Rodchenko, Aleksandr (Mikhailovich)

(born Dec. 5, 1891, St. Petersburg, Russia—died Dec. 3, 1956, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Russian painter, sculptor, designer, and photographer. He initially embraced a completely abstract, highly geometric style, using a ruler and compass. His series of black-on-black geometric paintings (1918) was a direct response to Kazimir Malevich's painting White on White. In 1919, influenced by Vladimir Tatlin, he began to make hanging three-dimensional constructions that were, in effect, mobiles. As leader of a wing of Constructivism that sought to produce works appropriate to workers' daily lives, he renounced easel painting and took up photography and book, furniture, and set design. His innovations in lighting in his photography influenced Sergei Eisenstein. He returned to easel painting in the 1930s.

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