Lot 37 D

Like his contemporaries Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Nikolai Suetin or El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko was intensively exploring the relationship between the plane and space in his works from 1917 and 1918. In his compositions, precise contours drawn with a compass and ruler are broken up in the coloured sequence of planes or synthesise an astounding sense of depth through their mutual interpenetration: “Rodchenko had already begun his experiments with the collective spatial arrangement of elements made up of planes and lines in 1917, and he continued these in 1918. He made it his goal to achieve a constructive, overarching interrelationship between the elements, which were simultaneously to form a unified spatial organism on the canvas. As Rodchenko wrote, form had 'not just a painterly, but also a constructive connection' in this context. That same year, Rodchenko created his first series of spatial constructions: vertical, spatial-constructive compositions made up of the interlocking planes of different forms. These works can be taken apart and put back together again; in their disassembled state, they can be stored in a very compact manner, because each of the individual pieces is flat” (Selim D. Khan-Magomedov, Alexander Rodtschenkos Raumkonstruktionen, in: exh. cat. Rodtschenko, Lehmbruck-Museum Duisburg/Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne 2002, pp. 19 f.).

In its radical handling of spatiality, the present composition - which has been prominently exhibited multiple times - impressively documents Rodchenko's important contribution to the Russian avant-garde's revolutionary set of experiments.