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ALEXANDR RODCHENKO, (Russian, 1891-1956), RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS, ON RED SQUARE, initial insignia et...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:10,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
ALEXANDR RODCHENKO, (Russian, 1891-1956), RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS, ON RED SQUARE, initial insignia et...
ALEXANDR RODCHENKO
(Russian, 1891-1956)
RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS
ON RED SQUARE
initial insignia etched in negative
Cyrillic inscription with date "1938"
in pencil on verso
artist's stamp on verso
gelatin silver print
111/2 x 1413/16 in. (29.2 x 37.6 cm)
1936
ESTIMATE: $10,000-15,000
<p>PROVENANCE
Christie's London, October 29, 1992, Lot 134
Private Collection, EUROPE
<p>LITERATURE
Daniel Girardin, ed., ALEXANDRE RODTCHENKO: LA FEMME ENJEU, Lausanne, Petite École, Musée de l'Élysée, 1997, n.p. (variant illustrated)
Alexander Lavrentiev, RODCHENKO: PHOTOGRAPHY 1924-1954, Cologne, Könemann, 1999, p. 281, fig. 374 (illustrated)
In 1928, Stalin issued the first of the Five-Year Plans and the new centralized bureaucracy began to constrain the output of the blossoming Russian avant-garde. One of the founders of Soviet photographic art, Alexandr Rodchenko began working more closely with the state to project an image of the Soviet Union as a workers' paradise, superior to capitalist nations. Well aware of the arrests and purges conducted by the government, as his friends and colleagues began to disappear, Rodchenko carefully avoided the same fate by creating images of unity, democracy and productivity in the Soviet Union. Sports parades had begun in 1925, becoming most extravagant from 1936 to 1938, and projected the image of a nation built upon the health and well-being of its men and women.