Visual Experiments of Russian Avant-Garde Artists 1910s-30s March 6, 2007

For the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century, crossing the border between visual and verbal was an important element in their quest for artistic freedom. As a result, artists and poets often collaborated closely on books that abound with pictures in dialogue with the text. In the 1920s, when such media as photomontage and photography rapidly advanced, political texts entered a close relationship with visual arts. Promoting the concepts of function and communication, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Gustav Klutsis and other constructivist artists, designed all forms of printed matter, including posters, books and catalogues. These artists introduced radical new ideas and forms to graphic design -- notably, the value of the diagonal as a dynamic device, the effect of layering letters over each other and a combination of different fonts.