Gustavs Klucis

Please add an image!
Birth Date:
04.01.1895
Death date:
26.02.1938
Length of life:
43
Days since birth:
47202
Years since birth:
129
Days since death:
31443
Years since death:
86
Person's maiden name:
Gustavovich
Extra names:
Густав Густавович Клуцис, Klutsis
Categories:
, Artist, Designer, Painter, Private, Victim of repression (genocide) of the Soviet regime
Nationality:
 latvian
Cemetery:
Butovo Shooting Range

Gustav Klucis (Klutsis)  Latvian artist born in Rujiena, Latvia (that time - occupied by Russian Empire). A pioneering photographer and major member of the Constructivist avant-garde in the early 20th century. He is known for the Soviet revolutionary and Stalinist propaganda he produced with his wife and collaborator Valentina Kulagina.

Klucis began his artistic training in Riga in 1912.

Exposición "Gustavs Klucis. En el frente del arte constructivista"

 In 1915 he was drafted into the Russian Army, serving in a Latvian riflemen detachment, then went to Moscow in 1917. In the next three years he began art studies under Kazimir Malevich and Antoine Pevsner, joined the Communist Party, met and married longtime collaborator Valentina Kulagina, and graduated from the state-run art school VKhUTEMAS. He would continue to be associated with VKhUTEMAS as a professor of color theory from 1924 until the school closed in 1930.

Klucis taught, wrote, and produced political art for the Soviet state for the rest of his life. As the political background degraded through the 1920s and 1930s, Klutsis and Kulagina came under increasing pressure to limit their subject matter and techniques. Once joyful, revolutionary and utopian, by 1935 their art was devoted to furthering Joseph Stalin's cult of personality.

Despite his active and loyal service to the party, Klucis was arrested in Moscow on January 17, 1938, as he prepared to leave for the New York World's Fair. Kulagina agonized for months, then years, over his disappearance. In 1989 it was found that he had been executed by Stalin's order soon after his arrest.

 

Klutsis worked in a variety of experimental media. He liked to use propaganda as a sign or revolutionary background image. His first project of note, in 1922, was a series of semi-portable multimedia agitprop kiosks to be installed on the streets of Moscow, integrating "radio-orators", film screens, and newsprint displays, all to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Revolution. Like other Constructivists he worked in sculpture, produced exhibition installations, illustrations and ephemera.

But Klutsis and Kulagina are primarily known for their photo montages. The names of some of their best posters, like "Electrification of the whole country" (1920), "There can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory" (1927), and "Field shock workers into the fight for the socialist reconstruction" (1932), belied the fresh, powerful, and sometimes eerie images. For economy they often posed for, and inserted themselves into, these images, disguised as shock workers or peasants. Their dynamic compositions, distortions of scale and space, angled viewpoints and colliding perspectives make them perpetually modern.

Klutsis is one of four artists with a claim to having invented the sub-genre of political photo montage in 1918 (along with the German Dadaists Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, and the Russian El Lissitzky).

***

Born 1895, мест. Руен Кенигской вол. Вольмарского уезда (Латвия); латыш; высшее (худож.);

художник ИЗОГИЗа, член Союза работников искусств (родоначальник советского плаката)..

Lived: Москва, Петровско-Разумовская аллея, д. 6, кв. 23..

Arrested: 16 January 1938.

Sentenced: Комиссией НКВД СССР и прокурора СССР 11 February 1938.

Charged: причастности к контрреволюционной националистической организации и терроризме.

Shot: 26 February 1938.

Buried: место захоронения - Московская обл., Бутово.

Rehabilitated: 25 August 1956.

Source: Москва, расстрельные списки - Бутовский полигон

File number: том II, стр.181, место хранения дела - ГА РФ.

***

Source: memo.ru

No places

    loading...

        Relations

        Relation nameRelation typeBirth DateDeath dateDescription

        24.05.1937 | Pasaules izstādes atklāšana Parīzē. Baltijas valstis savu paviljonu apmeklētājiem ver 17. jūnijā.

        PSRS izstādes paviljonu iekārto latviešu izcelsmes, Rīgā dzimis mākslinieks Gustavs Klucis. Tajā izstādīta Rīgā dzimušās skulptores Veras Muhinas skulptūra "Strādnieks un kolhozniece". G. Kluci latviskās izcelsmes dēļ likvidē pusgadu vēlāk - 1938. gada februārī- pret nekrievu tautībām (vairāk kā 30 "nacionālās operācijas") vērstā genocīda laikā. Lai gan, īpaši Rietumu vēsturnieku aprindās Krievijas (PSRS) komunistu 1937.-38. gada represijas tiek sauktas par Lielo teroru, un pašā Krievijā par to nemīl runāt vispār, faktiski ignorēts tiek fakts, ka represijas bija "mērķēti" pret Krievijas (PSRS) mazākumtautībām vērstas. To pierāda statistika- Lielā terora laikā no arestētajiem poļiem, latviešiem, somiem u.c. ar nāves sodu tika sodīti vairāk kā 80%, kamēr pašu krievu vidū šis rādītājs nepārsniedza dažus procentus.

        Submit memories

        13.07.2017 | Rīgas būvvaldes lēmums par ielu nosaukumu maiņu

        Submit memories

        Tags