The Spread of Constructivism

During WW1, Russian suprematism and the Dutch De Stijl movements were apparently completely isolated form one another, yet both groups pushed cubism to a pure geometric art. After the war artists in other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, adopted their ideas. Lissitzky’s 1920’s Warsaw Lectures on his Mechano- Faktura theory decisively influenced the Polish designer Henryk Berlewi. Believing that modern art was filled with illusionistic pitfalls, he mechanized painting and graphic design into a constructed abstraction that abolished any illusion of three dimensions. This was accomplished by mathematical placement of simple geometric forms on a ground. The mechanization of art was seen as an expression of industrial society.

Henryk Berlewi, exhibition poster, 1925.

This early application of Mechano-faktura principles to graphic design is for an 

exhibition held in a Warsaw automobile showroom.

In 1924 Berlewi joined the futurist poets Aleksander Wat and Stanley Brucz in opening a Warsaw advertising firm called Roklama Mechano. They introduced modern art forms to Polish society in industrial and commercial advertisements. Berlewi hoped that commercial advertising could become a vehicle for abolishing the division between the artist and society.

Henryk Berlewi, Putos Chocolates brochure, page 6, 1925.

Copywriter Aleksander Wat closely collaborated with Berlewi to integrate text and form.

In Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Sutnar became the leading supporter and practitioner of functional design. He advocated the constructivist ideal and the application of design principles to every aspect of contemporary life. The publishing house Druzstevni Prace retained Sutnar as design director. His book jackets and editorial designs demonstrated an organized simplicity and typographic clarity, giving graphic impact to the communication.

Ladislav Sutnar, cover of Nejmensi dum  (Minimum Housing), 1931.

Karel Teige, also from Prague, also worked in typography and photomontage as an enthusiastic advocate of international modernism. He was an active participant in Devutsil (Nine Forces), a group of avant-garde poets, designers, architects, performance artists and musicians. Founded in 1920, Devutsil would eventually have as many as eighty members. Teige believed that the untrained practitioner could contribute a fresh and innovative approach to design. He designed over one hundred books and periodicals. His constructivist approach involved an expressive use of type, montage, collage, and borrowed clips from silent films. He was the editor of several avant-garde magazines. As a social idealist, he believed that good design could help resolve the differences between capitalist America and the communist Soviet Union. After his own country fell to communism, he was banned from working as a writer and designer, and her died three years later.

Hungarian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy turned to nonrepresentational painting influenced by Malevich. In 1921 he moved to Berlin, where Lissitzky, Schwitters, and Van Doesburg were frequent visitors to his studio. His design for Arthur Muller Lehning’s Amsterdam-based avant-garde publication i10 – one of the purest examples of De Stijl principles applied to typography- demonstrates the collaboration of constructivism, De Stijl and Merz. De Stijl member Cesar Domela assisted Moholy-Nagy in the cover design. The printer was initially disturbed by the complete disregard for the rules of typography but eventually he came to understand and appreciate the design.

  

The quest for a pure art of visual relationships that began in the Netherlands and Russia remained a major influence for the visual disciplines throughout the twentieth century. The dominant directions in graphic design have been the use of geometric construction in organizing the printed page. The Unification of social and human values, technology, and visual form became a goal for those who strove for a new architecture and graphic design.