Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin (28 December [O.S. 16 December] 1885 – 31 May 1953)[1] was aRussian[2][3][4][5][6] andSoviet painter, architect, and stage-designer. Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designedThe Monument to the Third International, more commonly known as Tatlin's Tower, which he began in 1919.[7] WithKazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in theSoviet avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became an important artist in theconstructivist movement.
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was born inMoscow[1][2][3][4][5][6] orKharkiv,[8][9][10][11]Russian Empire. His father, Yevgraf Nikoforovich Tatlin was a hereditary nobleman fromOryol, a mechanical engineer graduated from theTechnological Institute inSt.Petersburg and employed by theMoscow-Brest Railway in Moscow.[12][13] His mother, Nadezhda Nikolaevna Tatlina (Bart) was a poet who sympathized with theNarodnaya Volya revolutionary movement.[14] After she died in 1887, his father married again and resettled to Kharkiv.[15] His father, by whom he lived after having failed to study inMoscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture died in 1904, so young Vladimir had to interrupt his studies at the Kharkov Arts School and to leave forOdesa to become a merchant sea cadet. According to his own memories, sea and distant lands gave him both means of subsistence and source of inspiration; he sailed all across theBlack Sea and also toEgypt.[15]
In 1905 he started and in 1910 successfully completed his studies at N. Selivestrov Penza Art School inPenza. During the summer vacations he traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg to participate in various art events.[16] In 1911 he resettled to Moscow to live by his uncle and began his art career as an icon painter. He also played thebandura, a Ukrainian folk instrument he picked up when living in Kharkov, and performed abroad as a professionalbandurist, accompanying his own singing in Ukrainian.[17]
Tatlin became familiar with the work of Pablo Picasso during a trip to Paris in 1913.[18]
Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed the huge monument to theThird International, also known asTatlin's Tower.[19] Tatlin began to design it in 1919.[7] The monument was to be a tall tower made ofiron, glass andsteel which would have dwarfed theEiffel Tower inParis (the Monument to the Third International was a third taller at 400 meters high). Inside the iron-and-steel structure of twin spirals, the design envisaged three building blocks, covered with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds (the first one, a cube, once a year; the second one, a pyramid, once a month; the third one, a cylinder, once a day). The entire building was to house the executive andlegislature of the Comintern, and be a central area for the creation and dissemination of propaganda.[20] For financial and practical reasons, however, the tower was never built.[21][22]
Tatlin was also regarded as a progenitor of Soviet post-revolutionaryconstructivist art with his pre-revolutionary counter-reliefs, three-dimensional constructions made of wood and metal,[23] some placed in corners (corner counter-reliefs) and others more conventionally.[24] Tatlin conceived thesesculptures in order to question the traditional ideas of art, though he did not regard himself as a constructivist and objected to many of the movement's ideas. Later prominent constructivists includedVarvara Stepanova,Alexander Rodchenko,Manuel Rendón Seminario,Joaquín Torres García,László Moholy-Nagy,Antoine Pevsner andNaum Gabo.
Although colleagues at the beginning of their careers, Tatlin andMalevich quarrelled fiercely and publicly at the time of the0.10 Exhibition in 1915 (long before the birth of constructivism), also called "the last futurist exhibition", apparently over the 'suprematist' works Malevich exhibited there. This led Malevich to develop his ideas further in the city ofVitebsk, where he found a school calledUNOVIS (Champions of the New Art).
Tatlin also dedicated himself to the study of clothes, and various objects, and flight, culminating in the construction of Letatlin personal flying apparatus.[25]
Tatlin taught and directed the theatre, film and photography department at theKyiv Art Institute from 1925 to 1927.[10][11] In 1930 he taught in Kyiv where one of his students wasJoseph Karakis.[26]
From the 1930s Tatlin worked for different theatres in Moscow and during theGreat Patriotic War, in Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod). He also worked for and with many Soviet art organizations, including the department of Fine Arts (IZO) ofNarkompros.[27]
In 1948 he was heavily criticized for his allegedly anti-communist stance and lost his job, but was not repressed.[28]
Tatlin died in 1953 in Moscow and was buried at theNovodevichy Cemetery.[29]
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