Jean-Louis Cohen

This fascinating book charts the dazzling trajectory of Russian avant-garde architecture during the brief but intense period of design and construction that took place from c. 1922 to 1935. Fired by the radical new language of Constructivist artists, such architects as Konstantin Melnikov, Moisei Ginzburg, and the Vesnin brothers produced designs whose innovative style embodied the energy and optimism of the new Soviet Socialist state. Streamlined, flat-roofed, and white-walled, their extraordinarily novel buildings must have seemed like alien forms.
Architectural photographer Richard Pare has spent the last 15 years documenting the remains and ruins of these structures. Here, his spectacular photographs are juxtaposed with vintage images, ephemera, and drawings and paintings by artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Popova, and Lissitzky.… (mer)