van Leonidov’s graphic talent is universally known today as it already was among his contemporaries, including the many detractors existing in the Soviet Union at the time. Above all, his fame is due to the stupendous collection of very elegant square-format drawings, made of almost luminescent white lines on a black background, published by the journals “SA-Sovremmenaja Architektura” between 1926 and 1930. From the 1930s a denser graphics, influenced by a renewed interest in popular Russian folklore as well as in the warmer tones of nineteenth-century painting (Repin, Kramskoij, Bakst, Levitan) appeared in his works. A formal register no longer oriented towards the West and the future, purified by suprematist abstractionism, and oriented towards the neo-Scythian, Great Russian and Eastern art tradition, within the frame of that global, eclectic experience that was the Stalinist architecture. In the twilight of his production and his life, the last melancholy post-war architectural fantasies, in which all the architectural forms experimented during a tormented career aligned in a single, coherent, fantastic universe made of buildings of dreamlike and diaphanous quality.
L’opera al nero. Segno e disegno in Ivan Leonidov
Luca Lanini
2023-01-01
Abstract
van Leonidov’s graphic talent is universally known today as it already was among his contemporaries, including the many detractors existing in the Soviet Union at the time. Above all, his fame is due to the stupendous collection of very elegant square-format drawings, made of almost luminescent white lines on a black background, published by the journals “SA-Sovremmenaja Architektura” between 1926 and 1930. From the 1930s a denser graphics, influenced by a renewed interest in popular Russian folklore as well as in the warmer tones of nineteenth-century painting (Repin, Kramskoij, Bakst, Levitan) appeared in his works. A formal register no longer oriented towards the West and the future, purified by suprematist abstractionism, and oriented towards the neo-Scythian, Great Russian and Eastern art tradition, within the frame of that global, eclectic experience that was the Stalinist architecture. In the twilight of his production and his life, the last melancholy post-war architectural fantasies, in which all the architectural forms experimented during a tormented career aligned in a single, coherent, fantastic universe made of buildings of dreamlike and diaphanous quality.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
