ABSTRACT
The history of Russian Constructivism is complex and controversial. Alexander Rodchenko, who had been a companion and rival of Malevich in abstract painting, contributed to Constructivism a series of cardboard or wood constructions such as the hanging nest of circles and the study in cantileverage. In Germany especially Constructivism was influential not only in the theatre but in other ways which will be indicated in the paragraphs on the Bauhaus at Dessau. The Constructivist movement in Moscow was strengthened by the return in 1917 of the expatriate Russians, Pevsner and Gabo. Pevsner had studied painting in Paris where he had known his fellow countryman Archipenko. Pevsner and Gabo took an active part in the Russian movement, exhibiting with the others in the great Constructivist exhibition of 1920. After leaving Russia they continued to make occasional celluloid and metal constructions in the shape of masks or figures but most of their constructions in the fifteen years have been abstract.
