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Vkhutemas was not a company but a school: the “Higher Art and Technical Studios” in Moscow, active from 1920 to 1930. In the same years as the Bauhaus, with which it is often compared, it was the centre of the Russian avant-garde, of Constructivism, Suprematism and architectural Rationalism, and one of the places where modern design was born.
A school for industry
Vkhutemas was founded in 1920 by a decree of Lenin, merging the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture with the Stroganov School of Applied Arts. Its declared aim was to train “master artists of the highest qualifications for industry”. It came to have 100 teachers and 2,500 students, divided between an art faculty (graphics, sculpture, architecture) and an industrial one (printing, textiles, ceramics, wood, metal). All students first attended a compulsory basic course on colour, form, space and construction, taught by artists such as Lyubov Popova, Aleksandra Ekster and Alexander Rodchenko: an idea similar to the Bauhaus preliminary course.
Artists, architects, designers
The leading figures of the avant-garde taught or exhibited at Vkhutemas: Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin. Painters and sculptors worked on architectural projects, and teachers moved from one department to another. Rodchenko, dean of the wood and metal faculty from 1922, taught an approach to designing objects that combined art and technology: tables with moving parts, standardised and multifunctional. Popova, Varvara Stepanova and Tatlin even designed workwear for factory workers.
Paris 1925 and the end
At the great Paris Exposition of decorative arts in 1925, the one that gave Art Deco its name, Konstantin Melnikov's Soviet pavilion won the Grand Prix; inside, Rodchenko presented a workers' club furnished by his faculty, and the students' work won several prizes. In 1926 the school became an institute, Vkhutein, but political pressure grew and in 1930 it was closed; teachers and students dispersed to other schools. Vkhutemas products almost never reached factory production, but its ideas influenced design and architecture throughout the century.
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