Experiments for the Future. Records, Articles, Letters, and Memories

A collection of diary entries, articles, letters, poems, and manifestos by Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) is not only a chronicle of the life of one of the creators of Russian Constructivism, but also the history of an entire movement in art. For Rodchenko, life was an uninterrupted creative process, a series of “experiments,” beautifully reflected in his texts from different years: in non-objective poems dedicated to his future wife Varvara Stepanova, in personal notes full of admiration and wonder at immersing himself in the world of art, in articles dedicated to photography and design or “constructing things,” in notes about working with contemporaries and friends – Mayakovsky, Gan, Meyerhold, Kandinsky, and others. Rodchenko managed to convey very accurately the feeling of his contemporary era of revolutionary discoveries and bold experiments, for which, as Varvara Stepanova wrote, “the future is the only goal.”