User:Regina Khidekel

Artist, designer and visionary architect Lazar Markovich Khidekel (Russian, 1904, Vitebsk – 1986, Leningrad) belongs to the titans of Russian Avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century. Khidekel had the opportunity and the grace of good fortune to be taught by mentors such as, Marc Chagall, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky. They shaped his artistic and philosophical outlook and marked his personal achievements and fate.

Being fourteen years old when he was excepted by Mark Chagall to the Vitebsk Art School, Khidekel participated in the famous 1919 Vitebsk Exhibit along with the most important artists of Russian Avant-garde such as Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov, Liubov Popova, Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall and others.

In 1919, under Kazimir Malevich's leadership, Khidekel became one of the founders of the group called UNOVIS - Affirmers of New Art. He belonged to a few of Malevich's students who deeply embraced Suprematism and its philosophy, and constituted the nucleus of genuine followers who soon become into their master's partners and assistants.

During the crucial years of 1919 -1922, Khidekel was pivotal in the development of Suprematism from a painterly to an architectural form. In 1921, after El Lissitzky left for Moscow, Khidekel and his classmate Ilya Chashnik headed the Architecture and Technical Department of the Vitebsk Art School. Khidekel's contribution was critical in extricating from two-dimensional suprematist shape to its three-dimensional, spatial expression.

By elaborating suprematist ideas through five decades of art development, he defined his personal approach to suprematist canon, introducing his own ideas, forms and thoughts. In 1926, while a student of the Architectural College (PIGI) in Petrograd, he created the first real suprematist architectural project that defined Lazar Khidekel’s groundbreaking role in developing Suprematist and Constructivist-Suprematist style as a definitive trend of the Leningrad architecture of the 1920’s - early 1930’s.

In the mid 1920’s he envisioned his projects of the futurist cities such as Aero-city, Garden-city, City on the Poles and on the Water, that firstly young Lazar Khidekel defined in his 1920 hand lithographed manifesto “AERO. Articles and Projects”. In this publication Lazar defined new social and aesthetic approaches and solutions to the issues of the ecological impact on the environment produced by the modern industrial civilization.

He was the only architect from Malevich's group who completed innovative ideas in the building of residential complexes, theaters, movie-houses, and in drafting plans for new forms of skyscrapers. In the middle of the 1920's Khidekel was exploring specialized projects of buildings for a new way of life, the communal housing in suprematist style, as well as he was the first in the 20’s century to create projects of futuristic cities.

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1986       Lazar Khidekel (b.1904), Russian artist and architect, died. He sustained a radical utopian vision and avant-garde aesthetic during decades of Soviet control of cultural production. (SFC, 2/22/05, p.E1)

Categories: | Russian artists | Russian architects Suprematism | Russian Avant-garde | Modern artists | 1904 births | 1986 deaths | Visionary architect | Futuristic cities