User:Romangood/Lazar Khidekel

Lazar Khidekel (1904 Vitebsk – 1986 Leningrad)

The rapid maturation of Lazar Khidekel’s creative approach during the Vitebsk Art School (1919-1922) under star teachers such as Chagall, Dobuzhinsky, Lissitzky, and Malevich, allowed a teenage prodigy to find his own way and to play a substantial role in developing Suprematism’s inherent potential. He was instrumental in the transition from planar Suprematism to volumetric Suprematism, creating axonometric projections, making three-dimensional models, and producing the first Suprematist architectural project. Directly inspired by Suprematism and its notion of an organic form-creation continuum, he explored new philosophical, scientific  and technological futuristic approaches, and proposed innovative solutions for the creation of new urban environments, where people would live in harmony with nature and would be protected from man-made and natural disasters. These visionary and imaginative projects still topical today. The logic of further avant-garde development can be detected ahead of its time in Khidekel’s oeuvre. Even his early works were Minimal avant le letter, but most importantly, Khidekel’s art continue to inspire exploration of “the Suprematist way to understand the world.” According to Dorothea Strauss, the director and curator of Museum Haus Konstruktiv which hold a Khidekel's solo exhibition in 2011-12, Khidekel’s art “bridges the gap between 1920s Suprematism and the Zurich Concretists, who examined the legacy of this Russian movement intensively… His art revealed Suprematism’s relevance in the context of “refreshingly diverse forms of a new Minimalism, indicative of a widespread renewal of interest in the themes of the classical avant-garde.” “The extent to which Suprematist works remain topical, even today, becomes clear: many young and international contemporary artists refer to the traditional themes of the founding generation with new self-confidence and can be seen to handle this heritage in a respectful, yet playful manner.” Lazar Khidekel represents the next generation of Avant-garde artists and his perception and development of Suprematim from the very early 1920s through his long career constitute a different era bringing us closer to understanding why Suprematism became the foundation of the visual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Daniel Libeskind, New York, September 30, 2014

"In my view Lazar Khidekel is one of the greatest of innovators in architecture in our times. His conception of space, function, and modernity is something which has inspired me ever since I discovered his drawings. In Khidekel's work the word 'innovation' is not a footnote but is the central spirit of his buildings. Although his architecture is on the level of architect's who's works are well known to us like El Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Melnikov, and Vesnin, it is only recently that he has emerged into the light of history. As Sophocles says 'truth is the daughter of time' and it is now time to celebrate and be inspired by Khidekel's seminal oeuvre. He is not a mere visionary of the past, but an architect whose work should inspire all of us to become as young as his ethereal vision."

Jonathan Brent, New York, 2013

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is proud to be presenting an exhibition of the life and work of Lazar Khidekel. A genius, visionary and prophet, Khidekel was propelled by the power of his imagination into a future space and time that overturned the “realistic” conventions of his world. He was both an individual living in concrete reality and also a representative of that which did not yet exist. He is an exemplar of the creative genius of the Jewish people at the turn of the Twentieth Century in Eastern Europe whose work transcends his time, his place, his ethnicity and heritage to something universal. - Financial Times, London, UK July 18, 2014 5:35 pm Lazar Khidekel at Pushkin House, London.By Edwin Heathcote. "Where do you go after the Black Square? Following Malevich’s innovations, the story of suprematism is the narrative of the search for revolutionary geometries capable of expressing an emerging society in a radical artistic language. The black lines and red circles, the floating forms and complex geometries, have become familiar – revived in everything from 1980s pop graphics to postmodern fashion and jewelry. But some of the most fascinating experiments of the era took place when architects attempted to translate a form developed specifically to flatten the painted plane back into three dimensions – into sculptures, buildings and visionary cities. In the work of one remarkable designer, Lazar Khidekel (1904-86), we can see hints of what these experiments might have turned into had political reaction and technological backwardness not interceded. Khidekel was selected by Marc Chagall at the age of 14 to study at the Vitebsk school of art, where he came under the influence of Malevich and El Lissitzky. By the age of 16, the prodigious Khidekel was turning out striking, fully mature suprematist works, many of which are on show at a small but illuminating exhibition at London’s Pushkin House, Building Drawings, Drawing Buildings: Lazar Khidekel, Suprematism and the Russian Avant-Garde. Some are heavily indebted to his masters but others, notably “Black Suprematism” (1920), reveal a free manner with ink and a subtle building-up of the painted surface, which presage the bold, minimalist works on paper by Richard Serra and others half a century later. Khidekel was responsible for some of the earliest translations of suprematist language into architectural form. A sports club and the workers’ club for a Leningrad shipyard caused waves in the west. Next, Khidekel began designing visionary cities, floating grids and complex “cosmic” structures somewhere between space stations and megastructures, the kind of utopian urbanism advocated in the 1950s and 1960s by avant-gardists such as Yona Friedman, Constant Nieuwenhuys and Superstudio. But Khidekel was there in the 1920s, barely out of his teens. …Khidekel is barely known compared with his now-stellar contemporaries, yet in his fusing of art, architecture and urbanism, he remains arguably the most visionary of them all." http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/0c4b0fde-0d04-11e4-bcb2-00144feabdc0.html -- http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/lazar-khidekel-suprematism/ Aesthetica Magazine, 2nd December 2014, UK Bryony Byrne, Lazar Khidekel & Suprematism Regina Khidekel. Prestel. "An architect and an artist, Lazar Khidekel trained under Marc Chagall, and at the age of only 15 exhibited alongside other modern art luminaries including Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich and went on to become an important member of the Russian avant-garde. This book is the first dedicated to his work and explores the importance of Suprematism in his oeuvre. It is a fantastic introduction to an often-overlooked artist and spans the decades of his long career, moving through the different phases of his work. A stunning collection of paintings, drawings and photographs, the book reveals insight into Khidekel’s early and prodigious experiments with abstraction in both art and architecture. A series of interesting essays also traces Khidekel’s interactions with Malevich and the development of the Suprematist movement. Coinciding with a renewed interest in Russian abstract art, this book is a brilliant exploration of a talented and significant artist and provides a detailed and beautiful showcase of Suprematist work. A key link in the story of abstraction." - References: Magdalena Dabrowsky, Alla Rosenfeld, Tatiand Goriatcheva, Constantin Boym, Boris Kirikov and   Margarita Shtiglitz. Prestel Publishing, 2014.  M., 2008  Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York, 1995.  Avant-Garde 1915-1932.- Solomon Guggenheim Museum, 1992, State Tretiakov Gallery, State Russian   Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.  no 7-8, 1989  1983.  Thames and Hudson, London, 1982.  VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, 1978
 * Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism. Regina Khidekel,Editor and contributor, Charlotte Douglas,
 * S. O. Khan-Magomedov. Lazar Khidekel (Creators of Russian Classical Avant-garde series)
 * Alla Efimova . Surviving Suprematism: Lazar Khidekel. Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley CA, 2004.
 * S.O. Khan-Magomedov. Pioneers of the Soviet Design. Galart, Moscow, 1995.
 * Selim Khan-Magomedov, Regina Khidekel. Lazar Markovich Khidekel. Suprematism and Architecture.
 * Alexandra Schatskikh. Unovis: Epicenter of a New World. The Great Utopia.The Russian and Soviet
 * Mark Khidekel. Suprematism and Architectural Projects of Lazar Khidekel. Architectural Design 59,
 * Mark Khidekel. Suprematism in Architecture.L’Arca, Italy, # 27, 1989
 * Selim O. Chan-Magomedow. Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden,
 * Larissa A. Zhadova.Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art 1910-1030
 * Larissa A. Zhadowa. Suche und Experiment. Russische und sowjetische Kunst 1910 bis 1930

http://fairenough.ru/participants/khidekel-elements/; http://fairenough.ru/about/; http://azmiu.edu.az/images/konkursen.pdf; www.bbc.co.uk/russian, BBC Русская служба - Cева Новгородцев; https://www.aestheticamagazine.com/lazar-khidekel-suprematism <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"; http://thekompass.rbth.co.uk/article/503; AIA New York Chaper | eOculus - Suprematism Revisited by Claire Webb http://main.aiany.org/eOCULUS/newsletter/suprematism-revisited/; http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/0c4b0fde-0d04-11e4-bcb2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38Sx7gLsE; http://www.amazon.com/Lazar-Khidekel-Suprematism-Regina/dp/3791349686; http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/regina+khidekel/lazar+khidekel+and+suprematism/10787586/it http://archinect.com/news/article/53722256/discovering-khidekel;

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