Anastasia Guseva
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
Artist and teacher Gustav Gustavovich Klutsis was one of the founders of a genre of political posters. The name of Klutsis was unfairly forgotten for some decades after his arrest and execution in 1938. Today his name is often heard. Two personal exhibitions of Klutsis have been held in Moscow and in Riga in recent years. He is well-known as master of political poster and one of creators of photomontage technique. There is a number of less studied aspects of his art. In the RGALI archives, the Museum of Mayakovsky and the Museum of the Moscow architectural institute unknown documents and the artist’s works were found. In 1924–1930 Klutsis was a professor of color theory in VKhUTEMAS. This period is not researched enough. His students studied the principles of coloring of a volume form, revealed essential design and figurative features of a designed project. It is necessary to mention special relation of Klutsis to color in art and color in production. In his last years Gustav Klutsis gave up production of posters and photomontages and turned to painting. There are some drafts for his works from this period. In this report the latest finds in the archives related to art and life of Klutsis will be considered.The author on the basis of the materials found in the archives analyzes educational work of Gustav Klutsis, focusing attention on his relation to color. This work is an attempt to fill in the gaps regarding art and life of Klutsis. The leader of constructivism, one of founders of photomontage, the master of the political poster, the innovator in the exhibition design, Klutsis sincerely believed in the ideas of transformation of the world and transformation of a person. The author of this work tries to shed a new light at the pedagogy of Klutsis actual for modern education.