Memories of the Future: Utopian Graphics by Soviet Architect Yakov Chernikhov

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 2006, an event took place in Russia that received the status of a "cultural catastrophe" in the circles of art critics. More than a thousand originals of Yakov Chernikhov's works were stolen from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Who was this man, whose ideas rarely received practical implementation, and why his utopian graphics can be considered a national treasure?

The future genius of architecture was born in December 1889 in Pavlograd. He grew up in a large and friendly Jewish family - he had eleven brothers and sisters! Parents did not really want their children to drag out a miserable existence, and sought to find them a business that they considered suitable, worthy and money. Yakov's father once owned ship restaurants, but went bankrupt. Jacob had to go as an apprentice to a photographer, to a portrait photo studio - not the worst fate. However, upon learning of this, he was horrified and … ran away from home.

The escape was a success. Chernikhov entered the branch of the Academy of Arts in Odessa. During these years he worked as a laborer in order to get himself food and money for his studies. True, having started as a port loader, Yakov nevertheless made his way in the creative field. He also managed to work as a photographer - what an irony! - and a carver of a mat, and once became an assistant to the organizer of the Odessa industrial exhibition. Chernikhov was able to, as they say, “learn from everyone,” literally collecting the acquired skills.

In Odessa, he developed his first pedagogical course, which was implemented. For some time, Chernikhov taught in the same place where he previously studied.

Then Yakov moved to St. Petersburg, already to the Academy itself, and at the same time decided to get a real pedagogical education. In search of his vocation, Yakov ended up at the Faculty of Architecture of the Academy, from which he brilliantly graduated in 1916.

The next ten years turned out to be a forced break in his creative career - Chernikhov was called up for military service. However, demobilized in 1926, he managed to graduate from the famous VKHTUEIN, which was once one of the centers of development of the Russian avant-garde, but was already under the rule of "clean books" - artists of the traditional direction.

Few graduates of VKHUTEIN, who adhered to the ideas of the avant-garde, were able to realize themselves in the profession. Chernikhov, on the other hand, began work in the field of construction as a foreman - there is no time for creativity. Over time, he received the position of a designer at the Leningrad Institute of Railway Engineers, and finally was invited to teach at the Moscow Architectural Institute.

As a designer of industrial systems and structures, he seems to have worked quite successfully. Projects for metallurgy and chemical industries, schools, housing estates, research institutes were carried out by Chernikhov personally or under his leadership. However, their implementation was often difficult for financial or bureaucratic reasons.

At this time, the avant-garde had already turned into pure theory, utopian paper architecture, romantic fantasy - but teaching, illustrations, books remained … Back in 1927, Chernikhov organized in Leningrad the "Research Experimental Laboratory of Architectural Forms and Graphic Methods", which occupied design graphics and the search for rational design solutions in the field of industrial architecture.

"Replace the word with graphics everywhere!" - said Chernikhov, in many ways anticipating modern visual culture.

As an educator, he strove to teach students how to think, invent new buildings, and not copy existing ones. He taught at the faculties of architecture and construction, in real schools, in schools …

Added to the vast experience in the field of construction has been an understanding of the cognitive and technical difficulties faced by creative youth. He wrote several books, in fact - teaching aids, where all sorts of words were overshadowed by virtuoso, fantastic graphics, inspiring students to experiment on their own.

In his younger years, he adored abstractionism and its extreme form - Suprematism. Chernikhov considered architecture akin to fine art, insisted not only on functionality, but also on beauty - in the sense in which he understood it.

Chernikhov devoted all his free time to improving his graphic skills, being in an endless search for style, means of expression, and unusual combinations. Colleagues and disciples considered him to be something like a prophet or a saint. To a modern person, it seems almost unbelievable that such complex architectural compositions were created without the use of computer graphics - only paper, pencil and colored ink.

Chernikhov's drawings are both fabulous architecture of the past, constructivist space stations, and entire industrial worlds, deserted, almost post-apocalyptic, filled only with smoking chimneys of factories, endless staircases and power lines.

Over the years, many of Chernikhov's works look visionary, but alarming.

However, there is no prophet in his own country. The most daring and innovative ideas of Chernikhov were practically not implemented. In the last years of his life, Chernikhov became interested in the development of fonts - a business that modern designers, with the availability of technology and software, consider the most difficult.

He died on May 9, 1951. For thirty years, Chernikhov's legacy was forgotten - but in the 1980s it was suddenly rediscovered and today it has acquired the status of a cult - largely thanks to the efforts of his grandson. The futuristic worlds of Yakov Chernikhov attract the attention of architects, designers, filmmakers and creators of computer games, young talents devote their works to him, books are republished, works are digitized and widely disseminated in the digital environment. A romantic and visionary, he predicted the architecture of our time and remained in history as the most mysterious representative of the Russian avant-garde.