As you know, the Moscow Architectural Institute, along with several other art universities, for example, Textile and Polygraphic, was founded in 1930 with the collapse of VKHUTEMAS (renamed VKHUTEIN in 1927) and is deservedly considered one of its direct heirs. The current main architectural university of the country is even located in the same complex of buildings on Rozhdestvenka, where the main department and a number of faculties of VKHUTEMAS were located in the 1920s. For two decades, the MArchI Museum has collected a significant collection of educational materials from the 1920s, mainly donated by the families of former students, and these works have not lost their methodological value and modernity today.
The exhibition in the VKHUTEMAS gallery, beautifully designed by Alexander Ermolaev, the head of the "TAF Workshop", immerses us in the educational atmosphere of the 1920s, imbued with the spirit of collectivism and creative freedom. The curators distributed the student's work to the faculties and workshops of the teachers, accompanying the graphics with the household items of the students - drawing tools, student tickets, photographs. Students were admitted to faculties without exams (for which later VKHUTEMAS was criticized more than once), training began with propaedeutics - general courses on understanding form, color, design, which in 1923 were united into the Main Department. This is, perhaps, the most valuable methodological part of the VKHUTEMAS program, which left behind the most interesting graphics: the exposition presents works on the identification of mass (workshop of N. Ladovsky), color (workshop of G. Klutsis), construction (workshop of A. Rodchenko). The uniqueness of the VKHUTEMAS curriculum was in the commonwealth of "pure" art (arch faculty, life faculty, sculpture faculty), applied (textile faculty) and industrial (polygraph faculty), for which uniform foundations were found in the form of propaedeutic courses. Thus, the students of Alexander Rodchenko's workshop studied the construction of a crane and, on their basis, designed table lamps.
A special place at the exhibition is occupied by the poorly studied materials of the Leningrad VKHUTEMAS-VKHUTEINAa. Basically, these are works from the archives of the family of students of the archfak Y. Velikanov and T. Timofeeva. If in the Moscow VKHUTEMAS the traditions of the classical school represented by I. Zholtovsky, A. Shchusev and G. Golts freely coexisted with absolutely new principles of shaping based on the so-called. psychoanalytic method of N. Ladovsky, then in Leningrad - and this can be seen from the sketches presented - the academic tradition prevailed.
The exhibition in the Apothecary Prikaz of the Museum of Architecture, curated by Irina Chepkunova, the author of works on the history of the Soviet avant-garde, continues the story about VKHUTEMAS, however, the main emphasis is placed on magnificent architectural graphics. Perhaps for the first time, within the framework of one exposition, so many iconic projects are presented at once - the works of Krutikov, Burov, Korzhev and other "stars" of the avant-garde from the MUAR collection, still known only from reproductions in the books of S. Khan-Magomedov or foreign catalogs.
Until now, a whole layer of less significant student work has generally remained the lot of specialists only. So, if the project graphics of Ivan Leonidov are widely known (it is fascinating by its clear geometry, minimalism, bordering on symbolism and even some sacredness), then the general public sees similar projects of other students of VKHUTEMAS for the first time. Among them, I would especially like to mention the project of the sanatorium in Matsesta K. Afanasyev - an endless building-plate on graceful supports, reminiscent of a linear city in miniature, or the project of a resort hotel by N. Sokolov with mechanized catering belts.
Both exhibitions are held within the framework of the large-scale festival "VKHUTEMAS Space", designed to summarize the research, knowledge and experience of a unique educational institution. During its short existence, VKHUTEMAS left a significant legacy - its students and teachers successfully participated in the international exhibition in Paris in 1925, and in 1927 already hosted the famous first exhibition of Modern architecture. But, perhaps, the main thing that the curators of the current exhibitions wanted to show was the valuable methodological experience of VKHUTEMAS, which has not yet exhausted its potential.
