{{short description|Russian artist (1885–1953)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2025}} {{pp-extended|small=yes}} {{Infobox artist | name = Vladimir Tatlin | native_name = {{nativename|ru|Владимир Татлин}}<br />{{nativename|uk|Володимир Татлін}} | image = Татлин.jpg | caption = Vladimir Tatlin in a sailor's blouse (1914–1915) | birth_name = | birth_place = Kharkov or Moscow, Russia | birth_date = {{Birth date|1885|12|28|df=y}} | death_place = Moscow, Soviet Union | death_date = {{Death date and age|1953|05|31|1885|12|28|df=y}} | education = Kharkov Real School; Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; Penza School of Art | style = Soviet avant-garde, constructivism | notable_works = Tatlin's Tower or the project for the Monument to the Third International | children = Anatoli Romov | awards = People's Artist of the RSFSR }} '''Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin'''{{Family name footnote|Yevgrafovich|Tatlin|lang=Eastern Slavic}}{{efn|{{langx|ru|Владимир Евграфович Татлин}}; {{langx|uk|Володимир Євграфович Татлін}}}} ({{OldStyleDate|28 December|1885|16 December}} – 31 May 1953)<ref name="Lynton 2009 1">{{cite book|last=Lynton|first=Norbert|title=Tatlin's Tower: Monument to Revolution|year=2009|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=978-0300111309|page=1}}</ref> was a Russian<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Boersma |first=Linda S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t-fefv1hw9gC&q=born |title=0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting |date=1994 |publisher=010 Publishers |isbn=978-90-6450-135-7 |pages=22 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Lynton |first=Norbert |title=Tatlin's Tower: Monument to Revolution |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0300111309 |pages=34}}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite web |title=Vol. 7, Winter, 1978 of October on JSTOR |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/i231751 |access-date=2023-03-19 |website=www.jstor.org |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=Vladimir Tatlin |url=https://www.artnet.com/artists/vladimir-tatlin/biography |access-date=2023-03-19 |website=artnet}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite web |last= |date=2013-03-09 |title=Vladimir Tatlin Biography (1885–1953) – Life of a Russian Artist |url=https://totallyhistory.com/vladimir-tatlin/ |access-date=2023-03-19 |website=Totally History |language=en-US}}</ref> and Soviet painter, architect, and stage-designer. Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed The Monument to the Third International, more commonly known as Tatlin's Tower, which he began in 1919.<ref name="HF">Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) ''A World History of Art''. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing, p. 819. {{ISBN|9781856695848}}</ref> With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Soviet avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became an important artist in the constructivist movement.
==Biography==
According to various accounts Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was born either in Moscow<ref name="Lynton 2009 1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> or in Kharkov,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Tatlin, Vladimir (Ukrainian painter, designer, and sculptor, 1885-1956) |url=https://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=Tatlin&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=500021874 |access-date=2023-03-03 |website=Union List of Artist Names (Getty Research)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2017 |title=Tatlin, Vladimir (Yevgrafovich) |url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ebconcise/tatlin_vladimir_yevgrafovich/0 |access-date=2023-03-03 |website=Britannica Concise Encyclopedia – Credo Reference}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Citation |last=Milner |first=John |title=Tatlin, Vladimir |date=2003 |url=http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/documentID/oao-9781884446054-e-7000083448 |work=Oxford Art Online |publisher=Oxford University Press |language=en |doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t083448 |isbn=978-1-884446-05-4 |access-date=2023-03-03|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite book |url=http://www.oxfordartonline.com/benezit/view/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.001.0001/acref-9780199773787-e-00179852 |title=Benefit Dictionary of Artists |date=2011-10-31 |publisher=Oxford University Press |volume=1 |language=en |chapter=Tatlin, Vladimir Levgrafovich |doi=10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.b00179852|isbn=978-0-19-977378-7 }}</ref> Russian Empire. His father, Yevgraf Nikoforovich Tatlin was a hereditary nobleman from Oryol, a mechanical engineer who graduated from the Technological Institute in St.Petersburg and was employed by the Moscow-Brest Railway in Moscow.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Tatlin|publisher=Rizzoli|others=Zhadova, L. (Larisa)|year=1988|isbn=0847808270|location=New York|page=321|oclc=15054267}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://search.rsl.ru/ru/record/01003666329|title=Татлин, Евграф Никифорович – Отчет о поездке для изучения системы сменных бригад на паровозах американских железных дорог / – Search RSL|year=1893 |publisher=тип. М-ва пут. сообщ |access-date=2018-12-05}}</ref> His mother, Nadezhda Nikolaevna Tatlina (Bart) was a poet and was a sympathizer of the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary movement.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rusavangard.ru/online/biographies/tatlin-vladimir-evgrafovich/|title=ТАТЛИН Владимир Евграфович|website=Encyclopedia of Russian Avantgarde|language=ru|access-date=2018-12-05}}</ref> After her death in 1887, his father remarried and moved to Kharkov.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=http://www.archjournal.ru/rus/04612010/tainovidec.htm|title=ТАЙНОВИДЕЦ ИЗ ОТРЯДА СОЛНЦЕЛОВОВ. К 125-летию со дня рождения В.Е. Татлина.|last=Terekhovich|first=Marina|website=www.archjournal.ru|publisher=Journal for Architecture|access-date=2018-12-05}}</ref> Tatlin lived with his father after failing entrance examinations for the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His father died in 1904, and young Vladimir had to interrupt his studies at the Kharkov Arts School and left for Odessa where he became a merchant marine cadet. According to his memoirs, the sea and distant lands gave him both means of subsistence and a source of inspiration; he sailed all across the Black Sea and also to Egypt.<ref name=":0" />
From 1905 and 1910 he studied at N. Selivestrov Penza Art School in Penza. During the summer vacations he traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg to participate in various art events.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://tatlin.ru/articles/otecz_xudozhestvennogo_avangarda|title="Отец" художественного авангарда|website=tatlin.ru}}</ref> In 1911 he resettled to Moscow, where he lived with his uncle and began his art career as an icon painter. He also played the bandura, a Ukrainian folk instrument he picked up when living in Kharkov, and performed abroad as a professional bandurist, accompanying his own singing in Ukrainian.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.uartlib.org/exclusive/tatlin-graye-na-banduri/ |title=Tatlin Playing The Bandura – Ukrainian Art Library |publisher=En.uartlib.org |date= |accessdate=2022-04-11}}</ref>
Tatlin became familiar with the work of Pablo Picasso during a trip to Paris in 1913.<ref>Gray, Camilla, (1986) ''The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922''. rev. by Marian Burleigh-Motley. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 174.</ref>
Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed the huge monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin's Tower.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Begicheva|first=Anna|date=2013-03-01|title=How I remember Tatlin|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/690996|journal=Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics|volume=63–64|pages=299–313|doi=10.1086/690996|s2cid=185645013|issn=0277-1322|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Tatlin began to design it in 1919.<ref name="HF" /> The monument was to be a tall tower made of iron, glass and steel which would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the Monument to the Third International was a third taller at 400 meters high). Inside the iron-and-steel structure of twin spirals, the design envisaged three building blocks, covered with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds (the first one, a cube, once a year; the second one, a pyramid, once a month; the third one, a cylinder, once a day). The entire building was to house the executive and legislature of the Comintern, and be a central area for the creation and dissemination of propaganda.<ref>{{cite web|title=Vladimir Tatlin|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Yevgrafovich-Tatlin|access-date=2021-03-28|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref> For financial and practical reasons, however, the tower was never built.<ref name="Janson">Janson, H.W. (1995) ''History of Art''. 5th edn. Revised and expanded by Anthony F. Janson. London: Thames & Hudson, p. 820. {{ISBN|0500237018}}</ref><ref name="Singh">Singh, Iona (2012) ''Aesthetic World in the Future – chapter from Color, Facture, Art & Design''. Hampshire: Zero Books, p. 104–128. {{ISBN|978-1-78099-629-5}}</ref>
Tatlin was also regarded as a progenitor of Soviet post-revolutionary constructivist art with his pre-revolutionary counter-reliefs, three-dimensional constructions made of wood and metal,<ref>[http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/361 Tatlin, Vladimir Evgrafovich: Counter-relief (Material Assortment).] The State Tretyakov Gallery, 2013. Retrieved 10 May 2013. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130728042057/http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/361 |date=2013-07-28 }}</ref> some placed in corners (corner counter-reliefs) and others more conventionally.<ref>Boersma, Linda S. (1994) [https://books.google.com/books?id=t-fefv1hw9gC&dq=tatlin+counter+reliefs&pg=PA63 ''The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting: 0,10''.] Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, p. 63. {{ISBN|9064501351}}</ref> Tatlin conceived these sculptures in order to question the traditional ideas of art, though he did not regard himself as a constructivist and objected to many of the movement's ideas. Later prominent constructivists included Varvara Stepanova, Alexander Rodchenko, Manuel Rendón Seminario, Joaquín Torres García, László Moholy-Nagy, Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo.
Although colleagues at the beginning of their careers, Tatlin and Malevich quarrelled fiercely and publicly at the time of the 0.10 Exhibition in 1915 (long before the birth of constructivism), also called "the last futurist exhibition", apparently over the 'suprematist' works Malevich exhibited there. This led Malevich to develop his ideas further in the city of Vitebsk, where he found a school called UNOVIS (Champions of the New Art).
Tatlin also dedicated himself to the study of clothes, and various objects, and flight, culminating in the construction of Letatlin personal flying apparatus.<ref>{{cite magazine |author=Maria Antonova |date=2017-01-10 |title=The Bird-Like Soviet Flying Machine That Never Quite Took Off |url=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-birdlike-soviet-flying-machine-that-never-quite-took-off |magazine=Atlas Obscura |access-date=2019-10-19}}</ref>
Tatlin taught and directed the theatre, film and photography department at the Kyiv Art Institute from 1925 to 1927.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> In 1930 he taught in Kyiv where one of his students was Joseph Karakis.{{sfn|Юнаков|2016|p=53}}
From the 1930s Tatlin worked for different theatres in Moscow and during the Great Patriotic War, in Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod). He also worked for and with many Soviet art organizations, including the department of Fine Arts (IZO) of Narkompros.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kachurin|first=Pamela|date=2012|title=Working (for) the State: Vladimir Tatlin's Career in Early Soviet Russia and the Origins of The Monument to the Third International|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/477624|journal=Modernism/Modernity|volume=19|issue=1|pages=19–41|doi=10.1353/mod.2012.0001|s2cid=144496036|issn=1080-6601|url-access=subscription}}</ref>
In 1948 he was heavily criticized for his allegedly anti-communist stance and lost his job, but was not repressed.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://tatlin.ru/articles/otecz_xudozhestvennogo_avangarda|title="Отец" художественного авангарда|website=tatlin.ru|access-date=2018-12-05}}</ref>
Tatlin died in 1953 in Moscow and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://nlobooks.ru/magazines/teoriya_mody/44_tm_2_2017/article/12557/|title=Таким помню Татлина. Мемуары Анны Бегичевой|website=НЛО|language=ru|access-date=2018-12-05}}</ref>
==Gallery of works==
<gallery widths="140px" heights="160px"> File:Female Model by Vladimir Tatlin 1913.jpg|Tatlin, 1913, ''Female Model / Натурщица'', oil on canvas File:A Life for the Tsar (Tatlin) 05.jpg|Tatlin 1913, ''scene design'' for the play 'A Life for the Tsar' File:Counter-relief by V.Tatlin (1916, GTG) 02 by shakko.JPG|Tatlin, 1916, ''Counter-relief'', sculpture of several materials File:Tatlin's Tower maket 1919 year.jpg|Tatlin, 1919–20, ''Tatlin's Tower'', official title: ''Monument to the Third International'', the design was never built File:Tatlin 2.jpg|Tatlin, 1919–20, recently made copy of ''Tatlin's tower, Monument to the Third International'', a later model File:Vladimir Tatlin's dress design.jpg|Tatlin, 1920s, ''dress-design'' File:2012-01 Neue Tretjakow-Galerie 08 anagoria.JPG|Tatlin, 1923–24, ''Costumes'' File:Letatlin.jpg|Tatlin, 1929–1931: ''Letatlin № 1.'', sculpture; human-powered ornithopter File:Letatlin No 3 at Central Air Force Museum.JPG|Tatlin, 1930–1932, ''Letatlin № 3.'', sculpture; human-powered ornithopter File:Tyrsa Window Cleaner and Portrait of V. Tatlin.jpg|Tatlin, c. 1942, ''Window Cleaner and Portrait of V.'', brush on paper </gallery>
== References == === Notes === {{Notelist}}
=== Citations === {{Reflist}}
== Bibliography == * {{Cite book|last=Юнаков|first=О.|date=2016|title=Архитектор Иосиф Каракис|publisher=Алмаз|isbn=978-1-68082-000-3}}
== External links == {{Wikiquote}} * {{commons category-inline}} * [http://en.uartlib.org/exclusive/tatlin-graye-na-banduri/ Tatlin Playing The Bandura. Special Project of the Library of Ukrainian Art.] * [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/tat1-j19.shtml Exhibition of Russian-Soviet artist Vladimir Tatlin in Basel — Tatlin’s “new art for a new world”] * [https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/search?query=tatlin&filters=%7B%22forms_collection_library_bookstore%22%3A%5B%22photographs%22%5D%7D Photographs of Tatlin and his assistants constructing the first model for the monument to the Third International, Petrograd, 1920], Canadian Centre for Architecture ([https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/search?query=tatlin&filters=%7B%22forms_collection_library_bookstore%22%3A%5B%22photographs%22%5D%7D&img_filter=1 digitized items])
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tatlin, Vladimir}} Category:1885 births Category:1953 deaths Category:Artists from Moscow Category:People from Moscow Governorate Category:Russian avant-garde Category:Architects from Moscow Category:Constructivist architects Category:Russian male painters Category:Russian sculptors Category:Bandurists Category:Soviet architects Category:Soviet painters Category:Constructivism (art) Category:20th-century Russian male artists Category:Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery Category:20th-century Russian painters Category:Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture alumni