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Ivan Leonidov: Artist, 7

dreamer, poet

Andrei Gozak
Complete Works
January 1988
.

“
The greatest poet is not the one who wrote best but the
one who suggested most.

— Walt Whitman

.
Since he first emerged on the architectural scene
in the twenties, the name of Ivan Leonidov has
acquired legendary status. The reason for this is
simply the uniqueness of his work. Its power and
originality have been attested by the deep and
fruitful influence which it exerted, and continues to
exert, on worldwide architectural thinking —
despite the fact that the vast majority of his
projects remained on paper and unbuilt.

For all the complexities of his life, Leonidov

produced a great deal of work. Till the very end of
his life he preserved his sharpness of eye and
steadiness of hand. But more important he also
preserved a total faithfulness to the central ideas
of his architecture and to his own aesthetic
principles. Thus those commentators are
profoundly mistaken, and indeed inaccurate, who
say that he was only fully able to display his talent
in those brief avant-garde years of the late
twenties and early thirties during which he first
became known. Notable here has been the writing
of P. Aleksandrov and S.O. Khan-Magomedov.1 The
triumphant success of Leonidov’s projects in those
years is obvious, but what he did later is neither
architecturally nor artistically inferior to it. His
capabilities in no way diminished with time, but
only now, when we can see the fullest possible
range of his sketches and designs, such as is
assembled here, can we really appreciate the
inexhaustible quality of his talent. Naturally his
work underwent a process of evolution, as on one
hand it reflected the beating of his own internal
artistic pulse, and on the other it reacted to
external influences and circumstances. But
through all the modifications it was characterized
by an enviable stability, both in aesthetic and
ethical dimensions of his worldview, and in its
style of graphic representation.

Ivan Il’ich Leonidov was born into a peasant family

on the 9th of February 1902 in the village of
Vlasikh, in what was then the Stantskii district of
the Tverskoi gubemia, or province. His childhood
was spent in the village of Babino, and when he
had completed four years at the local parish school
he went at the age of twelve to earn his living in
Petrograd.2 It is known that Leonidov first received
training in painting and drawing in Tver, at the
Free Art Studios which were organized in 1920.3 In
1921 he was sent to continue his study in Moscow
at the Painting Faculty of the VKhUTEMAS, from
which he later transferred to the architecture
faculty and the studio of Aleksandr Vesnin.

The atmosphere of the VKhUTEMAS and his

personal contacts with Aleksandr Vesnin played an
important role in the shaping of Leonidov’s
creative personality. Aleksandr Vesnin contributed
a great deal to drawing out every side of his gifted
pupil’s talents. While still a student, Leonidov took
part in numerous open architectural competitions,
and often achieved success. There were for
example third prizes for an improved peasant hut
and for a housing development in Ivanovo-
Voznesensk, as well as a “recommendation for
acquisition and adoption” for his Byelorussian
State University project for Minsk. None of the
original drawings done during his training have
survived, but several publications from those years
give a relatively full idea of his highly individual
manner of composition and his graphic skills, as a
young architect who had already mastered the
language of early constructivism. There are
manifestly close links between these Leonidov
works and the projects of the Vesnin brothers and
other founders of the constructivist architectural
association, OSA.4

Leonidov’s final diploma project, for the Lenin

Institute of Librarianship, must be regarded not
only as his first truly independent work, but also
as the distinctive credo of an architect setting out
on his professional life. Displayed publicly at the
First Exhibition of Modern Architecture in Moscow
in 1927, it was received as the opening up of a
whole new architectural direction.5 Alongside
Tatlin’s tower of 1919 and Melnikov’s Paris Pavilion
of 1925, the Lenin Institute has remained to this
day one of the great symbols of the revolutionary,
innovative spirit of the first decade of Soviet
architecture.

The beginning of Leonidov’s professional activity is

marked by his active participation in competitions.
From 1927 to 1930 he was himself teaching at the
somewhat reorganized version of VKhUTEMAS
known as VKhUTEIN. Competitions were very
numerous in Soviet architecture in those years,
and they gave the young architect an opportunity
to express himself in the various typological
genres of current practice. Leonidov’s works of
those years are universally characterized by the
coherence of the synthesis he achieved between
the constructivist functional method and his own
compositional approach, but they are equally
characterized by the consistency of his
representational technique in exploiting the
restrained language of black-and-white graphics.

In 1928 Leonidov took part for the first time in

international architectural competitions, for the
headquarters of the Tsentrosoiuz in Moscow, and
for the monument to Christopher Columbus in
Santo Domingo. Many well-known Soviet
architects participated in both competitions, as
well as Westerners. Corbusier of course was
eventually to build the Tsentrosoiuz, which was
completed in 1935; it is well known that he met
Leonidov on related visits to Moscow during 1929-
1930, as he did other leading constructivists, and
that he had a very high opinion of Leonidov’s
scheme for that building.

The finale to this series of competition designs was

the project for the new socialist town around the
Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine in the Urals
executed at the end of 1929. Leonidov headed an
OSA design team composed of students from his
own class in the VKhUTEIN.

The next year, 1930, was to be a fateful one in

Leonidov’s biography. He took part in a
competition for the design of a Palace of Culture in
the Proletarskii district of southern Moscow,
around the old Simonov Monastery. The plan which
he submitted for the first round diverged
significantly from the brief, and proposed not a
building, but a model for the “cultural
organization” of a whole area of the city. Even in
the first round of the competition Leonidov’s
project therefore provoked sharp criticism.
Discussion of the results of the second round took
place in even more complex circumstances,
revealing acute disagreements between the
various groupings and philosophies now becoming
consolidated in and around Soviet architecture.
Although this time his proposal was in complete
accordance with the terms of the brief, Leonidov’s
scheme once again became the focal point of
heated debate and discussions of larger
architectural issues.

By the end of 1930 the clouds had thickened still

further over Leonidov. The Architecture and
Building Institute which had been formed out of
the VKhUTEIN organized a debate on
Leonidovshchina, or “Leonidovism,” at which his
work was subjected to abusive criticism. In the
December issue of the journal Art and the Masses
there appeared an article by Arkadii Mordvinov
entitled “Leonidovism and its Harmfulness.” The
outcome of the debate was documented on
December 20th in a resolution of the IZO [Fine
Art] Section of the Institute of Language and
Literature based on a lecture by Mordvinov entitled
“On the petit-bourgeois tendency in architecture
(Leonidovism).” In this Leonidov was presented
not just as a “dreamer on paper” who had lost
touch with reality, but as a pedagogue without a
future who was a harmful influence on the training
of new architectural cadres. The end of 1930 saw
not only the last issue of the constructivist
architectural journal Modern Architecture (SA),
where Leonidov had been on the editorial board
since 1928, but the closure of the VKhUTEIN and
Leonidov’s departure from architectural education.
A difficult period of his life began, but the
difficulties did not cool the professional
enthusiasms of the young 28-year old architect,
and did nothing to stifle the forward movement of
his thinking and design work. He assembled a
team out of his former students, and in 193 I,
having got work in the state town-planning bureau
GIPROGOR. they started work on a number of
planning projects including designs for the town of
Igarka, and competition projects tor the
replanning and reconstruction of the city of
Moscow, and at a more limited scale, for the
redevelopment of the open spaces around its
Serpukhov Gates. In 1932-3, whilst heading one
of the studios in Mosproekt, Leonidov at last
received a real commission. A design of his for the
workers’ club for the Pravda newspaper combine
was accepted an passed for construction. But the
project tailed to get the further go-ahead at a later
stage of its development, and Leonidov left
Mosproekt.

The year 1934 was one of the high-points of

Leonidov’s development. Taking part in one of the
biggest and most important architectural
competitions of the early Soviet era, for the Heavy
Industry Commissariat, Narkomtiazhprom, on Red
Square in Moscow, he created what was perhaps
his most significant work. If the design for the
Lenin Institute can be taken as a model for the
first stage of Leonidov’s oeuvre, then the scheme
for Narkomtiazhprom building was to be seminal
for much of his later work. The breakthroughs in
design approach that he made here, demonstrated
in a series of brilliantly executed drawings and a
model, constituted a reserve of vast compositional
potential that he would exploit, develop, and
perfect in the future.6

In the same year Leonidov moved to a job in the

architectural bureau of that same Commissariat,
which was headed by his senior comrade-in-arms
from the journal Modern Architecture and one of
the former leaders of constructivism, Moisei
Ginzburg.

Leonidov’s works from this period not only display

to us new aspects of his talent, through his
designs for such large complexes as the Kliuchiki
settlement or the Southern coastline of the Crimea
and the Greater Artek region; they also show us
very clearly the development of a new formal
language. Leonidov’s reaction to the general
refocusing upon tradition taking place in Soviet
architecture then, was not to reject the
achievements of his constructivist youth, but
rather to develop and enrich them. It must not be
forgotten that this period saw a complete change
of emphasis within Soviet architecture from the
world of “ideas projects” and “conceptual
schemes” that inevitably pervaded the late
twenties, to one of absolutely concrete building
commissions in the construction boom of the
second half of the thirties. As a result Leonidov’s
drawings now have a more realistic content,
indicating specific materials and colors, precise
instructions for detailing, which are naturally
expressed in a more concrete and accessible
graphic language. Perhaps the most noticeable
changes in the external stylistic characteristics of
Leonidov’s work are to be seen in his competition
project for the newspaper combine of Izvestiia,
executed in 1940. Even here though, if we look
carefully, there are all the devices typical of
Leonidov’s earlier work, albeit veiled by the new
stylistic decor.

In the framework of work at the Narkomtiazhprom

office, Leonidov was at last actually able to build a
small project but one of great importance to our
understanding of his work. This was a series of
landscaped steps in the grounds of the
Commissariat’s sanatorium at Kislovodsk. Here he
not only demonstrated his desire and capacity to
build, but realized many of the fundamental
elements of his professional vocabulary for the
first time. A familiarity with this only extant
example of Leonidov’s built work enables us, albeit
to a limited degree, to evaluate the notions of
space-time and three dimensional composition
underlying his work at this period.7

As a whole the thirties were a fairly fruitful period

in Leonidov’s life, despite the fact that very little of
the considerable amount that he designed was
ever actually realized. Nevertheless he worked
assiduously, and it is quite wrong to suggest, as
Aleksandrov and Khan-Magomedov have done,
that he “abandoned himself,” or “lost his most
valuable qualities as an architect.”8

In 1940 he began to work in the Studio for

Monumental Art attached to the Academy of
Architecture of the USSR. In 1941, he was called
up into the army and sent to the front as a sapper.
He was demobilized in 1943 after being wounded.
He then tried again to turn to architectural
practice, and in the Academy of Architecture he
did a series of studies for the eventual postwar
reconstruction of Stalingrad, Kiev, and Moscow.
This forward-planning was an integral part of the
Academy wartime program, but Leonidov’s plans
found no support and he left the Academy.

In the last years of his life Leonidov was principally

occupied as a designer of exhibitions. Finding
himself isolated professionally, however, he did not
interrupt his own program of continued design. He
responded to many important events in the
architectural life of the time in the Soviet Union,
doing schemes, as were many other architects, for
Monuments to Victory and then to the first
Sputnik, for the Palace of Soviets and for the
proposed World Exhibition in Moscow. At the same
time and in parallel he continued systematic work
on his own private project for a “City of the Sun,”
an idea that he had first formulated before the
War. His dreams about this city of the future were
realized in innumerable sketches, drawings and
models, of which all extant examples are
reproduced here. This work continued until the
very last days of his life.

Ivan Leonidov died on November 6th 1959. He

was buried near Moscow in a simple village
cemetery. The plainest of monuments was erected
on his grave: a granite cube with the inscription
“Ivan Leonidov, architect.”

Like any great artist, Leonidov created his own

original vocabulary of forms, and the process of
developing and augmenting that vocabulary went
in parallel with the process of crystalising its
elements into specific architectural solutions.

Certain characteristics of Leonidov’s personal

vision are already manifest in his earliest works,
despite their direct link with mainstream
architectural constructivism. Already in his pre-
diploma project for the Izvestiia newspaper’s
printing house, done under Vesnin, there is a clear
stress on the separateness of the building’s
functional and structural elements, as well as a
sharply dynamic juxtaposition of forms in three
mutually perpendicular directions. Both features
are characteristic indicators of Leonidov’s hand.

The spatial interaction and intersection of simple

geometrical bodies in a system of three
orthogonals had been quickly mastered by
Leonidov in his student days. Its ultimate
expression was the famous Lenin Institute design,
which became the reference point for all his
constructivist work. He divided the building into
separate volumes, placing them along the main
coordinate axes and pinning them together with a
large spherical auditorium raised above the ground
that functioned as a compositional key-stone to
the whole structure. The volumes and forms
themselves were geometrically simple, but their
complex inter-relationship of contrasts and levels
produced an architectural composition of rare
refinement. The plan for the Lenin Institute is a
classic example of the suprematist composition
based on the most precisely considered
relationship of elements and of what Malevich
called their “weight, speed, and direction of
movement.” The centrifugal dynamic is obvious,
and is underlined on the drawing by taking the
main axes out to the edges of the paper. In the
volumetric composition, the three-dimensional
dynamic and the centrifugal movement are even
stronger. Thus the model which Leonidov made
can be understood as a highly original depiction of
Euclidean space, where the three main axes and
the lines of development are defined by the main
building volumes.

Linear elements play an important part here in

communicating its rhythmic, scalar and tectonic
characteristics. The drawing showing the
construction of the spherical auditorium, for
example, consciously evokes direct associations
with the ropes of a balloon, playing on our desire
to master the forces of gravity and to conquer the
architectural air-space. This striving towards the
sky and eternity is at the root of the deep
symbolic meanings of the Lenin Institute project.

All later designs in what we may call Leonidov’s

suprematist series follow the compositional model
of the Lenin Institute, interpreting and developing
it according to the functional specifics of each site
and building. His plan for the film-production
center is a model of sharply contrasting and
dynamic composition and rhythmically
extraordinarily rich. His axonometric drawing has
adopted certain very specific techniques: the sheet
of paper has been arranged along the diagonal, for
example, with the clear intention of heightening its
dynamic effect. Among Leonidov’s simplest and
purest solutions is the design for the Tsentrosoiuz
building. Two rectangular forms of different
heights intersect at a right angle; there is a
circular vestibule on one floor of the project, and
there is the slender vertical of the lift shaft. That is
all.

During these years Leonidov made extensive use

of circular forms, and he particularly reinforces
their compositional significance in the plan
solutions. The circle and the system of circles
become not merely the bearers of a certain planar
and volumetric geometry, but the purveyors of
various meanings and ideas. The circle has moved
beyond the framework of the geometrical concept
and is already being treated as the sphere of life’s
activity, the sphere of organization, the sphere of
influence.9 Moreover the symbolic function of such
geometry is obvious: the concentric circles portray
and express the centrifugal character of
movement. His passion for circular forms showed
itself most clearly in his plans for “a club of new
social type,” where a scheme for the spatial
distribution of cultural organization becomes a
symphony of concentric and intersecting rings and
arcs.

Regardless of the size of the object concerned, all

Leonidov’s designs from before 1931 develop
identical principles, using a relatively limited
vocabulary of simple geometrical forms —
rectangular, square, and circular in plan. Linear
elements play an important role everywhere: to
emphasize the basic axes and to create a
deliberate contrast with the architectural volumes
which they connect. Leonidov’s works from this
period can be regarded as some of the highest
achievements of architectural suprematism and
constructivism, and as virtuoso embodiments of
the architectural possibilities of simple geometrical
forms. He had the ability to express the
characteristic aesthetic tendencies of his time in a
very concentrated and complete way.
Unfortunately not one of his designs was realized.
It remains only to imagine them from our
experience of such a master of simple form as
Mies van der Rohe. The closeness of these two
architects’ aesthetic concepts and their
representational modes and graphic languages
makes such an extrapolation legitimate, and
indeed instructive.

Leonidov’s very first designs do not move far

beyond the standard stereotypes of constructivist
graphics. But already in his competition schemes
for workers’ clubs, the individuality of his
representational language is beginning to reveal
itself as something quite distinctive. It can be felt
above all in his virtuoso mastery of lines. In his
club designs the language of the drawings is highly
conventionalized: a planar network of plans and
facades form compositions against the background
of a white sheet of paper; the character of the
compositions is defined by the interaction of these
graphic patches, the strength of their tone and the
weight of the hatchings. Here we see an example
of the skillful translation of the rules of
suprematist composition into the language of
graphics. In his design for the printing-house of
the Izvestiia newspaper, the lines of the drawing
are already saturated with a real content,
emphasizing, especially in perspective, the
delineation of the metal constructions against the
background of the buildings’ glass surfaces, which
he lightly shades with dilute Indian ink.

The same method of combining a light wash of

Indian ink with linear graphics was also used in the
presentation of Leonidov’s diploma project whose
exposition was supplemented by a large model
made with his own hands. The model which has
become so famous through photographs was made
of the simple materials which came to hand:
wood, paper, wire and unbleached thread. An
ordinary electric light bulb of a large size was used
to make the glass sphere of the auditorium.
Henceforth it was always Leonidov’s principle to
make models for his designs that would also be a
demonstration of his inventiveness in choice of
materials. In his perspective drawings of this
building the architect chose his view points with
particular care, showing it from above or in strong
foreshortenings which served to maximize the
impact of this highly unusual object.

In later projects Leonidov enriched his

representational techniques through the
introduction of applied color, and by an extensive
use of reversal: of white drawing on black
background, for example. Unfortunately all the
originals of Leonidov’s early works have been lost.
It is therefore difficult to say exactly when the use
of applied color first appeared in the presentations
of his buildings. But the tone reversals, for
example, resulted in a greatly increased
complexity of rhythmic and plastic structure in his
drawings. Their surface took on a new flavor,
becoming spatially deeper and more saturated
emotionally. We can follow these changes through
the drawings for the Film Production Centre, the
Tsentrosoiuz building, and the Club of New Social
type, as for this latter we do have several pages of
the original drawings.

The plan drawings for Variant B of the Club of New

Social Type give us further evidence of the
architect’s virtuoso mastery of line, and a
comparison of them shows how the spatial and
plastic structure and the character of the image
change with the dramatic changes in his mode of
representation. The drawing of the Club’s first-
floor plan is undoubtedly one of Leonidov’s graphic
masterpieces. It is in ink on white paper. Only
certain lines are executed with instruments, and
the majority of them are hand-drawn. Their live,
natural and slightly intermittent character creates
a palpitating, fine vibration on the paper surface
akin to that of engraving or etching. In the sketch
for the first stage of the same subject, the
representational language is different Against a
black background, fine white lines repeat the
outline of the basic figures of the plan, and of
those same elements of the architecture and the.
landscape. Three small circular blobs are picked
out by applied color. Despite the restraint used in
the coloring of the drawing it creates a very
powerful impression and evokes rich associations
with the dark depth of a night sky. The black and
white surface texturing of the page, embellished
only by two small areas of orange, creates a
flickering spatial polyphony which is much more
complex than a simple relationship between black,
white, and orange. Small golden circles give the
back ground a bluish tinge, and the white lines a
hint of silver. The space of the sheet of paper
takes on a cosmic seriousness and depth.

Two of Leonidov’s details for this project — the

plan for the Sports Pavilion and the “scheme for
the spatial organization of culture” — demonstrate
the compositional advantages of combining these
techniques of line work and applied color. The
spatial depth of both sheets is created by their
precisely measured alignments and placing of
elements. The “cosmic” spirit of the second
drawing is conveyed by intersecting arcs of
different radii, concentric circles, small dots, all
shining on a black background to create the
feeling of a distant world of stars, mists and
galaxies. The luminescence created by white and
cultured areas on a black background was used by
Leonidov in all his subsequent works of this
period: in the Columbus Monument project, in the
first-round scheme for the Proletarskii district
Palace of Culture, and in the plan and elevation of
its Physical Culture Section. All are superb
examples of his technique of luminescent”
representation.

Only a small number of Leonidov’s originals from

these years remain, and several of those which do
are his own copies of originals, specially prepared
for reproduction purpose in magazines. But there
are enough of these to reinforce our understanding
of the virtuosity with which he used a simple and
highly conventionalized representational
vocabulary to convey his ideas.

The changes which occurred in Leonidov’s

professional thinking at the beginning of the
thirties were the result of internal as well a
external factors. The transition from conceptual
and schematic competition designing to concrete
briefs brought the necessity for taking account of
real building conditions and a need for a more
detailed working out of his designs, this naturally
led to a transformation of the almost hygienic
simplicity which characterized his compositions of
the twenties; a shift away from his abstract
orthogonalism and geometricism to
demonstrations of a freer, more manifestly live
formal synthesis. Amongst external factors
affecting him was undoubtedly the strong
opposition to constructivism and other generally
“leftist” currents which arose in Soviet architecture
during those years. By the middle of the thirties,
these broader changes in Soviet architecture
forced Leonidov too to address the historical
heritage of both his own country and the rest of
the world. The self-restraint and purity of the
twenties became replaced in his work by a style of
free interpretations. The critical turning point is
usually seen as the competition for the
Narkomtiazhprom building in Moscow. It was this
design that really marked the appearance of
elements that were new in his architectural
vocabulary. There were new methods and
techniques of composition, and they were
continually being moved forward by
transformations of the devices he had already
mastered and by introduction of wholly new ones.

As I have already noted, the Narkomtiazhprom

design was to become the prototype for most work
in the next period of Leonidov’s oeuvre. In his
compositional devices and his forms here, there
are glances backwards as well as forwards. He
took on board a great-deal that was new, whilst at
the same time paying careful attention to the
things he had achieved in the preceding years,
striving through amalgamation of the two for a
more intense saturation and richer polyphony of
architectural vocabulary. It is therefore interesting
and instructive to compare the two most famous
projects, the Lenin Institute and Narkomiazhprom,
which are separated by a mere, seven years in
Leonidov’s life and development. It is easy enough
to discover what they have in common. This is
because the essence of both compositions is very
clearly defined, as is always the case with
Leonidov, by the interaction of independent
architectural elements which are precisely and
clearly delineated in space and whose role in the
system as a whole is precisely designated. The
tectonic starting point of each of them is
emphasized as much as possible. The geometry of
the plan has the utmost clarity, and the direction
of the main axes is traditionally orthogonal.

From this point on, however, the projects have

marked differences. The composition of the
Narkomtiazhprom plan has been deprived of the
centripetal dynamism so characteristic of that for
the Lenin Institute. It is mono-directional, along
the axis of Red Square, and statically placid by
comparison. The vertical axis is strengthened in
space not just by one tower, but by a cluster of
three. Most importantly, though, the forms
themselves have taken on more complex outlines,
with parabolic curves used to define the
geometrical volumes of the hall and of one of the
towers, the three-petaled plan form for the other
tower and the arch spanning the old established
Nikol’skaia Street.

The architectural forms become more complex,

but in the working out of detail they have also
taken on a clearly material nature as metal, glass
or stone. In this design Leonidov drew certain
details very attentively, as he had attached a
number of important compositional functions to
them. All the metal structures are drawn with a
filigree delicacy, and as in all his constructivist
work, they are taken to the outside as an
exoskeleton. These metal structures include the
open-work “crown” of the square tower, the little
balcony tribunes on the parabolic tower, and the
round girder which supports the main volume of
the hall. The details which manifest the individual
character of each of the volumes and connect
them to each other also create the unity between
the new building and the architecture of the
Kremlin, so rich in its silhouette and plastic quality.
We see why the deliberate schematicism of his
previous designs suddenly flowered into this
abundance of compositionally important details:
the main reason lies in the architectural
environment within which the building was to
stand.

If we are to judge by the architectural publications

of those years, Leonidov’s contemporaries failed to
understand his purpose and did not at all
appreciate the building’s affinity with its historic
surroundings. Only El Lissitzky, analyzing the
results of the competition as a whole, referred
favorably to Leonidov as the only entrant “who, as
is evident from his series of drawings, tried to find
a unity for the new complex [created by] the
Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral and the new
10
building.”

The new compositional ideas which Leonidov

brought to this design and actively developed in
subsequent works found their realization also in
the few things he did execute. He was beginning
to be attracted to more balanced, more strictly
axial compositions, and was clearly exploring a
number of variations on this spatial device,
interpreting it according to the size of the object
and the conditions of its site. Linear compositions,
probably inspired by the architecture of Italian
Baroque villas, first made its appearance in a
design for a cottage in the Kliuchiki village
development, with axial symmetry controlling the
basic solution of the general plan for the area, and
the plan and elevation of the cottage itself. On a
larger scale he worked out many similar
compositions in his designs for the South Coast of
the Crimea and the Greater Artek complex, turning
steep relief to advantage with terraces. And finally
he realized his interpretation of this Italian” theme
when he built the terraced parkland steps for the
Narkomtiazhprom sanatorium.

He turned ever more frequently to symmetry, but

we find no complete symmetries in his designs —
except of course in individual details. Even within
the absolutely symmetrical facade of the Kliuchiki
cottage the mural on the first-floor balcony serves
to destroy its absolute control.

The link between the composition and plans of the

Narkomtiazhprom building, and those of the
complex for the Izvestiio newspaper enterprise, is
very easily seen. The two designs are linked by
the principle of the single dominating axis, about
which their volumetric and spatial structures are
developed. The Izvestiio design may at first sight
seem an unlikely work for Leonidov. But even the
figurative sculpture decorating the facade had
already been present earlier on one of the
Narkomtiazhprom details. Moreover the design
was a commission from the convinced classicist
Ivan Zholtovskii, which fact could well have had
considerable influence on the character of the
external decoration.

The basic features of the composition of

Narkomtiazhprom recur in the design for the
Monument to the Heroes of Perekop, especially in
the version with the three obelisks. Here is the
same stepped composition, extended podium and
three towers: the same overall idea and a similar
vocabulary of elements, but each played in
different variations.

The second half of the thirties made a significant

contribution to Leonidov’s oeuvre. His numerous
designs and his occasional built works bore
witness to his unflagging skill and his capacity to
find an organic synthesis of forms which would not
long before have seemed aesthetically
incompatible.

The character of Leonidov’s drawings and the

presentation of his buildings also changed in the
thirties. His sketches and drawings were now filled
with a concrete content. They became far more
colorful, more realistic, altogether more alive; the
subjects appear in their real environment and are
drawn from more normal and natural viewpoints.

The Narkomtiazhprom competition design was

itself a striking witness of the changes. As
previously, line remained the fundamental element
in depiction of the architecture. The line was in
either pencil or ink, and reached its highest
expressiveness in the first drafts and sketches for
the design. The majority of the plans, elevations
and perspective projections of the complex were
also done in a linear technique embellished by
light shadings and color. In the overall ground plan
color was used for its symbolic and conventional
function, as a color coding. Elsewhere, as in the
mural on the parabolic volume of the hall, its
purpose is naturalistically decorative. The realistic
nature of his submission was evident both in the
truthful presentation of the environment,
particularly in his montage of how the new
structure would be seen within the river frontage
of the Moscow Kremlin, and in the perspective
drawings of the complex and its details. These
perspectives were entirely straightforward in the
way they were drawn from natural eye-level,
although their foreshortenings were somewhat
acute.

There is much in this design which is carried on

from his previous experience, but new things are
also added and combined with them. The
polyphony of method correlates with the
polyphony of forms. The suprematist precision of
the general plan, for example, coexists happily
with the casual delineations of the paths and
greenery. The sharp constructivist foreshortening,
the perspectives of the building details, have a
completely realistic tone and color environment. In
all this Leonidov uses the drawings to reinforce the
hand-crafted, boldly sketched and painterly
foundations of his approach. His model for the
Narkomtiazhprom design was also considered at
the time to be the latest word in representational
techniques. The basic materials used were wood
and paper, buttoned and white celluloid were also,
applied and details were brightly cultured.

The original drawings for the Palace of Culture of a

Collective Farm and for the cottage in Kliuchiki,
which were done immediately after
Narkomtiazhprom, can be seen as the continuation
and development of his new representational
style. Here too we see the transition from a
schematic representation of the subject that turns
it into a piece of graphics in its own right, to one
that was naturalistically cultured and concerned
with volume and space. The cottage elevation is a
classic model of realistic architectural graphics
synthesizing line, tone and color. As a
demonstration of skill in the working out of all the
smallest details, this sketch makes nonsense of
the view widely held in the thirties that Leonidov
was an architectural fantasist with no desire to
engage in real design or building.

The projects for development of the South Coast

of the Crimea and the Greater Artek area were
done by Leonidov during his employment in the
design studios of Narkomtiazhprom itself, and are
even more conspicuous for their colorful and
pictorial qualities and their direct intelligibility. The
most striking is without doubt the panorama of the
whole Southern shore of the Crimea, which was
presented as a series of spreads placed end-to-
end as a view of the whole coast. Only two
sections of the panorama remain, which are
remarkable not only for the pictorial and colorful
nature of the depiction but for their chosen
technique. For the first time here Leonidov made
extensive use of plywood as a base on which to
put his paint. The natural texture of the wood is
then transmitted to the applied materials, and
gives a particularly effective unity to the long
seaward elevation of the Crimean coastline.
Ribbons of sea and beach, where the texture of
the wood is left in its natural form, run across the
whole drawing. But in those places where he adds
extra layers of paint to depict mountains, greenery
and architecture, the warm tones of the wood
shine through them. Just as formerly on the
constructivist drawings, bright cultured details
create additional flickerings on the surface of this
architectural landscape created in tempera.

Leonidov turned one of the fragments of the

general plan of the coast-the plan for the hill of
Darsan which rises above Yalta — into a pictorial
composition of genuine magic. The texture of the
plywood gives relief to the earth on which the
main objects — the two hills with the communal
buildings dispersed over them — are made to
stand out with bright flashes of red and blue. Fine
white lines define the contours of these buildings
which seem to be drowning in the deep and
mysterious space of the picture.

The design for the Greater Artek area follows this

painterly tradition. The only panel which has
survived is a perspective of the Pioneer Palace
complex, and was executed in a technique which
very closely resembles that of icon painting. The
general style of drawing which Leonidov used in
working out his Greater Artek project is recorded
in two small remaining scraps of tracing paper
carrying fragments of the overall plan.

Leonidov’s architectural palette broadened

consistently with time. In the thirties for example,
he began boldly to add gold and silver paint to his
basic colors and to use them side by side with
contrasting hues and very fine nuances of tone, or
to combine smooth surfaces with ones in relief.
Nevertheless in all cases the material surface on
which the representation is made was used not
simply as a background for his future depiction,
but as a spatial environment in its own right for
the existence of the subject matter.

Leonidov always tried to reveal and emphasize as

much as possible the texture and color features of
this background surface. In this respect, it is
interesting to compare two variations of the facade
for the editorial and publishing block of the
Izvestiia newspaper. One is done on a plywood
board and the other on tracing paper. In the
former the natural texture and the golden color of
the wood are embellished only be fleecy light
clouds scudding across the sky. This is sufficient to
evoke a feeling of the space in which the building
is to stand — a space which he makes both
complex in its plastic quality and disturbing in its
feeling. In the latter variant, the smooth grey
surface of the tracing paper becomes the
embodiment of the lofty empty space of the
sketch. Without disruption of either of these
background surfaces, he has delineated the
framed structures of the elevation by fine light
lines, using whitewash and silver. As is often the
case with Leonidov, the cultured details burn with
extraordinary force against the background of local
areas within the expansive planes.

The strengthening of the painterly dimension of

Leonidov’s graphics can also be explained by the
direct contacts he had had with artists themselves,
particularly during that period when he was
working in the Studio for Monumental Painting of
the Soviet Academy of Architecture. This active
harnessing to architectural ends of traditional
methods of monumental painting, along with their
stylistic and plastic characteristics, had other
direct influences on the development of his graphic
vocabulary. Thus accompanying the increasingly
realistic depiction, we find increasing use of
chiaroscuro, of surface texture in the brushwork,
and of color.

Although the post-War part of Leonidov’s oeuvre is

much closer in time to us than that of the thirties,
let alone the twenties, a consideration of this later
work comes up against some significant
difficulties. Leonidov carried out various individual
commissions, and he took part in competitions,
but many of these designs remained incomplete
and not one of them has ever been published, until
now. Moreover he gradually moved away from
architectural activity and worked as an artist and
designer in fields like exhibitions. Despite this, the
scraps and fragments of different projects which
do remain, and the numerous architectural
fantasies, show a vivid picture of how his work
was evolving.
Despite the external differences between
Leonidov’s earlier works and those of this period,
his professional thought had changed little,
although sometimes it is quite difficult to identify
the pure forms we identify with his name in his
brightly cultured and luxuriantly decorated
sketches. He continued to use much of the familiar
vocabulary from the thirties and even the
twenties, but his favorite techniques and forms
were given new intentions and meanings.

Undoubtedly Leonidov’s work of the forties and

fifties was influenced by the general stylistic
direction of Soviet architecture, which was
oriented towards history. But in these years, as
opposed to the thirties, he himself was more
interested in ancient Russian models and in the
architecture of the East Having no opportunity to
plan large complexes or buildings, he concentrated
his main attention on working out individual
architectural themes and details. In designs which
were done at the Academy of Architecture, he
used whimsical combinations of forms that he had
already tried out elsewhere, with new ones
borrowed from history. And although many of
these plans remind one somewhat of “variations
on a theme” rather than of independent creations,
Leonidov often achieved outstandingly imaginative
and bold compositions in these works.

In the designs of this period there are many

strange interminglings of themes and some shifts
that are not entirely comprehensible. When
working on real briefs Leonidov would use what he
found there to create parallel sets of sketches for
the City of the Sun, putting concretely conceived
buildings into the semi-fantastical landscapes of
his town of the future. Often, as before, he would
repeat the same themes several times, playing
them in different variations. The pyramidal roof of
a little village club, decorated with the bonnet-
shaped gables known as kokoshniki, was
unexpectedly transformed into the magnificent
conical Pagoda for the City of the Sun. Framed by
an arcade, a vast cupola on a circular plan — t h a
t favorite plan form of the twenties — became the
center of his composition for the Moscow Circus
building, one of several designs which are
preserved from the fifties. Still Leonidov returned
frequently to his favorite simple forms, continuing
to assert their autonomy and architectural
significance despite the camouflaging with new
details. Parabolic cones attracted him particularly,
for their monumentality, for their magnificence
and upward, aspirational movement. They
therefore appeared very commonly in his
memorial projects: for the Stalingrad embankment
it seems, and certainly for the Monument to the
First Sputnik. Large parabolic-conical towers occur
in almost every sketch related to the City of the
Sun.

Leonidov’s work of the post-War years was not

distinguished by any innovations of the
significance of the Lenin Institute or the
Narkomtiazhprom. But amidst the drawings for
these projects of the Moscow Circus, the First
Sputnik memorial and the City of the Sun there
are masterpieces of composition and graphics that
constitute equally worthy contributions to his
oeuvre. His visions of a future city were perhaps
the works that brought him closest to the kind of
architecture he had dreamed about in his youth.

However Utopian the pictures of the City of the

Sun may appear, the buildings with which he filled
it were born of the imagination of an architect who
was taking the opportunity to unite in one place
everything that he had created so far. His sketches
not only reiterate his personal vocabulary of
forms; they develop the ideas further and imbue
them with new meanings and purposes. Decorated
as it is with sculpture and painting, the
architecture of the City reveals an unusual
diversity of three-dimensional invention, and of
color.

The representations of this project can hardly be

called drawings. They are dream pictures,
romantic and poetic depictions of the City, its
various groups of buildings, its streets, its
individual details. Even the form of his
presentation varies greatly, ranging from pencil
drawings to panels done in the manner of icons,
and to cultured models. Leonidov used and freely
combined a wide range of different materials and
techniques in order to create his image of the City
as something permeated with sunlight and air, and
all the most characteristic features of his
representational language are to be found here.

Leonidov’s works of the forties and fifties can

justifiably be regarded as works of art in their own
right, although they include a considerable number
of strictly architectural projects. Though differing
in their themes and techniques, they are
distinguished by their heightened sense of
emotion, their tension and their enhanced
expressiveness. There are several factors which
contribute to this development, but the
strengthening of the painterly foundation of his
work is certainly among the most important. In
these years Leonidov turned very frequently to his
icon-painting technique, fully exploiting its
potential for richness of color and form, but the
same qualities can be found in small sketches
done on paper as in these more solid paintings on
wood. Whether the subject be the semifantastical,
festive and almost Christmassy landscape of the
Island of Flowers for Kiev, done in the Academy
after the War, or the entirely realistic facade for a
standardized village club brightly decorated “in the
peasant style,” the execution is typically
characterized by lightness, a certain sketch-like
quality, and a natural easy confidence. There is
also some exhibition work from the 1950s, notably
that for the Soviet pavilion at the Brussels
International Exhibition of 1958.

There is one further layer of work in Leonidov’s

oeuvre: the notebooks from the thirties and the
fifties with their little sketches in pencil and in ink.
These too are concerned with architecture. Some
of the sketches are very preliminary or tentative.
In others we can readily guess at the projects
which would have emerged from the ideas at the
next stage. In all cases their language is of the
simplest and most laconic, and their mastery of
line is faultless.

Leonidov’s thinking on composition is closely

linked with his philosophy of life and art and with
those moral and aesthetic principles which he
supported. Although he left no special theoretical
tracts — he did not aspire to that — his work was
consistently underpinned by a firm world-view that
is the basis of his remarkable continuity of
direction. This line of thinking, which runs through
all his works and is often manifested before the
work itself acquires specific function or meaning,
embraces his opinions, passions and sympathies —
everything that defines the profile of a unique
personality.

Leonidov’s philosophical and ethical position, and

his attitude to art, were integrally related, as he
considered art an inalienable and inseparable part
of life. At the foundation of his life-building
aspirations lay the principal of activeness, both in
life itself and in creative work, a belief in the
necessity to dream, a thirst to transform the world
and the individual personality, a faith in the
creative mission of architecture. From all this
derived Leonidov’s conception of man as a free
dreamer and creator.

Many people in the twenties were attracted by the

notion of “the architect as the organizer of life.” It
attracted Leonidov too by its purposeful concern
with transformation. In such a view the architect
was seen as having the power not only to organize
functions or space, but to influence the formation
of new social patterns of living. In the design for
the Magnitogosk area, Leonidov’s whole newly
organized town is presented in terms of the
contrast with the old and uncontrolled; there is
great stress on the precise way different functional
zones are distributed: the residential, the
industrial and the transportation system linking
them. In designs for clubs and other social
buildings he revealed the latent opportunities for
achieving a rational organization of labor, leisure
and feeding — in short for the whole environment
whose structure can influence the creation of the
kind of person he admired: one who is active,
physically strong, and hardy.

This conceptual starting point dominated

Leonidov’s works of the late twenties and early
thirties. His determination to stress this underlying
idea as strongly as possible often lead to a certain
schematicism and to designs which were more
symbols or ideograms than functioning organisms.
Many are as much models of a principle as of a
concrete proposition. Even the architect himself
regarded them as conceptual designs, as ideas to
be corrected and given increased precision in
further development. In the early work of Le
Corbusier, amongst others, we find many moments
of this kind: his City for Three Million or the Plan
Voisin are in effect nothing but such “drawn ideas.”
Similarly Leonidov’s proposals for Magnitogorsk or
the Proletarskii District Palace of Culture are first
and foremost models of organization — in one
case for a socialist town, in the other for the
system of distributing “cultural services” to the
population of one city district.

When there was need for the more concrete

embodiment of an idea, Leonidov would do it with
all the necessary professionalism. In the design for
the Kliuchiki development, we see the abstract
geometrical schema for Magnitogorsk taking on life
and the characteristics of a particular site and
topography, and therefore abounding in details.
The second-round project for the Palace of Culture
was likewise highly adapted to the detailed
conditions of a particular site.

Leonidov’s aspiration was not just to be an

organizer of life, but to invest the architecture with
a stimulating cognitive and creative function.
These were the qualities he sought to bring to a
whole range of social and community buildings,
regardless of their specific compositional or
stylistic characteristics. Thus in the design for the
Palace of Culture for a Collective Farm, of 1934,
his ideas about “clubs of a new social type” are
given architectural form with no less skill than in
the more famous, and stylistically entirely
different, constructivist works on that theme. The
center of the collective farm is treated as a
distinctive forum of knowledge and of culture, both
of them highly necessary to such villages. In the
Greater Artek project he proposed creating a
special map of the world which would tell
schoolchildren about the planet’s flora and fauna,
about such themes as the great expeditions and
the historical discoveries of new lands.

Leonidov was able to realize some of his life-

building ideas in such constructions as the Houses
of Pioneers in Moscow and Kalinin, where many
features of the interiors, in particular the large
thematic panels, actively aroused in the child not
only a healthy curiosity, but a thirst for creative
knowledge.

The early part of Leonidov’s professional life had

proceeded under the banner of an unquestioning
acceptance of technology — of an enthusiasm that
amounted almost to blind faith. A cultivation of the
most advanced aspects of contemporary
technology was one of the central tenets of
architectural constructivism, and it can be found in
all Leonidov’s designs of the late twenties and the
early thirties. Here structures and technological
equipment of various kinds are introduced into the
architecture as extensively and explicitly as
possible. They are openly manifested and
celebrated. They are the predeterminants of the
whole composition; they are its most active
elements, and are regarded as the generators of
entirely new architectural principles. Indeed the
architecture itself becomes a symbol for the
inventiveness of technology.

The projects of this period are saturated with

forms deriving from technology, engineering and
industrial design, all of them given a new
architectural voice. The structural forms found in
bridges, hangars, cooling towers, stratospheric
balloons, air-balloons, all become legitimate
elements of architectural form. Depictions of
dirigibles, airplanes, radio masts all appear in
architectural drawings as symbols of the
technological achievements of the era and as
expressions of its spirit. We know that Leonidov
himself collected books on aeronautics and was
particularly interested in dirigibles.

In the Lenin Institute design, the ideas of a well-

regulated mechanism are expressed with
maximum consistency. The lightness and mobility
of the structures, facilitating the dynamic flow of
the space and the changeability of form, the much
emphasized openness of structure, all this
provides a model of the technologically perfect
mechanism. In the design for the Film Production
Center, the supreme flexibility of the technological
schema determines the whole spatial organization
and the composition of the entire complex. In the
various Club designs, an expanded system of
audio-visual media is proposed to fulfill the role of
“a living newspaper.” Similar methods are
employed in the project for the Columbus
Monument and supplant traditional architectural
forms, transforming at their very roots all
established conceptions of what a monument
might be, and anticipating ideas of what Robert
Venturi would later call “an architecture of
information.” Only in the late sixties and early
seventies would such concepts begin to have any
genuine reality, and find expression in such
concepts as that of the “center of constantly active
information” underlying the Pompidou Center in
Paris. Both Leonidov himself, and constructivism
as a whole, were often criticized for an extreme
aestheticizing of technology, and such critics would
point to the very limited real opportunities for its
application in architecture. Constructivists were
likewise accused of rejecting traditions, of
forgetting that any contemporary phenomenon is
to a large extent a distillation of the past, and
cannot possibly be totally removed from that
context. Certainly Leonidov’s designs of the late
twenties and early thirties made very open use of
engineering forms, whilst filling them with an
architectural content. Suffice it to point to the
“hovering” auditorium of the Lenin Institute or the
heavily emphasized industrial connotations of the
cooling-tower form used for the hall of
Narkomtiazhprom. But however significant might
be the role of technology in providing shapes, in
the end it was the poeticization that had the upper
hand for Leonidov; the artistic dimension of the
design process absorbed everything.

Later, despite notable changes in the stylistics of

his work, he never ceased to be fascinated by the
latest building materials and the structural forms
they afforded. Studying their properties, their
characteristics and the opportunities they opened
up, he called them to the service of architecture
not only in his designs, but in one of his rare
excursions into print.11

It is possible to see the whole of Leonidov’s design

career as a progression from technologically
generated form to a vocabulary that is more
organic and natural, but such an approach
oversimplifies and even distorts the real picture.
When proclaiming the links between architecture
and technology he was not striving to increase
their external similarities. Rather, he was following
one of the key slogans of architectural
constructivism which declared “Architects! Do not
imitate the forms of technology, but learn the
method of the engineering designer.” It had been
proclaimed in a typographical vignette of his own
design in their journal in 1926. Leonidov asserted
that this principle was equally applicable to the
world of natural form, affirming the necessity for
the architect to have close contact with the natural
world and even to subordinate himself to it. He
was far from enthusiastic about the copying of
forms from this field either, though from the
second half of the thirties he studied their
structure assiduously. These enthusiasms left a
clear legacy in several of his works, in particular
perhaps the Crystal Fountain and the design for
the Island of Flowers. In his mature years
Leonidov not only studied the laws regulating the
connections between natural structures and their
external forms, but was also inspired by their
unique quality of being able to adapt to change.
He sought to develop this natural life-sustaining
flexibility in his own architectural forms — it was
precisely in order to acknowledge the possibilities
for growth and development that he so often left
his projects unfinished.

In the majority of his early constructivist designs,

the mark of nature takes on a rather abstract
form. Relief, greenery, and water are often present
in the drawings, but often without concrete
delineation. They make themselves felt as
something global rather than specific. The
architecture encroaches into this natural
environment by making a contrast with the precise
geometry of its shapes. Existing in a fairly
autonomous way, the architecture relies on a more
Euclidean geometry: the predominant form-
making principle is the geometry of construction.
Even when Leonidov’s work had moved away from
the strictly suprematist compositions, this principle
remained dominant. With him the mutual influence
of artificial and natural forms was as a rule based
precisely on this principle of contrast. It was a
union of mutually complementary opposites.

This contrast, which can be felt most strongly in

Leonidov’s constructivist designs, did not prevent
him from achieving close and impressive
compositional links between architecture and
landscape, using in particular the relief of the site.
In the Lenin Institute design, the whole complex is
set out in the Lenin Hills taking precise account
not only of the nature of the incline on the site,
but also of the characteristics of the silhouette it
would present when viewed from the center of the
city, towards which it faced.

Close links with the landscape are more strongly

felt in Leonidov’s later designs, which were
executed for particular sites with unique natural
features. The schemes for the development of the
South Coast of the Crimea and Greater Artek are
most significant in this respect. Stretching out and
unfolding along the shore, his compositions are
calculated to given an integral, panoramic
perception from the sea. At the same time they
are developed in depth into individual complexes
of features, and into terraces running down
towards the sea. In both designs, great attention
is paid to working out the details of parkland which
will occupy the whole shoreline. In making these
parks into something active, he makes extensive
use of natural materials: the soil, lawns, flowers,
bushes, trees, to form a three-dimensional
ornamentation to the surface of the earth itself.
When planning these parks he took into account
the rich recreational potential of the local flora,
both as an object of admiration in its own right,
and as the most benevolent of environments for
learning about nature as a whole. To him it was an
indispensible feature of the full education that
people should have the opportunity to make
contact with nature and cooperate with it in some
way. The project in which he developed this idea
most fully was that for the Island of Flowers to
stand in the Dnepr River at Kiev.

Only once was Leonidov able to realize his

principles on the inter-relationship of architecture
and nature in a built project: in the landscaped
flight of steps down the hillside of the
Narkomtiazhprom sanatorium in Kislovodsk. It was
a plan on which he worked for a long time, feeling
his way towards a solution. What might have been
a simple descent became a branching system of
routes making their way at different paces down
the slope and meeting in the open amphitheater
before going off into the park. By the bottom of
the cascade of steps, the monumental forms which
characterize the top area have become
transformed into a simple path of trodden earth.
The architecture initially draws attention to itself
loudly, but then dissolves imperceptibly into
nature.

Very conscious that the natural world was the only

receptacle for human life, Leonidov looked to it as
the unique source of life-giving and life-creating
energy. He believed in the possibility of creating
an architecture which would be filled with sunlight,
fresh air and the scents of greenery and flowers.
In towns therefore, such as Magnitogorsk and
Igarka, he planned glass towers bathed in air and
permeated with sunlight; he gave clubs and
children’s institutions large green spaces with
swimming pools and natural playgrounds; he
replaced the usual partition walls of office
buildings by screens of greenery, and created roof
gardens — all this maintained the importance of
man’s links with the natural world. The result was
a highly individual architectural interpretation of a
theme characteristic of the prevalent world-view of
his time. Thus at the end of his life, when doing
designs for the City of the Sun, Leonidov always
included in them a hovering golden sphere to
symbolize the Sun itself as source of all life and
existence. In this way he maintained the
significance of nature as something whose power
did not diminish man, for in obeying her he was
following the voice of life itself.

In Leonidov’s creative philosophy, an important

place was accorded to art as the conveyor of
moral, ethical and aesthetic values. To him art was
not something for consumption or entertainment,
but a source of educative and transforming power.
What he valued in painting was therefore not its
decorative potential but its creative power. This
was perhaps the basis of his general lack of
sympathy with the theater. His views were akin to
those of the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, who saw
theater as something that destroyed contact with
a work of art “like a third person at a lovers’
rendezvous.”

In life and in art Leonidov valued self control and

restraint; his striving for a pure simplicity was on
occasion the basis for accusations of primitivism
and schematicism. His opponents either could not,
or would not understand his method of designing.
A sensible curtailment of the number of details in
his drawings, for example, was the result on one
hand of the desire to express his fundamental
ideas with the greatest possible clarity, and on the
other, of consideration for the limitations and
constraints of the graphic image. In elevational
drawings of the Tsentrosoiuz project, for example,
the storey heights are indicated only by the finest
of lines. Andrei Leonidov recalls his father’s
explanation that “if all the window transoms had
been depicted, the image would have been much
too florid.” Such simplification was equally the
result of his conviction that details were something
to be worked out at a later, more concrete stage of
the project. Familiarity with Leonidov’s later work,
and knowledge of how it was executed, show that
he not only had a great interest in detail, but full
mastery of the professional skills required to carry
them into practice if required. There is emphatic
evidence of this in the interior finishings and
equipment for the Moscow and Kalinin Houses of
Pioneers, as well as in the detailing of the
Kislovodsk steps.

To Leonidov, art was the natural accompaniment of

human life. In his younger years particularly, he
therefore spoke out sharply against professional
art which was done to order as paid employment.
Being an architect — and architecture by its very
nature is dependent for its existence upon
commissions — he strove to maintain the greatest
possible autonomy in his views, regarding freedom
and creativity as the two most important blessings
of human existence. He would often change and
reformulate his design briefs, proposing his own
counter-projects based on a new version. He
always felt innovation to be an organic feature of
art, an “elemental creative necessity.” Even as a
student, he tried to avoid using ready made
devices and techniques. Fascinated by
independence, he suggested improving the
training program which did not promote the
capacity for invention, and indeed threatened “to
atrophy this important side of creativity.”12
At all stages of his life he strove for an individual
renewal of the language of architecture. When
creating a series of designs around a common
principle, he would always complete the series
with a work which brought them all together,
concentrating all the thinking into one statement.
The Lenin Institute was the climactic project of his
first period. In the second it was the
Narkomtiazhprom, and in the third the City of the
Sun.

While considering innovation to be an essential

element of the creative process, Leonidov strove
for synthesis, never separating innovations out
into conceptual, technical and formal ones,
although in some works one or other category is
given particular prominence. Thus in the design for
the Columbus Monument, the conceptual element
has greatest importance: the new notion of what a
monument might be. We are no longer dealing
with the traditional concept whereby visual forms
document the significance of the person or the
events concerned. Rather we are dealing with a
source of broadcast information that will cover the
whole world. The traditional, dead monument is
turned, in Leonidov’s own words, into “a living
organism.” At the same time, from the
compositional point of view the project followed
the stylistic characteristic of the period.

Leonidov felt the larger pulse of his era keenly. He

was deeply concerned with questions of how
architecture could master the force of gravity: the
theme of the hovering sphere began with the
Lenin Institute and continued to the end of his life
in the City of the Sun. The notions of architectural
dynamics, of the changeability of space and. form
in response to changes in function, all this found
an original incarnation in his designs. He was one
of the most talented founders of “dynamic
architecture,” many elements of which have
become firmly incorporated into the mainstream
architectural vocabulary of the twentieth century.
But however innovatory his work may have been
— and in the twenties and thirties it was
particularly so — we can never speak of a break
with tradition and the past in this connection. Even
his most “leftist” designs manifest a historical
continuity in their methods and their compositional
techniques. This is true of the suprematist series,
where the spatial and geometrical framework of
the architecture has been maximally cleaned of
the superfluous, and revealed; it is equally true of
his later works, where the external attributes of
historical styles can be more readily identified. In
his Narkomtiazhprom design, for example, there
are no direct historical references, but the link
with tradition is consciously present through
compositional analogies with its surroundings.

Leonidov’s art, though forward-looking, never

broke its ties with the past. His sources, even at a
quick glance, reveal themselves with precision
despite reflection through the spirit of the times
and the personal preferences of the architect
himself. Some can be identified quite definitely;
about others we can only make assumptions.

No artist’s work develops in isolation; it is

inevitably shaped by many and various external
influences. Any particular work may be the product
of deep and essentially hidden links with some
previous artistic phenomenon, or it may have been
born of a fleeting enthusiasm. It has conceptual
predeterminants as well as direct formal
precedents. In Leonidov’s work we can see
something of these processes, for the sources of
his work include both long-term artistic and
philosophical influences, and short-lived
enthusiasms for particular devices or details. At
the same time, there are brief impulsive contacts
with a specific work or a person or a book. The
influences are different at different stages of his
life.

It is quite clear that the innovative artistic

environment of the VKhUTEMAS-VKhUTEIN where
he trained and later taught, as well as his close
contacts with Aleksandr Vesnin, had a decisive
influence on his first designs, in particular that for
the Izvestiia printing house. The aesthetic
language of those works is relatively limited, but
similar self-limitations, which are characteristic of
both suprematism and constructivism, did not
prevent Leonidov from creating such an original
work as the Lenin Institute. Indeed it was one of
the greatest achievements of the young
architectural school. Naturally the plan here
followed the basic principles of constructivist
design, but the highly individual aesthetic and
formal treatment raised it above any routinized
canons to a level of perfection rarely attained in
such youthful work.

The suprematist and constructivist threads

dominate the work of Leonidov’s early period, but
the range of external influences was becoming
wider all the time. He was well familiar with the
ideas and aesthetic principles of such leading
Western architects as Le Corbusier and Mies van
der Rohe, whose designs had been published in
the Soviet professional press. Indeed such journals
as Building Industry [Stroitel’naio promyshlennost]
and the constructivists’ own Modern Architecture,
presented the achievements of Western
architecture and engineering very extensively.
Amongst the young leftist” avant-garde, such work
enjoyed enormous popularity. It is not difficult to
see stylistic echoes of Corbusier in Leonidov’s
work. The competition project for the House of
Government in Alma Ata is perhaps his most
obviously Corbusian design. As already mentioned,
Leonidov met Corbusier in Moscow several times,
and indeed the family archives contain a snapshot
of Corbusier which Leonidov took at the Moscow
Zoo. The influence of Mies’ work perhaps extended
for longer and ran deeper, through Leonidov’s
whole period of simple geometrical forms and of
his enthusiasm for notions of universal space.

With an artist’s keen eye, Leonidov sought out the

motifs he needed in other forms of art too: from
Gauguin, Malevich, and Léger, for example, in
painting; or from photography, whose sharp
foreshortenings he used in the drawings for his
buildings. Several photographic devices from Erich
Mendelsohn’s two books America, and Russia
Europe and America, were used by Leonidov as
compositional prototypes when drawing up the
Narkomtiazhprom project and the United Nations
complex, and in his exhibition design work. Both
these books were extremely popular in Russia in
the twenties.

The second half of the thirties was dedicated to

active use of Classical, and predominantly Greco-
Italian models. Leonidov’s designs for the south
coast of the Crimea and the Kislovodsk steps bear
very precise marks of the influence from these
Classical models. At this stage, the experience of
his direct predecessors and contemporaries took
second place in his work to the historical
experience of Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome; of
the Italian Renaissance masters, and of the
Baroque. From this vast baggage of world
architecture Leonidov chose those themes which
were closest to his predilections and interpreted
them freely. Diverse variations of Greek
amphitheaters, the linear-terrace compositions of
Baroque parks and villas, literally fill his sheets of
designs for the Crimea and Greater Artek, with
individual areas evoking such famous models as
the Villa d’Este at Tivoli or the Villa Farnese in
Caprarola.

In his works of the forties and fifties, medieval

Russian motifs often appear, and one feels his
passion for the architecture of the East: of India,
China and Japan. The enormous conical buildings
of the City of the Sun are simultaneously
reminiscent of the tall Russian tent-roofed
[shatrovye] churches and of Buddhist pagodas.
Leonidov’s mode of interpretation in these cases is
based on profound and direct links with the past.
They are more obvious in the pyramids and the
amphitheaters, and less easily perceived in the
rostral columns which he so much loved. The
compositional structure of the circular tower in the
Narkomtiazhprom complex, for example, is
essentially that of a rostral column.

In Leonidov’s work of this period, however, we also

meet direct quotations: there is the “Egyptian”
portico of the Palace of Culture for the Collective
farm — the planning of Darsan Hill in Yalta to
resemble the Acropolis in Athens; the window
embrasures of the Iaroslavl church of John the
Golden Mouthed [Zlatoust] a very characteristic
medieval Russian form which is featured in the
elevational design of his building for Pushkin
Street, Moscow.

As in the work of any artist, concrete events in his

life, the books he reads and the people he meets,
will leave traces alongside those of purely artistic
phenomena The environment is after all what
nurtures the individuality. In this connection
Leonidov’s peasant origins and his direct contact
with nature in his childhood undoubtedly
influenced the formation of his world-view, just as
the Vesnin influence too left its mark.

In his youth, Leonidov was particularly fascinated

by books on aeronautics. In the thirties, at the
period when he was working on the design for the
Crimean coast eye witnesses reported that a copy
of Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur,
published in Leipzig in 1904, never left his drawing
board. It was a book he adored, and traces of his
enthusiasm can be seen in many of his sketches
and drawings. He loved poetry, and was
particularly fond of Mikhail Lermontov. Among his
contemporaries he had a high regard for Velimir
Khlebnikov, Vladimir Maiakovskii, and for Sergei
Esenin. He often used to read Maiakovskii aloud.

In the complex project for the City of the Sun,

which engaged him for so many years, it is from
Campanella’s book of the same name that he
derived the initial impulse. He probably first
became acquainted with it in the middle thirties.
Certainly he would later turn to it frequently, and
many of the Italian’s ideas — even some concrete
descriptions of parts of the town — are interpreted
in Leonidov’s general design work of the later
thirties, as well as in the City of the Sun project
itself.

We find direct echoes of Campanella’s ideas, and

live images from his town, in the Greater Artek
designs, where the retaining walls of the mountain
terraces were not only decorated with bas-reliefs
and paintings, but also told the story of the
structure of the world, its history and geography.
In Campanella there were just such walls, in seven
circles that formed the town. It is possible that
some of Leonidov’s ideas about education and
upbringing were also borrowed from the Italian
teacher, in particular those based on the
importance of children having contact with nature,
and on their being trained in self control and
restraint. However, ideas akin to these can also be
found in writings of Leo Tolstoy, whose work and
thought deeply interested Leonidov.

We can also find direct formal analogies: Leonidov

has a sketch of the City of the Sun shaped as a
round pyramid, for example. Whilst it is true that
there are more than seven steps in this pyramid —
and in Campanella’s description the structure of
the town was like Copernicus’ solar system with its
seven circles of planetary movement — the
parallels are very obvious.

Yet Leonidov paid most attention not to the

descriptive parts, but to the philosophical content
of Campanella’s book. In this respect his thinking
is like that of Corbusier, in his Ville Radieuse, and
of other ideal-city concepts which abounded in the
twenties and thirties. In Campanella’s town the
inhabitants honor the sun above everything else,
calling it “the face and living image of God from
whom light, warmth and life.”13 For Leonidov the
formal and symbolic link between the town and
the sun was strengthened by the representation of
a golden sphere shining over everything: it was an
idea that he said came to him when he was at the
front, in the War, and for lack of paper was trying
to fix his vision of the future city in his visual
memory.

Leonidov’s life was far from straightforward. It

spanned the whole gamut of experiences that can
befall a creative artist: extraordinary triumph in
his youth; attacks on his work and a personal
struggle for vindication of his ideas and principles;
a period of complete professional oblivion. Then
there came a posthumous renaissance and
rehabilitation, with recognition from a whole new
generation.

The happiest and most productive time of his life

was probably his youth. A brilliant series of
designs made the young architect recognized as
one of the most talented designers of his
generation. His works enjoyed unusually high
levels of popularity both at home and abroad,
where there was particular interest in that Soviet
work which most clearly reflected the innovatory
social and artistic ideas of those years.14

Leonidov managed to achieve a great deal. In

1934 when the competition for the
Narkomtiazhprom building took place, he was only
32 years old. The level of his achievement in that
project was undoubtedly the result of a most
unusual talent and diligence. It owed a great deal,
too, to his belief in his own creative powers and in
the revolutionary, transforming spirit of the times,
which led to a particularly productive period in the
general condition of art and artists’ methods of
work. It was in these years that many of
Leonidov’s innovatory ideas were first proposed
and tried out, thence to become part of the larger
heritage of world architectural thought. It is not
part of our brief here to evaluate Leonidov’s
contribution comparatively or to attribute relative
degrees of novelty to the various dimensions of it.
It is apparent however that the novelty of his
social thinking and his aesthetic innovations are
amongst the weightiest of his contributions to the
architecture of this century. It was well after the
Second World War — indeed towards the later
sixties — that these qualities of his work became
rediscovered, and were supplemented in the public
understanding by a rediscovery of their formal and
graphic richness.15 In the Soviet Union and the
West alike, his works then became an
indispensible part of all major studies on the
history of twentieth century architecture.

Leonidov dedicated his whole life to architecture —

whether through his conceptual designs of the
twenties, his real projects of the thirties or his
Utopias of the fifties. He began from a dream and
returned to it again at the end of his life. Despite
the external stylistic diversity of his designs, it is
possible to discern in them a clear inner line,
linking his initial works with his concluding ones.
At the end of his life he tried to consolidate this
common idea, embracing themes from the
different periods of his work into the design for the
City of the Sun. Gathered together, they bear
witness to his burning passion for pure geometry,
to his love for Russian architecture, to his
enthusiasm for the elegant graphics of the East
and to his peasant’s love for bright and diverse
colors. The late works remind us of an important
facet of his creative urge: of the striving for what
is elevated and eternal. His symbol for this
became the conical form rising to the sky under a
hovering solar sphere.

Leonidov’s work not only reflected the times in

which he lived; it also displayed features
characteristic of himself, as someone who had
emerged from the ordinary people. We see his
ability to dream; his openness; his thirst for the
infinite. All of them were simultaneously the cause
of many of his life’s tribulations, and the root of
the genius in the works he created.

In Whitman’s terms Ivan Leonidov performed a

great feat in life: he created a great deal as well
as suggesting much to others. Few poets achieve
more.

Notes

1
I. Aleksandrov & S. Khan-Magomedov, Ivan Leonidov, Moscow,
1971, p. 6.
2
The city of St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914 and
became Leningrad in 1924.
3
Problemy istorii sovetskoi arkhitektury [Problems of the History
of Soviet Architecture], Moscow, 1985, pp. 105-106.
4
OSA, the Union of Contemporary Architects [Ob’edinenie
Sovremennykh Arkhitektorov] was an independent architectural
group formed by architects of constructivist sympathies under
Aleksandr Vesnin and Moisei Ginzburg in the very end of 1925.
From 1926 to 1930 it published the only substantial and purely
architectural journal of that period in the Soviet Union, called
Modern Architecture [Sovremennaia Arkhitektura], commonly
known as SA.
5
For a discussion of the exhibition in English, see: Irina
Kokkinaki, “The First exhibition of Modern Architecture in
Moscow,” Architectural Design, 1983, number 5/6, pp. 50-59.
6
For a discussion of this competition see: Catherine Cooke, “Ivan
Leonidov: Vision and Historicism,” Architectural Design, 1986,
number 6, pp. 12-21.
7
Several of Leonidov’s designs for interiors were realized, but
they have not been preserved. These were interiors for some
sanatorium accommodation in Kislovodsk: for a study in the
Communist Academy in Moscow; for the Chaigruziia [Georgian
Tea] sanatorium; for Houses of Pioneers in Moscow and Kalinin.
8
Aleksandrov & Khan-Magomedov, Ivan Leonidov, p. 99.
9
In Russian, the words for “sphere” and “circle” have a semantic
burden of association with concepts of “community,” in the sense
of “a community of like-minded people,” a “sphere of
dissemination,” etc.
10
L. Lisitskii [El Lissitzky]. Forum sotsialisticheskoi Moskvy [The
Forum of Socialist Moscow], Arkhitektura SSSR, 1934, number
10, p. 4.
11
See: I. Leonidov. “Palitra arkhitektora [The Palette of the
Architect],” Arkhttektura SSSR, 1934, number 4, pp. 32-33.
12
TsGALI [Central State Archives of Literature & Art], fond 681,
opus 2, ed. khr. 177, p. 124.
13
Kampanella [Campanella], Gorod sol’ntsa [City of the Sun],
Moscow-Leningrad, 1937, p. 100.
14
For detail on this see: Irina Kokkinaki, Vliame sotsial’nykh idei
sovetskoi arkhitektury na tvorchestvo zarubezhnykh arkhitektorov
v mezhvoennyi period [The influence of Soviet architecture’s
social ideas on the work of foreign architects in the inter-war
period],” Problemy teoru i istorn arkhitektury [Problems of theory
and history of Architecture], Moscow 1973, and other articles by
the same author.
15
Leonidov’s work was first given renewed prominence in
Western architectural literature by Anatole Kopp in 1967, who
devoted a climactic chapter of his pioneering study Ville et
Revolution: Architecture et Urbanisme Sovietiques des Annees
Vingt, to “Une Nouvelle Etape: Ivan Leonidov.” (Pans. 1967. pp.
197-210).

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7 THOUGHTS ON “IVAN LEONIDOV: ARTIST, DREAMER,

POET”

Ian Abley
— AUGUST 30, 2015 AT 6:14 AM

Ross – Hope you are well. Can I repost this on

http://www.audacity.org please?

Regards, Ian

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Ross Wolfe
— AUGUST 30, 2015 AT 7:53 AM

Absolutely! Go for it.

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earthbound, can be extended even further and calls for
the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating
structures, a physical-dynamic architecture.” ⎯ El
Lissitzky, The Reconstruction of Architecture in the
Soviet Union (1929)

MENACING RECTILINEAR SHAPES

META
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