Gustav Gustavovich Klutsis (, ; 4 January 1895 – 26 February 1938) was a pioneering Latvian

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

and major member of the Constructivist

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

in the early 20th century. He is known for the Soviet revolutionary and

Stalinist Stalinism (, ) is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalinism in ...

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

he produced with his wife Valentina Kulagina and for the development of

photomontage Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final imag ...

techniques.

Biography

Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina photomontage by Klutsis 1922

Born in Ķoņi parish, near Rūjiena, Klutsis began his artistic training in

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

in 1912. In 1915 he was drafted into the Russian Army, serving in a

Latvian riflemen The Latvian Riflemen (; ) were originally a military formation of the Imperial Russian Army assembled starting 1915 in Latvia in order to defend Baltic governorates against the German Empire in World War I. Initially, the battalions were forme ...

detachment, then went to Moscow in 1917. As a soldier of the 9th Latvian Riflemen Regiment, Klutsis served among

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

's personal guard in the

Smolny Smolny is a place name in central Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is a compound of historically interrelated buildings erected in 18th and 19th centuries. As the most widely known of the buildings, the Smolny Institute, has been used as the seat of ...

in 1917–1918 and was later transferred to

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

to serve as part of the guard of the

Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin (fortification), Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Mosco ...

(1919–1924). In 1918–1921 he began art studies under

Kazimir Malevich Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (

and

Antoine Pevsner Antoine Pevsner (12 April 1962) was a Russian-born sculptor and the older brother of Alexii Pevsner and Naum Gabo. As the originators of Constructivism and pioneers of kinetic art, the brothers are considered pioneers of twentieth-century sculpt ...

, joined the Communist Party, met and married longtime collaborator Valentina Kulagina, and graduated from the state-run art school VKhUTEMAS. He would continue to be associated with VKhUTEMAS as a professor of color theory from 1924 until the school closed in 1930. Klutsis taught, wrote, and produced political art for the Soviet state for the rest of his life. As the political background degraded through the 1920s and 1930s, Klutsis and Kulagina came under increasing pressure to limit their subject matter and techniques. Once joyful, revolutionary and utopian, by 1935 their art was devoted to furthering

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

cult of personality A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader,Cas Mudde, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create ...

. Despite his active and loyal service to the party, Klutsis was arrested in Moscow on 16 January 1938, as a part of the so-called " Latvian Operation" as he prepared to leave for the New York World's Fair. Kulagina agonized for months, then years, over his disappearance. His sentence was passed by the NKVD Commission and the USSR Prosecutor’s Office on 11 February 1938, and he was executed on 26 February 1938, at the Butovo NKVD training ground near Moscow. He was rehabilitated on 25 August 1956 for lack of

corpus delicti (Latin for "body of the crime"; plural: ), in Western law, is the principle that a crime must be proven to have occurred before a person could be convicted of having committed that crime. For example, a person cannot be tried for larceny unle ...

Work

Gustavs Klucis - Construction - Google Art Project

Klutsis worked in a variety of experimental media. He liked to use propaganda as a sign or revolutionary background image. His first project of note, in 1922, was a series of semi-portable multimedia agitprop kiosks to be installed on the streets of Moscow, integrating "radio-orators", film screens, and newsprint displays, all to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Revolution. Like other Constructivists he worked in sculpture, produced exhibition installations, illustrations and ephemera. But Klutsis and Kulagina are primarily known for their

s. The names of some of their best posters, such as "Electrification of the whole country" (1920), "There can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory" (1927), and "Field shock workers into the fight for the socialist reconstruction" (1932), belied the fresh, powerful, and sometimes eerie images. For economy they often posed for, and inserted themselves into, these images, disguised as shock workers or peasants. Their dynamic compositions, distortions of scale and space, angled viewpoints and colliding perspectives make them perpetually modern. Klutsis is one of four artists with a claim to having invented the subgenre of political photo montage in 1918 (along with the German Dadaists

Hannah Höch Hannah Höch (; 1 November 1889 – 31 May 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar Republic, Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collag ...

and

Raoul Hausmann Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...

, and the Russian

El Lissitzky El Lissitzky (, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky , ; – 30 December 1941), was a Soviet Jewish artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, h ...

). He worked alongside Lissitzky on the '' Pressa'' International exhibition in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

References

External links

Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina: Photography and Montage After Constructivism

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20160408153831/http://briviba.org/2016/03/30/photomontage-as-a-new-form-of-agitation-art/ Essay “Photomontage as a new form of agitation art” by Gustav Klutsis {{DEFAULTSORT:Klutsis, Gustav 1895 births 1938 deaths People from Valmiera Municipality People from Valmiera county Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Latvian graphic designers Latvian photographers Soviet photographers Collage artists Constructivism (art) Academic staff of Vkhutemas Latvian Riflemen Russian military personnel of World War I Soviet military personnel of the Russian Civil War Latvian Operation of the NKVD Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union executed by the Soviet Union Great Purge victims from Latvia Soviet rehabilitations