Nikolai Mikhailovich Tarabukin (; 25 August 1889 – 21 February 1956) was an art theoretician active in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. He was one of major theorists of

Proletkult Proletkult ( rus, Пролетку́льт, p=prəlʲɪtˈkulʲt), a portmanteau of the Russian words "proletarskaya kultura" ( proletarian culture), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution that arose in conjunction with the Russian Revol ...

. Tarabukin's first book was ''Опыт теории живописи'' (A study in painting theory) which although started in 1916 was not published until 1923. He was influenced by influence of

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles (" painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in ...

. Although he disavowed

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...

, he nevertheless helped explain their ideas through such essays as ''От мольберта к машине'' (From Easel to Machine) published in 1922. :“The way out of the crisis was found not through the "death" of art, but through the further evolution of its forms, prompted by both the logical process of their development and social conditions. Only in the era of deep decline of social life, art was locked in museum cells. Now art opens a vast horizon of the field in life itself. And no matter how indignant eclectic art critics may be, whatever they may say about the profanation of "holy" art, they cannot keep it in their silos, and, by tearing apart the chains of the museum, it emerges victoriously in life ...”

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tarabukin, Nikolai Soviet people 1889 births 1956 deaths