Aleksander Rodchenko was something of a chameleon. This Russian artist who argued for the death of traditional easel painting and was a guiding force in Constructivism (along with Tatlin, Malevich and in an early stage, Kandinsky) also was a collagist, graphic designer, photographer and even filmmaker. He was very much a renaissance man.

But though this painting, Untitled, 1920, in the new Lacma Modernist hang, depends on rational, constructivist, geometry, in fact I believe it's a beautiful painting even in the traditional sense. He used a compass and ruler and tried to eliminate brushwork, but the colors are subtle and almost warm even though the palette is blues, greens and grays and it's painted on wood. There is something very inviting about it.

By 1920, Rodchenko, and his also very talented wife artist Varvara Stepanova, seemingly considered an equal to these formidable men (along with Popova), had become a director of the fund that purchased art for the Bolshevik government and he was responsible for directing pedagogy. He was influenced by the Bauhaus in this idea of schools and practice being intertwined.