Jacov Georgewitsch Tschernikov Paintings

Yakov Georgievich Chernikhov was a constructivist architect and graphic designer, whose career spanned the crucial years of the Russian avant-garde movement and into the Stalinist era. Born on December 17, 1889, in Pavlograd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine), Chernikhov showed an early interest in art and architecture.

After training at the Odessa Art School, he moved to the much more cosmopolitan setting of Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) where he continued his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts. He graduated in 1925, at a time when Russian art and architecture were undergoing radical changes in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The constructivist movement, with which he is most closely associated, sought to apply principles of engineering and geometry to architecture, and to integrate art and industrial production.

Chernikhov is best known for his architectural fantasies and theoretical constructions, which he illustrated in numerous books and articles. His most famous book, ‘The Construction of Architectural and Machine Forms’ (1931), is celebrated for its visionary graphic illustrations. These works were not intended as practical designs for buildings but rather as explorations of the possibilities of architectural form and space. They were exercises in pure design, influenced by the latest developments in abstract art, and were a significant influence on the development of architectural thought.

Despite the innovative nature of his work, Chernikhov never saw most of his fantastical designs realized in physical form. Under Joseph Stalin's regime, the Soviet Union's official architectural style shifted towards socialist realism, and Chernikhov's avant-garde ideas fell out of favor. He continued to teach, however, and his work as an educator in Leningrad (the Soviet name for Saint Petersburg) was his main occupation until his death on May 9, 1951.

Chernikhov's legacy is complex. While his theoretical works were largely ignored in the later years of his life and following his death, they have been rediscovered and celebrated in the post-Soviet period as an important part of the Russian avant-garde. Today, Chernikhov is regarded as a visionary who expanded the boundaries of architectural imagination, and his books and drawings are studied by architects and designers around the world.