The Struggle for Utopia

Following World War I, a new artistic-social avant-garde emerged with the ambition to involve the artist in the building of social life. This project is exemplified in the lives of Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whose careers, which covered a broad range of practices and political situations, are studied in this text. Through close readings of their work Margolin examines the way these three artists negotiated the changing relations between their social ideals and the political realities they confronted. He traces their careers through the 1920s and 1930s in Moscow, Berlin and Chicago, documenting their contributions to Utopian architecture, Constructivist ideology, industrial design, photography, visual communication and design education. Each essay adopts a chronological perspective, beginning with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and ending with Chicago after World War II. Focusing on the difficult relationship between art and social change, the author seeks to bring new insights to our understanding of the avant-garde's role in a period of great political complexity.