Vkhutemas - Vkhutein

Vkhutein

As early as 1923, Rodchenko and others published a report in LEF which foretold of Vkhutemas's closure. It was in response to students' failure to gain a foothold in industry and was entitled, The Breakdown of VKhUTEMAS: Report on the Condition of the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, which stated that the school was "disconnected from the ideological and practical tasks of today". In 1927, the school's name was modified: "Institute" replaced "Studios" (Вхутеин, Высший художественно-технический институт), or Vkhutein. Under this reorganisation, the 'artistic' content of the basic course was reduced to one term, when at one point it was two years. The school appointed a new rector, Pavel Novitsky, who took over from the painter Vladimir Favorsky in 1926. It was under Novitsky's tenure that external political pressures increased, including the "working class" decree, and a series of external reviews by industry, and commercial organisations of student works' viability. The school was dissolved in 1930, and was merged into various other programs. One such merger was with MVTU, forming the Architectural-Construction Institute, which became the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1933. The Modernist movements which Vkhutemas had helped generate were critically considered as abstract formalism, and were succeeded historically by socialist realism, postconstructivism, and the Empire style of Stalinist architecture.

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