Vladimir Tatlin

Vladimir Tatlin (1885 - 1953) was a painter and architect, one of the two (together with Kazimir Malevich) most important names in Russian Avant-Garde arts of the 20's. Tatlin is best known as the architect that projected the huge "Monument to the 3rd International", a big tower all in iron, glass and steel, planned to be bigger then Paris Eiffel tower (1922). The project was never made due to its high costs.

Inside an iron-and-steel structure, similar to a DNA stripe, three building blocks covered with glass windows would turn in different speeds (the first one, a cube, at the speed of a year; the second one, a pyramid, at the speed of a month; the third one, a cylinder, at the speed of a day). Tatlin is also the founder of Russian Constructist Art, with his counter-reliefs, structures made of wood and iron projected to be hung in wall corners. These "sculptures" were conceived to question the traditional idea of painting. Although close friends at the beginning of their carriers, Tatlin and Malevitch split for the last one did not agree with the utilitarian program of constructivism. This lead Malevitch to develop his "Suprematist" program in the city of Vitebsk, where he found a school called UNOVIS (Researchers of new art). However, Suprematism was born in 1915, at the 0.10 exhibition, one of the main shows of Russian Avant-Garde, also called "last futurist exhibition".

Tatlin also dedicated himself to the study of clothes, objects and so on. At the end of his life he started to research over birds flights, in order to provide human beings to facilities that would allow them to pursuit one of the great dreams of humanity: to fly. Tatlin also was a very gifted designer that prefigurated some achievements even in modern sea navigation such as submarines.