Founding of the Vkhutemas

The Soviet government founded the Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios) in Moscow in 1920 by merging earlier art and technical schools into a single state institution intended to train artist-engineers for a new socialist society. Organized around a shared foundational course in form, color, space and materials taken by every student regardless of eventual specialty, the school became the training ground and workshop for Constructivist and Rationalist architects and designers, including Aleksandr Rodchenko and Alexander Vesnin among its faculty. Often compared to the contemporary Bauhaus in Germany for its integration of fine art, craft and industrial design pedagogy, the Vkhutemas was reorganized in 1930 as Stalinist cultural policy shifted away from the avant-garde.