Valentina Kulagina

Valentina Kulagina (Валентина Никифоровна Кулагина-Клуцис, 1902, Moscow – 14 December 1987, Moscow) was a Russian graphic designer active in Moscow. Like her husband, Gustav Klutsis, she employed the technique of photomontage but sometimes combined it with stylized figures close to Art Deco. It is likely that she collaborated without credit on some of his work. She was responsible for the photomontage design dedicated to Siberia in the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. The ‘deforming perspective and scales’ were criticized by Soviet Photo, a signal of a hardening line against experimentalism in photography comparable to that taken in painting earlier with the establishment of Socialist Realism.

Literature

• Margarita Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina: Photography and Montage after Constructivism, New York: International Center of Photography, and Göttingen: Steidl, 2004, 255 pp. (English)
• Christina Kiaer, "The Short Life of the Equal Woman", Tate Etc 15, Spring 2009. (English)

Links

• Tate
• MoMA
• V&A