Composition No 117

In 1914 Rochenko's artistic output shows a wide variety of styles throughout his career. Particularly in the Constructivist period, his new formal language was changing rapidly. His works included in the Kostakis Collection reflect this expressive diversity. The 1919-20 period, in addition to his experimentation with spatial constructions, is also characterized by his search for new expressive possibilities in the terrain, which yielded compositions with intertwined, usually geometric shapes that explore various chromatic relationships. A highly idiosyncratic work of this period is Composition No. 117, which, as Angelika Rudenstein mentions in the earlier catalogue of the Kostakis Collection, Gustav Kluczys spoke of in a letter to Ivan Kudriashov, now in the archives of a provincial Russian museum. Kluczys had seen the work at an exhibition in 1920 and said that the 'black painting with coloured dots' was a work of 'astonishing genius'. Indeed, judged by the standards of modern art at the time, this work was unprecedented in its economy of means and degree of abstraction and spontaneity. Another work that can also be called a black painting with red dots, also made in 1920, in oil on canvas, but on a slightly larger scale, is now in the collection of the Gmursinska Gallery in Cologne.