Nikolai Kolli

Tsentrosoyuz building (1933), Moscow,
collaboration with Le Corbusier.
Chistye Prudy station of the Moscow Metro (vintage image).

Nikolai Dzhemsovich Kolli (1894 - 1966) was a Russian Modernist—Constructivist architect, Soviet architectural functionary, and city planner in the Soviet Union.[1]

History

Kolli was born in Moscow, and studied at the Imperial Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and then at the Leninist VKhUTEMAS in Moscow.[1]

He first came to attention with a 1918 proposal for a monument celebrating the victory of the Red Army over Tzarist General Krasnov, in the form of a red wedge cleaving a block of white stone. It became an image that artist El Lissitzky subsequently appropriated in "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge."

Nikolai Kolli is buried in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery.[2]

Modernism

Nikolai Kolli studied under Ivan Zholtovsky as one of his "Twelve Disciples." In the late 1920s became a member of both the Soviet OSA Group (Union of Contemporary Architects), and a delegate to the international CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne) architectural group.

From 1928 through 1932 he lived part-time in Paris, assisting Le Corbusier in that architect's only built work in Moscow, the Tsentrosoyuz building (Central Cooperative Alliance offices).[3] Planning and construction[1]

Career

Kolli taught at the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School from 1920 to 1941, and at the Moscow Institute of Architecture from 1931 to 1941.[1]

From 1935 to 1951 he headed the Moscow branch of the Soviet Union of Architects.

Works

The works of Nikolai Kolli include:

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nikolai Kolli.

References