Vladimir Tatlin was born in Moscow in 1885. He trained at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and at the Penza Art School. After completing his formal studies, he joined a group of avant-garde painters and writers in Moscow, Odessa and St. Petersburg. During this period he designed for the theater and participated in exhibitions.
After the 1917 Revolution, Tatlin worked for the new Soviet Education Commissariate which used artists and art to educate the public. During this period, he developed an officially authorized art form which utilized 'real materials in real space'. His 1919 project for a Monument of the Third Communist International marked his first foray into architecture and became a symbol for Russian avant-garde architecture and International Modernism.
During the 1920s Tatlin taught in Petrograd/Leningrad, Kiev and Moscow. In his classes he emphasized design principles based on the inner behavior and loading capacities of material. Tatlin's work with materials inspired the Constructivist movement in architecture and design.
Tatlin retired when the Soviet Union rejected modernism in the 1930s. He died in Moscow in 1953.