Popova Lyubov Sergeevna is one of the greatest masters of the Russian avant-garde. Lyubov Popova: paintings, biography of the avant-garde artist Paintings by Lyubov Popova

Popova Lyubov Sergeevna, painter, graphic artist, designer, set designer

Popova Lyubov Sergeevna(1889, Ivanovskoye village, Moscow province - 1924, Moscow), painter, graphic artist, designer, set designer. Creator of non-objective compositions. Comes from a family of wealthy Moscow factory owners. In 1907 she visited the studio of S.Yu. Zhukovsky, in 1908–1909 – the school of K.F. Yuona and I.O. Dudin, where she mastered the principles of impressionism. Traveled a lot around Europe. Impressions from the painting of the Italian Renaissance were combined in her work with a passion for modern artistic movements. In 1912–1914 she lived in Paris and studied at the La Palette Academy with the cubists J. Metzinger and A. Le Fauconnier. In 1912 she worked in the studio of V.E. Tatlin's "Tower". In 1916–1917 - member of the Supremus group, created by K.S. Malevich. In 1918–1923 she taught at Vkhutemas, in 1920–1923 she worked in Inkhuk under the direction of V.V. Kandinsky in the section of monumental art.

L.S. Popova is one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian avant-garde, who in her work traveled the path from cubism to constructivism. Upon returning from France to Russia, she developed her own principles of cubism, giving it a monumental sound. This quality appears in Popova’s works also under the influence of ancient Russian art. In her paintings of the 1910s, cubism takes on a decorative quality. The artist paid special attention to the processing of the painting surface, achieving an expressive variety of textures. "Composition with Figures" (1913), "Violin" (1915) are the most significant works of this period.

Under the influence of counter-reliefs by V.E. Tatlina turns to “sculpture-painting”. In 1916–1917 he created a series of “picturesque architectonics”. They were combinations of colored geometric planes. Unlike the Suprematist works of K.S. Malevich, these planes acquire weight, a tectonic relationship of masses, a sense of top and support of the composition.

The next stage was “spatial-force formations.” These images consist of straight and curved ray lines. In a number of works they break through planes of various geometric shapes. The forms seem to rush through space at a rapid pace. Often the background is an unpainted wooden board. Colorful texture

On May 6, 1889, Lyubov Popova was born - a prominent representative of the artistic avant-garde, painter, graphic artist, designer, set designer, creator of non-objective compositions...

At the work of L.S. Popova "Pictorial Architectonics", 1918. Tate Modern.

Lyubov Sergeevna Popova was born on the Krasnovidovo estate (the village of Ivanovskoye) near Mozhaisk, into a merchant family. Her father's great-grandfather was a miller, her father Sergei Maksimovich Popov owned textile factories and was rich. The family of the mother, Lyubov Vasilievna, nee Zubova, belonged to the educated part of the merchant class and made a significant contribution to the history of Russian culture. One of the Zubovs, the artist’s grandfather, was the owner of unique bowed instruments- Stradivarius, Guarneri, Amati violins, which are now the pride of State collection unique instruments Russia, and the extensive collection of coins of his son, Pyotr Vasilyevich, donated Historical Museum, became the basis of his numismatic department.

The parents were great connoisseurs of music and theater and instilled a love for art and children: Pavel, Sergei, Lyubov and Olga. The first drawing lessons were taught to them by the artist K.M. Orlov. Lyubov Sergeevna's gymnasium education began in Yalta, where the family lived in 1902-1906. After finishing it in Moscow, Popova studied philology at the pedagogical courses of A.S. Alferov and, at the same time, in 1907, her serious art education began in the drawing studio of S.Yu. Zhukovsky.

From the time of studies in 1908-1909 at the School of Drawing and Painting by K.F. Yuon and I.O. Dudin, several early landscapes with genre motifs have been preserved. The picturesque “Houses”, “Bridge”, “Washwomen”, “Sheaves”, by strengthening the flat, decorative approach to conveying nature, are different from the works of teachers who worked in the spirit of moderate impressionism.

Over the next three years, Lyubov Sergeevna painted a lot, studied the history of art, and made a number of trips with her family to Italy and historical Russian cities. The accumulated impressions of Italian art and Vrubel's paintings seen in Kyiv at that time, ancient Russian icon painting and wall painting in Yaroslavl, Rostov, Vladimir truly manifested themselves later, in the mature period of her work.

The works of the late 1900s - graphic and pictorial "sitters" and "models" - testify to a passion for the work of Cezanne and new French art. With great perseverance, Popova worked on various turns of bodies, carefully studied the nude, revealing in it the constructive basis of the figures. A similar attitude to the tasks of painting distinguished many aspiring artists at that time, in particular Lentulov and Tatlin, whose friendship began in the “Tower” studio on Kuznetsky Most.

Popova Lyubov Sergeevna. "Composition with Figures", 1913, Oil on canvas, 160 x 124.3 cm.

At that time, a natural continuation of non-academic education was a trip to Paris. Lyubov Sergeevna in the company of the old governess A.R. Dege spent the winter of 1912-1913 there. Joint classes at the La Palette studio brought her together for a long time with V. Pestel, N. Udaltsova and V. Mukhina, who also studied there. The atmosphere of the artistic capital of Europe and the lessons of J. Metzinger, A. Le Fauconnier and A. de Segonzac helped Popova navigate development trends European art.

In contemporary Russian art, the active development of various influences had already begun: French Cubism, Italian Futurism, German Expressionism. Popova was among the Russian artists who, in the 1910s, found themselves at the forefront of European art and made a breakthrough into non-objectivity, towards a new understanding artistic space. Her work accumulated the ideas of Malevich’s Suprematism, Tatlin’s new materiality, and then it evolved, and Popova came close to developing the principles of constructivism.

The moment of rethinking the natural vision was marked by the 1913 works “Two Figures” and “Standing Figure,” made by Popova after returning to Moscow. Following the cubists, the artist became a designer of color volumes. On the canvases, as well as in the preparatory drawings for them, she boldly transformed the figures of the sitters into an articulation of stereometric volumes, revealing the axes of the connection of the head, shoulders and arms. “Drawing” lines of force are removed from the rank of auxiliary elements of the drawing; they permeate the entire space of the picture, and their intersections constitute new pictorial-spatial forms and rhythms.

In the 1910s, Lyubov Popova stood out from the Moscow “artistic” youth in that “for all her femininity, she had an incredible keenness of perception of life and art.” Her circle of like-minded people included artists N.S. Udaltsova, A.A. Vesnin, A.V. Grishchenko, philosopher P.A. Florensky, art historians B.R. Vipper, M.S. Sergeev, B.N. von Eding, who later became her husband. At weekly meetings in Popova’s studio on Novinsky Boulevard, serious theoretical discussions about art were held, and these conversations prepared the artist for future teaching work.

Already after entering the mainstream contemporary art, in the spring of 1914, Popova needed one more trip to Paris and Italy before she decided to publicly display her works. She looked at the architectural monuments of the Renaissance and Gothic with new eyes, studied the laws of their compositional relationships and the powerful force of classical color combinations. She returned to Russia shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Many artists from her circle went to the front in 1914, but creative life did not stop, and soon Popova took part in the exhibition of the “Jack of Diamonds” association for the first time. As art historian D.V. Sarabyanov noted, she “was saying goodbye to her timid past.”

A further, more mature period was marked by participation in cubo-futurist exhibitions of 1915-1916 - “Tram B”, “0.10”, “Shop”.
A supporter of cubo-futurism, “a style movement that arose in Russia thanks to the efforts of futurist poets and painters Malevich, Rozanova, Ekster, Kruchenykh,” Popova wrote a series of cubist single-figure compositions (“Traveller”, “Man + Air + Space”) in 1914-1915. , portraits (“Portrait of a Philosopher”, “Sketch for a Portrait”) and still lifes depicting musical instruments.

The favorite themes of her paintings - “Violin”, “Guitar”, “Clock” - are borrowed from the iconography of the French Cubists, Picasso and Braque. These scenes made it possible to visually decompose the trajectory of a clock pendulum into separate fragments, elements of movement, or “visually” demonstrate the long-lasting sound of sound, or otherwise “play out”, combine the Cubist analytical “decomposition” of a volumetric object on a plane and the futuristic simultaneity of movement. For Popova, the images of fragments of the violin, its neck and soundboard, and the bends of the guitar were not only a tribute to the modernist tradition. These forms had a different, more “animate” meaning for her. After all, since childhood, she had heard amazing stories about “personalized” instruments from her grandfather’s collection.

The contents of the artist’s still lifes and portraits were extremely materialized. They were supplemented by individual letters or words, as well as collages of stickers, wallpaper, notes, playing cards. Textured inserts were also made of gypsum as bumpy “substrates” for paint, or they were drawn with a comb over wet paint and looked like wavy stripes. Such “inclusions” of authentic labels and newspapers into the pictorial surface of the work introduced new, illogical, associative connections into the content. They increased the expressiveness of paintings and changed their perception. A work of illusion real world itself turned into a new object of this world. One of the still lifes of 1915 was called “Objects”.

The artist actively developed the ideas of Tatlin, the creator of the first counter-reliefs - “material selections”, and proposed her own original version of the counter-relief. “Jug on the Table” is a plastic painting in which Popova organically preserves the unity of color and texture on the flat and convex parts of the image, which gives the spatial composition the properties of a pictorial object.

From her first independent works, the artist consistently sought to “build” an easel painting and turn the static and dynamic forms into a suite of intersecting color planes. Further rethinking of the painting as an object, the painting as an object, led the artist to non-objective painting. Abstraction of a specific subject to the level of simple ones geometric shapes, begun by Malevich and Tatlin, was organically accepted by Popova. A certain role in mastering the specific language of abstract art was played by a trip to Turkestan in the spring of 1916, during which she became acquainted with the ancient architectural monuments Islam in Bukhara and Khiva, famous for their examples of geometric patterns.

The canvases with the title “Pictorial Architectonics” mark a new turn in Popova’s work. It is difficult to accurately judge whether her first non-figurative painting, marked in the catalog of the posthumous exhibition in 1915, was made before or after the artist met Malevich, who created his “Black Square” in 1915. But already in 1916-1917 Popova participated in the organization of the Supremus society together with other associates of Malevich - O. Rozanova, N. Udaltsova, I. Klyun, V. Pestel, N. Davydova, A. Kruchenykh.

In the film “Pictorial Architectonics. Black, Red, Gray" (1916), Popova realized one of her graphic sketches for the sign of the Supremus society. A black quadrangle placed in the center of a non-objective composition clearly points to Malevich’s “Black Square”, but Popova’s work differs from the “square” in figurative content. Color in Malevich's interpretation - black, white - is symbolically more oriented towards infinity, space, the abyss of possibilities hidden in it; it is not as tightly linked to a certain form, as is the case with Popova. The colored planes of the three figures of her composition, on the contrary, are more material; they do not “float in weightlessness” as much as the forms of the Suprematist works of Malevich, Rozanova and Klyun.

It is no coincidence that Popova called non-objective compositions “architectonics.” They do not have the real, functional, tectonic nature of building structures, but figurative architectonics, pictorial power, plastic monumentality, special clarity and harmony of forms. In creating this type of painting, the artist managed to use her experience of studying ancient Russian architecture and the high order of Renaissance European art. Among the forty-odd works of this numerous series, there is no monotony of repetition of motifs; all the “plots” sound like independent topics thanks to the richness of their color palette.

The compositions of 1916-1917 and 1918 are also distinguishable by the relationship between the spaces of the paintings and the forms immersed in them. At the first stage, Popova arranged geometric figures, the main “characters” of the paintings, in layers, which gave an idea of ​​the depth of the painting, and left space for the background, thereby preserving the “memory” of the Suprematist space.

In the “architectonics” of 1918, the background completely disappears. The surfaces of the paintings are filled to the limit by the figures - they are crowded together, one form intersects another in several places, changing the color saturation: breaks in the forms appear along the lines of intersection, peculiar “gaps” appear, the effect of “glow” of the planes is created, but their colors still do not mix . The layering of Suprematist colored planes of the first “architectonics” in 1918 is replaced by a dialogue of forms, filled with energy, the dynamics of collisions and their interpenetrations.

The flourishing of the artist’s bright individuality occurred during the critical war and revolutionary years with their social upheavals and personal trials, which temporarily interrupted the consistent development of the artist. From March 1918 to the autumn of 1919, Lyubov Sergeevna experienced many events - marriage to Boris Nikolaeviy von Eding, the birth of a son, moving to Rostov-on-Don, typhus and the death of her husband. She herself barely endured typhoid and typhus and received a severe heart defect. And that is why in the legacy of Lyubov Popova there are no works dated 1919.

The artist, who returned to Moscow, was supported by friends, first of all, the Vesnin family, and her return to the profession slowly began. Popova participated in 1919 with her previous works in the X State Exhibition “Objectless Creativity and Suprematism”. Her paintings were then purchased for the museum bureau of the People's Commissariat for Education. This somehow supported the artist not only financially. The Fine Arts Department of the People's Commissariat for Education sent purchased works to exhibitions and to newly organized museums of pictorial culture. In the 1920s, Popova's work found its way into the most unexpected corners Soviet Russia and since then they have been in the museums of Vladivostok, Vyatka, Irkutsk, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk, Perm, Tobolsk, Tula, Tashkent, Yaroslavl, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Some of them, along with works by other artists, represented Russian art at an exhibition in Berlin in 1922 and at the Venice Biennale in 1924.

Popova’s new understanding of formal problems manifested itself in works titled “Construction” and “Spatial-force constructions.”

The most famous “Construction” was made in 1920 on the back of the canvas of the large “Pictorial Architectonics” of 1916-1917. This is a dynamic and monumental composition, bristling with black sharp triangles-teeth, with a black braid and two crosses. In the painting, the spiral motif, new to Popova’s work, appears as a giant funnel, pushing out clots of energy and small, “random” shapes. This spiral develops, unwinds upward, upward, in defiance of the gloomy foreground triangles that impede its development. The figures and planes in the picture lack stability, they are directed into space, their movement is multidirectional, and therefore conflicting.

Life abstract geometric shapes This painting contained, at the level of reflection of consciousness in an indirect form, the artist’s own drama experienced. “Architectonics” and “Construction”, created on the same canvas, reflect two most important periods in Popova’s work and in her life too.

The double-sided work is largely programmatic also because it turned out to be the last canvas in Popova’s work. After it, her “Constructions” follow chronologically. There are almost 10 of them, and all of them are made on unprimed plywood or paper.

The color and texture of the wooden base act as active elements in abstract compositions consisting of intersecting lines and planes. To enhance the contrast in texture of a number of works and give them greater expressiveness, the artist uses plaster and metal chips. At the same time, space is designated figuratively - by lines of openwork abstract structures. Color palette discreet and refined.

The time after the revolution required creative people active participation in the organization cultural life, applied studies and many artists entered the governing bodies of the new state. In 1920, Popova’s sphere of professional interests also expanded. Together with her associates - Udaltsova, Vesnin, Kandinsky - she works at the Institute of Artistic Culture, gradually becomes close to a group of constructivists-industrialists, and teaches at VKHUTEMAS.

Last period Popova’s creativity took place in the bosom of “industrial” art. The artist began to design books, magazines, theatrical productions, create posters and even develop sketches for fabrics and clothing models.

Popova's debut in the theater based on the design of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet did not seem very successful to director A. Tairov, and when staging the play he used sketches made by A. Exter. While working on a puppet show based on A.S. Pushkin’s fairy tale “About the Priest and His Worker Balda,” Popova recalled her previous experience of studying folk art. In 1916, she made samples of Suprematist embroidery for the “Verbovka” enterprise, and therefore this time she boldly rethought the style of folk art and popular print.

Costumes and sketches for the production of “The Chancellor and the Locksmith” based on the play by A. Lunacharsky, carried out by directors A.P. Petrovsky and A. Silin, carried elements of a futuristic understanding of space and volume that had long disappeared from her easel creativity.

Popova’s meeting with V.E. Meyerhold in 1922 was significant. They turned the play “The Magnanimous Cuckold” by F. Crommelink into a fundamentally innovative work theatrical arts. To decorate the stage, Popova designed a spatial installation that replaced the change of scenery during the performance. The image is based on the theme of a mill with wheels, a windmill, a chute and intersecting diagonal structures. In its design there is not even a hint of a fake understanding of stage space. The graphic nature of the entire composition is akin to the poetics of the latest easel “spatial-power constructions”. The value of the new device invented by Popova for playing actors according to the Meyerhold system and according to the laws of biomechanics is not limited only to the history of theater and the emergence of constructivism in architecture. It's finished work of art It is important both as an aesthetic object and as a functionally made thing.

A day after the premiere, the “trial of Popova” took place at INKHUK. Fellow constructivists accused Popova of “prematurely turning to the theater, due to the fact that constructivism was not yet ripe to emerge from the experimental laboratory state.” Such creative discussions were quite in the spirit of the collectivist lifestyle of those years. The “sentence” of the artist was softened by history itself, inscribing this experience of Popova into the annals of art of the 20th century, and by Vsevolod Meyerhold, who immediately after the first collaboration invited Popova to teach the course “Material Design of a Performance” to his students at the State Higher Directing Workshops.

In 1923, they produced another performance together - “The Earth Stands on End” based on the play by M. Martinet. Descriptions of the theatrical performance and reproductions of a plywood tablet with a sketch of Popova have been preserved. The main permanent design element was a grandiose structure (but no longer an “image” of a real structure, a mill, as was the structure in “Cuckold”), but a literal wooden repetition of a gantry crane. Plywood boards with poster slogans and screens on which newsreels were projected were attached to this structure. It was a unique version of the mass propaganda art of the first revolutionary years, designed for squares, rapid transformation and a large number of people. The viewer was primed for an active, extremely updated perception of the plot. Popova managed to surprisingly succinctly combine functional constructivity and concentrated imagery with information wealth.

As J. Tugenhold wrote, “the straightforward nature of the artist was not satisfied with the illusion of the theater - she was drawn to the last logical step, to introducing art into production itself.” In these years, as N.L. Adaskina notes from Popova, there was a post-non-objective attitude towards representation, based on the schematic clarity of the image and the identification of its documentary authenticity. It manifests itself in book design, interest in developing fonts, and editing text with photographs. For example, Popova in the cover project for the book of poems by I.A. Aksenov “Eiffel. 30 od” unexpectedly posted photographs of electric motors.

The appeal to reality was part of the program of the new production art, which sought to establish new principles of life-building. The utopian ideas of the Art Nouveau and Art Nouveau eras were repeated at the new constructivist stage in the development of the language of art.
As part of these tasks, Popova turned to creating sketches for fabrics and clothing, intending through this work to move on to designing a new image and lifestyle. Her fabrics, produced at the cotton-printing factory, were popular. In the spring of 1923, all of Moscow wore clothes made from fabrics based on the artist’s drawings, without knowing it. Popova said that not a single artistic success brought her such deep satisfaction as the sight of a peasant woman or worker buying a piece of her fabric. And yet, the dresses based on Popova’s sketches were conceived for a new type of working woman. Her heroines are not “proletarian workers”, but employees of Soviet institutions or graceful young ladies who follow fashion and know how to appreciate the beauty of a simple and functional cut.

Her models are very figurative; when creating them, the artist relied on the experience of creating both theatrical costumes and her “constructivist” baggage of ideas. Popova made only about twenty clothing sketches and all of them became a specific program for the further fruitful development of costume modeling.

It is difficult to imagine in what other area the artist’s bright personality would have been able to manifest itself if the artist’s work and life had not ended on a high note. Lyubov Popova was 35 years old when she died of scarlet fever in May 1924, following her five-year-old son.

Lyubov Sergeevna Popova - great Russian artist. She worked in various avant-garde genres, including cubism, cubo-futurism, constructivism, and suprematism. Born in the Moscow province, the village of Ivanovskoye, in 1889. Since childhood, she was surrounded by attention and did not need anything, since her father was a very wealthy entrepreneur. The family's circle of friends included very famous people, including artists. One of the artists K.M. Orlov became the first teacher of the young talent.

After Lyubov Popova moved to Moscow, she received her secondary education at a gymnasium and took lessons at art school the wonderful painter Konstantin Yuon. Lyubov Popova also studied the art of drawing and painting in Italy and Paris. She has always been attracted to unconventional approaches to self-expression. She had a very good hand in painting, and she could have easily become a landscape painter, portrait painter, paint battle scenes, and so on, but instead she chose to plunge headlong into the avant-garde. She was especially attracted to Malevich's newly invented style. She achieved very great results in Suprematism, for which she gained fame and popularity. Together with some other artists she was a member of art group Supremus, which was also organized by Kazimir Malevich.

In addition to Suprematism, she also worked in other avant-garde genres, was engaged in the design of theatrical productions in the constructivist style, worked as a designer. Currently considered one of the most the brightest representatives Russian avant-garde. She died of scarlet fever in 1924. She was buried at the Vagankovskoe cemetery.

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Lyubov Popova

Grocer's

Picturesque architecture

Cubic cityscape

Linear composition

Still life with tray

Cover of the magazine Questions of Shorthand

Portrait of a Philosopher

Lyubov Popova was born in the village of Ivanovskoye near Moscow into a merchant family; her paternal grandfather had a cloth business. Perhaps when Popova decisively left in the 1920s easel painting into “production” and created sketches of designs for fabrics, this was to a certain extent a consequence of a genetic attachment to the craft.

But at the time when Lyubov Popova was born, her father, Sergei Maksimovich, was almost no longer involved in business, but was a famous philanthropist, patron of music and theater and represented the character of an enlightened merchant, familiar from the image of Savva Mamontov, who had nothing in common with merchants Ostrovsky's "dark kingdom". It was not without reason that Lyubov Popova received her first drawing lessons from her father’s friend, the artist K.M. Orlov. She spent her early years in Yalta, studied at the gymnasium there, and only in 1906 came to Moscow, here she received a secondary education and entered pedagogical courses.

In 1908, Popova, who had been committed to the art of painting since childhood, began attending the private art school of K.F. Yuon, where she met many artists, including Nadezhda Udaltsova. With Udaltsova’s sister, Lyudmila Prudkovskaya, Lyubov Popova somewhat later rented a studio in Antipyevsky Lane, but according to the artist herself, their independent work was not particularly successful, and around 1911 they went to work at the Tower.

This was the first free collective workshop in Russia; the artists themselves staged life here, most often Mikhail Larionov, who was then a recognized “leader”. In addition to Popova, N. Udaltsova, K. Zdanevich, V. Bart, N. Goncharova and others were there. In this environment there was a very strong passion for primitives and ancient Russian art; young artists seemed to be rediscovering their national past. We should not forget that the first scientific restorations of icons date back to this time and they appeared in all the fullness of their original colors.

Interest in icon painting, which is mainly attributed to the “neo-primitivist” artists - Larionov and others, was characteristic of all those seeking new paths in art.

In 1909-1911, Lyubov Popova visited Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov, Yaroslavl, and Suzdal in order to study ancient Russian painting and architecture. In 1910, she went to Kyiv and here she received another impetus for her creativity - she saw Vrubel’s monumental paintings in the Kirillov Monastery.

Also in 1910, Lyubov Popova visited Italy, where her attention was attracted by Italian primitives, Giotto and Pinturicchio.

And the final touch to the great and intensive work that Popova did in comprehending artistic culture was that she became acquainted with the collection of S.I. Shchukin in Moscow. At that moment, Henri Matisse was Shchukin’s new hobby. The art of Matisse became the key link that connected the past and the present, the West and the East in Popova’s artistic worldview. She could not help but appreciate the courage of Matisse’s innovative painting language and at the same time felt its connection with the art of the Middle Ages.

Now it became clear to Popova where she should study painting - in 1912 she went to Paris, she went as a mature artist: her “Trees” of 1911 were qualitatively different from the early still lifes and landscapes that she painted in Yuon’s studio.

Popova went to Paris with Nadezhda Udaltsova, who later recalled this: “Popova and I examined everything as much as possible and began to look for a workshop. We intended to work for Matisse, but Matisse's school was already closed. We went to the workshop of Maurice Denis, came across a sitting Indian with feathers on a red background, we ran away. Someone mentioned Le Fauconnier's La Palette workshop, we went there and immediately decided that this was what we needed. It was the art of construction, fantastic art. Le Fauconnier, Metzinger or Segonzac came once a week. Le Fauconnier spoke about large surfaces, about the construction of canvas and space, Metzinger spoke about the latest achievements of Picasso. This was the era of classical cubism."

Lyubov Popova worked seriously in the studio and spent many hours in the Louvre and the Cluny Museum. She lived in Paris at Madame Jeanne's boarding house, where mostly Russians stayed and where there was even a “Russian table*; Boris Ternovets and Vera Mukhina lived there at the same time, who studied sculpture with Bourdelle.

Popova had a sociable character, she quickly became friends with Mukhina and, having arrived in Paris for the second time in 1914, made a trip with her to Italy.

In winter, Lyubov Popova worked in V. Tatlin’s workshop in Moscow. Tatlin also came to Paris in 1914 and met with Popova there. The artist again plunged into the special atmosphere of Parisian life and art, but when she met her friends at La Palette, it seemed to her that they “had not gone anywhere,” the same as “last year.” Popova herself had outgrown La Palette; she visited the Udet collection, where she saw works by Picasso and Braque, and was now focused on searching for Picasso. And if Popova’s composition “Two Figures” of 1913, which was her debut at the “Jack of Diamonds” exhibition of 1914, bore traces of the influence of Metzinger, in particular his painting “The Blue Bird,” then in subsequent works she comes to a more in-depth understanding cubist systems.

“Portrait of a Philosopher” (1915) is distinguished by great restraint in color scheme; the dynamic composition of the canvas is built by alternating sonorous planes of color and intense rhythms of “convex” lines, which create an angular pictorial “relief” on the surface of the canvas. The composition includes inscriptions and the number “32” - this is a kind of license plate designating the painting as a “thing”, like a factory stamp.

It is worth paying attention to the peculiarities of Popova’s understanding of cubism. She was attracted to the world of things, to identifying the possibilities contained in the material itself, having a precise address: if she paints a still life with dishes, then it is “Tinware” (1913); if objects - then “Items from the Dyehouse” (1914).

She was interested in the mechanism hidden behind the outer shell of the form; in 1915, she created several works “Clocks” - a fairly common subject in cubist and futurist painting, as a symbol of time - the fourth dimension introduced into spatial art. Popova is not content with the symbolic designation of the dial, she shows the “insides”, the clutches of cogs and wheels, she is fascinated by the work of human hands - a wonderful machine. This, perhaps a little naive, but sincere belief in technical progress I can’t help but be captivated by Popova’s paintings.

However, the real flowering of Popova’s activity - a constructivist and production worker, a builder of new forms of “existence” of people - came after the revolution. She took an active part in the restructuring of all forms of life and everyday life: she designed mass revolutionary festivals, created posters, made book models, sketches of clothing models, drawings for textiles, and was one of the founders of the school of domestic design.

Besides practical work Popova taught at the State Higher Theater Workshops, where many figures studied with her Soviet art, including film director S. Eisenstein. These workshops were led by Vs. Meyerhold, in his theater Popova staged productions: “The Generous Cuckold” (1922) and “The Earth on End” (1923), which went down in the history of theatrical and decorative art.

Lyubov Popova also taught at the Vkhutemas main department and actively participated in debates at the Institute of Artistic Culture. She supported the call to replace easel art with production art, put forward by the “productionists” and constructivists in Inkhuk in 1921. Moreover, unlike many figures of that romantic era, who went into production only “theoretically,” Lyubov Popova was not satisfied with half measures. Her last works were completed for the first cotton-printing factory - designs for fabrics, decorative and practical, have not lost their “modern” quality to this day. According to the testimony of her Lef comrades, Mayakovsky and Brik, she found genuine satisfaction in this work.

Back in 1914, Lyubov Popova wrote: “Man is still a significant creature: as soon as he stops working, all life stops, cities become completely dead, but people earn money, and the city lives. What a terrible force is human work.”

E.DREVINA

Popova's paintings

"Spatial-force construction"

“Pictorial Architectonics” 3

"Pictorial Architectonics"

"The Traveler" 1916

"Composition with figures" 1914-15

Portrait of a philosopher. 1915

Popova L.S.
Oil on canvas
89 x 63

Russian Museum

Annotation

Depicted is the artist’s brother Pavel Sergeevich Popov (1892–1964), who graduated Faculty of Law Moscow University, who was interested in philosophy, psychology, and ancient literature, in the 1920s he taught at the State Higher Theater Workshops, led by V. Meyerhold. It was he who saved creative heritage Popova.
The model, surrounding objects and background are homogeneous, the artist deprives the space of depth, and the background ceases to be a background. Unfinished words contain a hint, forcing you to look for a code, an image code and a pictorial meaning. The shape of the body, head, and objects is constructed in the same way. The artist does not distinguish between a person, a thing and air, preparing herself for the transition to non-objective painting.

Author biography

Popova L.S.

Popova Lyubov Sergeevna (1889, village Ivanovskoye, Moscow province - 1924, Moscow)
Painter, graphic artist, theater artist, worked in the field of decorative and applied arts.
She was born on the Krasnovidovo estate (the village of Ivanovskoye, Moscow province). She studied at the school of drawing and painting by S. Yu. Zhukovsky (1907) in Moscow, at the art school of K. F. Yuon and I. O. Dudin (1908–1909), at the La Palette Academy with A. Le Fauconnier and J. Metzinger (1912–1913) in Paris. She visited the “Tower” studio of V.E. Tatlin (1913) in Moscow. Participant in the exhibitions “Jack of Diamonds” (1914, 1916), “The First Futurist Painting “Tram B”” (1915), “Shop” (1916). The artist's early works were designed in the spirit of Fauvism and analytical cubism. Later she moved to a more dynamic, “cubo-futuristic” style and semi-abstract synthetic cubism. She took part in the organization of the Supremus society (1916). She created the series “Pictorial Architectonics” (1916-1918), “Pictorial Constructions” (1920) and “Spatial-Power Constructions” (1921). Member of the Association of Extreme Innovators (1920s). She designed revolutionary holidays (1917, 1918). She worked at the Institute of Artistic Culture (1920–1924) in Moscow, and participated in the organization of the Museum of Artistic Culture (1921–1922). Member of the group "LEF (Left Front)" (1922–1924).
In the 1920s, she was engaged in book graphics, designed fashion and textiles, and worked for the theater. She designed the performances of V. E. Meyerhold: “The Generous Cuckold” based on the play by F. Crommelink (1922), “The Earth on End” based on the play by M. Martinet - S. M. Tretyakov (1923).
She taught at the Higher Art and Technical Workshops (1920–1923). In 1924, she took up “production art” and developed textile designs for the 1st cotton-printing factory.