Lyubov Popova Prints

About Lyubov Popova

Lyubov Popova was born in 1889 on her family's estate near Moscow, into a wealthy merchant family, and studied painting in Moscow in private studios, including those of Stanislav Zhukovsky and Konstantin Yuon. Travels in Italy and across Russia introduced her to Renaissance painting and to old Russian icons, both of which shaped her sense of structure. In 1912 she worked at the Moscow studio known as The Tower alongside Vladimir Tatlin, and in 1912–13 she studied in Paris at La Palette under Henri Le Fauconnier and Jean Metzinger, absorbing Cubism. Back in Moscow she combined Cubist and Futurist ideas in portraits and still lifes, took part in the avant-garde exhibitions Tramway V and 0.10 in 1915, and joined Malevich's Supremus group. From 1916 her Painterly Architectonics built compositions from overlapping planes of colour, her own answer to Suprematism. After the Revolution she taught at the state art workshops in Moscow and moved, with the Constructivists, from easel painting to design: stage sets such as Meyerhold's 1922 production of The Magnanimous Cuckold, fabrics for a Moscow textile factory, books and typography. She died of scarlet fever in Moscow in 1924, at thirty-five, days after her young son. Her canvases, solid and rhythmic, have the weight of architecture and the warmth of hand-laid paint.