Artist Birthday: Liubov Popova

Liubov Popova was one of the many women artists active in the avant garde art during the period of the Russian Revolution (1917). Not only did she experiment in all of the most recent modernist styles – Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism and Constructivism – she also designed typography for books, textiles, and clothing.
 
 

Artist birthday for 24 April: Liubov Popova (1889-1924 Russia)

Liubov Popova was an important Russian modernist during the early period of its evolution.

Liubov Popova, Objects from a Dyer’s Shop, 1914, oil on canvas, 71 x 89 cm  © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MOMA-P2432)

In 1913 Popova began working in the studio of Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953). Unlike Tatlin, she was not concerned with the construction of objects in space (sculpture), but expressed her progressive tendencies in painting. In Objects from a Dyer's Shop, Popova's Cubism has already fractured beyond the point of Jean Metzinger's (1883-1956) work, the Cubist with whom she had worked in Paris in 1912. This work not only reveals the influence of Futurism in the dynamic movement of the intersection of space and object, but also the bright palette of Russian folk art which also influenced her work.

Russian women only gained access to higher education during the last half of the nineteenth century. Art education followed, with the Academy of Arts in Moscow opening to women in 1871. In the 1880s, there were art schools established in Kiev, Odessa, and Saint Petersburg (Petrograd) that attracted the majority of women students. By 1900, there was already a second generation of educated women artists who emerged.

Russian art in the first three decades of the 1900s was dominated by artists who were eager to challenge traditional ideas about art with radical experiments in modernism of all kinds. This atmosphere was nurtured by the social and political upheavals caused by the Revolution (1917-1918). The abstract styles which grew out of the revolutionary spirit were influenced greatly by Cubism in Paris and Futurism (an offshoot from Cubism) from Italy. What emerged was some of the first non-objective abstract works in western art.

Liubov Popova was born in Ivanovskoe near Moscow to a family that was a vigorous patron of the arts. Already as a child she had a great appreciation for art, especially Italian Renaissance painting. At 11 she began formal art lessons at home, and from 1906 to 1910 she studied in private artists' studios in Moscow. She traveled widely thereafter to study different styles of painting. Ancient Russian icons, the Proto-Renaissance painting of Giotto (died 1337) and the work of Early Renaissance Italian painters had the most impact on her abstract style.

Starting in 1914, Popova became involved with the avant-garde artists' groups in Moscow, including the Knave of Diamonds exhibitions. Her early abstract works of that period indicated the strong influence of Cubism, but suggested a development of pure abstraction that would come out in her later "painterly architectonic" works. Her interest in the geometry and symmetry of Renaissance painting led to her interest in Suprematism with its emphasis purely on structure rather than narrative or object. Popova, however, disagreed with the Suprematist tenet that art should arouse feelings. Her revolutionary zeal and interest in connecting the balance and proportion of the past with the pure abstract form of the future led her to lean towards Constructivism. Like other Constructivists, she believed that easel painting should be abandoned in favor of art that would help create a new revolutionary society.