Lyubov Popova

photo of Lyubov Popova, c. 1920

Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova (24 April, 1889 – 25 May, 1924) was a Russian avant-garde woman-artist (Cubist, Suprematist and Constructivist), painter and designer. She joined the group of Russian avant-garde artists Supremus, led by Kazimir Malevich.

Quotes of Lyubov Popova

sorted chronologically, by date of the quotes of Lyubov Popova

Popova, 1920: 'Composition (Red-Black-Gold)', painting / collage; current location: Berardo Collection Museum, Portugal

Popova, c. 1924: textile design

• Our new aim is the organisation of the material environment, i.e. of contemporary industrial production, and all active artistic creativity must be directed towards this.
  • Quote, End of 1921, from; Liubov Popova, untitled manuscript, cited by A. Adaskina in 'Liubov' Popova. Put' stanovleniia khudozhnika-konstruktora', 'Tekhnicheskaia estetika', no.11, 1978, p.19; as quoted by Christina Lodder in Tate Papers no. 14: Liubov Popova: From Painting to Textile Design

• The role of the 'representational arts' - painting, sculpture, and even architecture.. ..has ended, as it is no longer necessary for the consciousness of our age, and everything art has to offer can simply be classified as a throwback.
  • Quote, c. 1921; from Lyubov' Popova, in 'Commentary on Drawings', trans. ed. James West, in Art Into Life: Russian Constructivism, 1914-1932; catalogue for exhibition Rizzoli, New York: 1990, p. 69 (Popova's original text, in the Manuscript Division, State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, f. 148, ed. khr. 17, 1. 4.)

• The era that humanity has entered is an era of industrial development and therefore the organisation of artistic elements must be applied to the design of the material elements of everyday life, i.e. to industry or to so-called production. The new industrial production, in which artistic creativity must participate, will differ radically from the traditional aesthetic approach to the object, in that primarily attention will be focused not on the artistic decoration of the object (applied art), but on the artistic organisation of the object in accordance with the principles of creating the most utilitarian object.. ..If any of the different types of fine art (i.e., easel painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture, etc.) can still retain some purpose, they will do so only * 1. while they remain as the laboratory phase in our search for essential new forms * 2. insofar as they serve as supportive projects and schemes for constructions and utilitarian and industrially manufactured objects that have yet to be realised
  • Liubov Popova, untitled manuscript, signed and dated December 1921, Manuscript Department, State Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow, (fond 148, op.17, l. 3–4); transl. John Bowlt; the same text is reproduced in Women Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde 1910–1930, Cologne 1979, p. 68

Quotes about Lyubov Popova

sorted chronologically, by date of the quotes about Lyubov Popova

• A cotton print is as much a product of artistic culture as a painting, and there is no basis for drawing a dividing line between them. Moreover.. ..the conviction is growing that painting is dying, that it is inseparably linked with the forms of the capitalist system and its cultural ideology, and that textile design has become the focus of creative concern – that the textile print and work on the textile print is the height of artistic work.
  • Quote of Osip Brik, 1924 - in his article 'Ot kartiny k sittsu', in 'Lef' (Left Front of the Arts), p. 27; as quoted by Christina Lodder, in 'Liubov Popova: From Painting to Textile Design', Tate Papers, no.14, Autumn 2010

• Although she had not joined the Working Group of Constructivists, she had exhibited with Rodchenko and Stepanova in September 1921 at the 5 x 5 = 25 exhibition. In this show she exhibited paintings that she called 'spatial force constructions' and wrote in the catalogue that the paintings exhibited 'are to be regarded only as series of preparatory experiments towards concrete material constructions.'
• Christina Lodder, in 'Liubov Popova: From Painting to Textile Design', Tate Papers, no.14, Autumn 2010

External links

• Christina Lodder, 'Liubov Popova: From Painting to Textile Design', Tate Papers, no.14, Autumn 2010