Liubov Sergeevna Popova, 1889-1924

The Collection of Yakov Evseevich Rubenshtein from 1950s

L'vov, L'vov State Picture Gallery, April 1958

Talinn, Fine Art Museum of the Republic of Talinn, Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours by Russian Artists of the first third of the Twentieth Century from the collection of Ya.E.Rubenstein, 1966

Alma-Ata, T.G.Shevchenko Art Gallery of the State Republic of Kazakhstan, Paintings and Drawings by Russian Artists of the First Third of the Twentieth Century from the Collection of Ya.E.Rubenstein, 1967

 

Tallinn, State Museum of Fine Art, 1966, No.115
Alma-Ata, 1967

Ex.Cat. Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours by Russian Artists from the First Third of the Twentieth Century from the Collection of Ya.E.Rubenstein, Talinn 1966, p.11

Ex.Cat. Paintings and Drawings by Russian Artists of the First Third of the Twentieth Century from the Collection of Ya.E.Rubenstein, Alma-Ata, 1967 illustrated on the cover

D.V.Sarabyanov and N.L.Adaskina, Popova, London: Thames and Hudson, 1990, p. 75 illustrated

The following condition report has been supplied by: Hamish Dewar Ltd, Fine Art Conservation, 14 Mason's Yard, Duke Street St James's, London SW1Y 6BU tel + 44 (0)20 7930 4004, fax + 44 (0)20 7930 4100, hamish@hamishdewar.co.uk www.hamishdewar.co.uk The canvas appears unlined and is providing a sound support on a conventional wooden keyed stretcher. The paint surface is rather fragile with some areas of dry and brittle paint as well as slightly raised craquelure. I would recommend localised structural consolidation and I would be confident that this would ensure long-term structural stability without having to resort to lining. The canvas should certainly not require lining for the foreseeable future if localised consolidation is carried out and the canvas is maintained in suitable climactic conditions. The turnover edges are slightly frayed and may require strengthening with a thin strip-lining over the turnover and tacking edges. Once the paint surface has been locally consolidated cleaning should result in an considerable colour change as there is an obvious layer of surface dirt and grime. Inspection under UV light shows the paint surface to fluoresce unevenly but I am confident this is caused by the nature of the artist's materials and the mixed media and textured surface. There is one small area in the dark green pigment just beneath the upper horizontal framing edge which might be retouching. This measures approximately 3.5 by 1cm. There are very minor flecks of paint-loss. The painting, while being in rather fragile condition, has obviously undergone minimal intervention in the past and has apparently never been cleaned. The painting should be transformed as a result of localised consolidation followed by cleaning and I would be confident that the painting could then be regarded as being in excellent condition.
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After Liubov Popova's death, an inventory of all the works in her studio was compiled by a commission made up of the artist's brother Pavel Popov, Aleksandr Vesnin, Ivan Aksenov and Tatyana Pakhomova. Number 75 in this catalogue is listed as Still Life with Tray. Text: Chai, K. This coincides with the number 75 inscribed on the stretcher of the offered lot, identifying it as a work from Popova's studio. The aforementioned list was kept by the scholar Dmitri Sarabyanov, and was neither published nor made available to third parties. Known only to scholars from a black and white photograph in Dmitry Sarabianov's 1990 publication, Still life with Tray can only be described as the most important composition by Liubov Popova still in private hands - and its rediscovery constitutes a major contribution to scholarly appreciation of the artist's early oeuvre.

The story of Liubov Popova's creative development is the clearest possible reflection of the classic evolutionary path of Russian avant-garde art - the progression from Cezanne and Gaugin to Constructivism.

Her artistic education followed the format of the time: it did not take place in the Academy of Arts, but in private studios and schools. These schools taught not only life-drawing and painting skills, but also fostered experiments in the latest Post-Impressionist techniques. For nearly all artists of this new generation, a trip to Paris was essential. For Popova this journey involved learning Cubism in La Palette from Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier and Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac.

Popova's painting reflects the varied impressions made on her by the art she saw there and shows the influence of contact with these innovators. In addition to the lessons of the Parisian La Palette Cubists, we can trace the influence of Vladimir Tatlin and an interest in the works of the Italian Futurists (Umberto Bocchioni, Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini). Italian Renaissance painting and medieval Russian art also had an important effect on Popova.

 Dynamic Futurism and static Cubism are the two fundamental principles which Popova encountered and adopted in the second half of the 1910s. Her works from 1914-1915, which she produced after her trip to Italy in spring 1914, are classics of Russian Cubo-Futurism (fig.1). It is to this cycle of works that Still Life with Tray (1915) belongs. 

Dmitri Sarabyanov has noted that a certain conceptual link remains in her still lifes, a certain 'situationness'. For us, that link to a situation, which is alluded to here in the label "Chai" (Tea), can be understood as the denotation of the subject.  A painted Zhestovo tray and a bowl with fruit could, of course, 'come togther' on a table. But here they are subordinated to the painter's clearly expressed compositional instinct, which above all values their colouring and the rounded form of their silhouettes. The selection of the range of colours and the manipulation of form and texture and the other items grouped together in the picture - the fruit, the pipe, the fragment of a tiled stove etc. - all follow the same principle. Alongside these facets there are elements of pure painting, detached from reality.

The newspaper clippings and scraps of wallpaper pasted onto the paint and the label from a box of French charcoal pencils both play an important role in the composition. They set the tone for the physical substance of the painting, for the material authenticity of all its details, both those details that depict objects, and the letters hovering in the air, as well as the abstract painted planes, some of which lie on top of each other, while others intersect. Popova's artistic challenge in this and in other similar Cubo-Futurist compositions was to balance and harmonise a patchwork conglomerate of figurative and non-figurative forms in order to create the solid unity of a painted surface.

As for the subject of the painting, here we can see the exhilarating disorder of a master artist, a disorder which, despite the seriousness of her profession, expresses the creator's feminine spirit.

As with other artists, certain objects are favoured in still lifes and achieve the status of sui generis sculptural 'formulae'. One such 'formula' was the bowl, an image which is repeated in a number of compositions, right up to her gouaches of 1920 (fig.2).  

The white fruit bowl, perhaps borrowed from Cézanne's still lifes, became Popova's trademark. Similarly, the tray was taken from the works of the Russian Cézanne school, the Jack of Diamonds group (see fig.3), and the motif of the violin from Cubist compositions. Popova works on the transformation of the image of the violin according to the Cubist system: she dissects the shape and unites volumes and slices. The Popova vase somehow exists in permanent motion; it revolves, revealing its internal structure and developing all its plastic potential in this multivalent form.

The path towards her abstract painting took shape within the confines of the still life. Objects gradually lose their real-life appearance and remain in the painting only as distant memories. Alongside her work with paint, Popova made a large number of pencil, charcoal and Indian ink drawings of those same objects which featured in her paintings. If we look at her drawings and paintings as a whole, then we can see the process of analysis by which form abstracted from reality was born. In these objects one can 'reconstruct' the reality which has lost its usual form. However, without doubt the most important element becomes the 'construction' of space in the painting. Here, the elements of objective shape become building blocks for the artist to meet a number of different, each very definite, professional challenges: to create the effect of a tiled space, to achieve a balance between coloured planes, to develop a painterly relief and so on. 

The culmination of Popova's experiments with 'painterly volumes' was the famous Pitcher on a Table of 1915 (fig.4). But these experiments, like her work in the Suprematist vein, are not part of her Cubo-Futurist phase, which, for all its originality and expressiveness, was for Popova only an entrée to a new quality in painting - an introduction to entirely abstract painting. Popova's creative energy and her continuing interest in shape as a burdened and 'tangible' quality ('Tatlinism') meant that she actively synthesised both movements. The result was her own brand of abstract painting - 'painterly architectonics'. These works borrow from Suprematism the principle of flat coloured planes and attention to intensive colour. They approach Tatlinism in the solidity, materiality and weight that these coloured planes possess. They are not simply placed within the space of the picture, but laid on top of each other like real objects. 

The philosophy behind Popova's work in this style also differs from that of Malevich in its 'earthbound' characteristics. In Popova's 'painterly architectonics' it is usually the case that not only the weight of the painted elements is maintained but also the concept of terrestrial spatial coordinates. The structure of the compositions is also different from Malevich's: Popova follows a centripetal principle, whereas Malevich prefers a centrifugal dispersal of elements in which they all fly out together like a squadron of aeroplanes. Despite her enthusiasm for dynamic shapes, the artist often employs diagonal constructions in her compositions; she loves sharp angles between coloured planes. Popova's 'architectonics' have no fragmentation.  There is something majestic in their rhythms, akin to the resonant sound of an organ.  

The next important stage in Popova's creative evolution was her 'Spatial Force Construction' phase. Above all they differ from the static compositions of the 'architectonics' phase in the wild, multi-directional movement of all the shapes in them. In these original compositions from 1921, either painted in oils or with gouache on paper, Popova gradually rejects the system of coloured planes and in so doing moves away from both Suprematism and Tatlinian materiality. Once treated objectively in these paintings the coloured planes lost their 'weight' and physicality. They were replaced by patches of colour without clearly defined borders, as well as by dark lines (cables) or light lines (rays). Popova's painting came closer to Malevich's theories of unlimited space as analogous to a global space devoid of all earthly coordinates. 

It is possible, paradoxically, to draw a thread from these bright 'cosmic rays' to Popova's later works, which were created not as mounted experimental exhibits, but as stage design projects.

We are grateful to Dr. Natalya Adaskina for providing this note.