About the artist

Liubov Sergeevna Popova (Ivanovskoe near Moscow, April 24th, 1889- Moscow, May 25th, 1924) studied at the private studios of Stanislav Zhukovskii, Ivan Dudin and Konstantin Yuon in Moscow from 1907 to 1908.

In the years 1909-1912 she traveled to Kiev, to ancient Russian cities and Italy. She was particularly impressed by the works of Mikhail Vrubel, Giotto as well as by the old Russian art and architecture.

In 1912 she worked with Tatlin in his studio, in Moscow, known as “The Tower”. In the winter of 1912 she moved to Paris and studied at the Academie La Palette, under Henri Le Fauconnier and Jean Metzinger, with Vera Pestel and Nadezhda Udaltsova. She returned to Moscow in the summer of 1913. In January- February 1914 she exhibited with the “Jack of Diamonds” group and in the spring of 1914 she traveled again to France and Italy with Ida Burmeister and Vera Mukhina but turned back when the 1st World War broke out.

In 1915-1916 she made a transition to a non-representational style, to which she applied the forms of Russian icon painting and ancient oriental architecture. She participated in the exhibitions The First Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: Tramway V (Petrograd, 1915), 0,10 Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings (Petrograd, 1915) and in the Jack of Diamonds (Moscow, 1916).

In 1916-1917 she was an active member of the group “Supremus” and produced designs for the Verbovka’s Company in the Ukraine. She participated from 1918 to 1920 in various exhibitions, including the Tenth State Exhibition: Non-objective Creation and Suprematism in Moscow. In November 1918 she returned to Moscow.

From 1920 onwards she taught at the Higher State Art-Technical Studios (VKHUTEMAS) and was a member of the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKHUK). She was one of the creators of the new system of practical artistic construction. She also participated in the “5 x 5 = 25” exhibition of 1921 in Moscow.

During 1922-1923 she designed the stage sets for Vselovod Meierkhold’s productions of Fernard Crommelynck's The Magnanimus Cuckold and Sergei Tretiakov’s Earth in Turmoil.

In 1924 she started designing textiles for the First State Textile Print Factory in Moscow. She also executed designs for book and magazine covers, posters and porcelain. These artworks were presented at her posthumous exhibition, which traveled from Moscow (1924) to Kiev (1925) and to Krasnodar (1926).

She tragically died in Moscow in 1924, at the peak of her career, two days after the death of her son, from whom she had contracted scarlet fever.