Exhibition Display Unit 1928

Elena Semenova made this exhibition display unit in 1924 with pencil and watercolour. Look at these blocks of color, the deep reds, the mustard yellow, blues and greys. I wonder what Semenova was thinking at the time? Was she thinking about the best way to display propaganda? Or, how the different blocks of colour could speak to one another? I wonder, too, how the shelves might create a language all of their own. The lines are so clean and the shapes so bold. I imagine Semenova standing back and looking at it, and thinking about Malevich and other constructivist painters. It’s like she’s saying, ‘I can do that too, but make it about real life, about building real things, things that people need.’ It’s not so different from thinking about the way we build paintings now, gesture by gesture, colour by colour, responding to each other across time, inspiring our creativity.