Painterly Architectonic 1918

Lyubov Popova made this painting, Painterly Architectonic, with oil paint, probably sometime in the 1910s. It’s all about shapes bumping up against each other, a kind of dynamic geometry. And for me, that’s what painting is – a process of arranging and rearranging. Up close, you can see how Popova built up the surface. The paint isn’t too thick, but it’s definitely there, doing its thing. Look at the way she used light and shadow to give these shapes some depth. The color palette is very grounded in reality, and this helps to give the painting a weight and volume that might otherwise be absent. It’s like she’s trying to construct a world with paint. Popova was part of the Russian avant-garde, experimenting with abstraction. Thinking of her work, I'm reminded of El Lissitzky, another Russian artist who was playing with similar ideas of space and form. Art is always a conversation, right?