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Painterly Architectonics (Still life. Instruments) is a key work for any understanding of the evolution of Russian art from Cubism to Abstraction. The years between 1914, which saw the start of the Great War, to immediately after the 1917 Revolution were particularly intensive ones for the development of the Russian avant garde movements. The Revolutionary atmosphere favoured the search for a new art which, like the new economic and political ideology, would constitute a complete break with the past. The last Futurist Painting Exhibition: 0 10 which opened in December 1915 in Petrograd just by the Winter Palace, was the official presentation of the new, Russian, non objective, Revolutionary art. Malevich showed a sizeable group of abstract works, among them his Black Square, while Tatlin showed his first Constructivist reliefs, derived from Picasso's three dimensional Cubist constructions. Liubov Popova, who also took part in this exhibition, showing Cubo Futurist works, came under the influence of Malevich's Suprematist ideas from this moment onwards.
Suprematism, which took its name from the Latin word supremus (meaning supreme, or absolute), was based on the idea of the reduction of painting to its most minimal expression, basing its investigations on the starting points of Cubism and Futurism. In the manifesto published by Malevich and Mayakovsky in 1915, one could read: "The artist has rid himself of everything which pre-decided the objective ideal structure of life and 'art': he has freed himself from ideas, concepts and representations in order to listen only to pure sensibility."
It was with the Painterly Architectonics, a series of non objective paintings executed between 1916 and 1918, that Popova began to explore the possibilities of an abstract vocabulary, following Malevich's Suprematist ideas. The choice of the word "Architecture" is undoubtedly due to Popova's intention to emphasise the constructive elements of the image. The artist's interest was focused on the creation of rhythms of intensely coloured planes, superimposed to create very structured compositions.
The Painterly Architectonics (Still life. Instruments) in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is one of the early works from the series. Although recent studies have dated it to 1916, John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler (1993) have noted the possibility that it dates from 1915 and that it was shown in the exhibition 0 10.The painting still retains some reference to the Cubist world of objects, such as the outline of the guitar which is clearly discernible. However, it already shows a tendency to geometricise and a superimposing of "floating" planes whose interaction, as Magdalena Dabrowski (1991) has pointed out, "creates a tension but nonetheless maintains a dynamic balance within the painting."
The daring combination of primary colours which gives Popova's works their intense luminosity, is one of the artist's contributions to Suprematism. As generally found in these paintings, some areas are painted with a particular texture, indicating Popova's interest in materials and their tactile qualities or faktura, which for the Russian avant garde artists was an essential element in the painting.
Although Popova officially gave up painting in 1922 in order to devote herself to design, the "Artist Builder" as her contemporaries called her, was one of the main defenders of abstract art in Russia, convinced that "Form transformed is abstract and finds itself totally subject to architectonic requirements, as well as to the intentions of the artist, who attains complete freedom in total abstraction, in the distribution and construction of lines, surfaces, volumetric elements and chromatic values."
Paloma Alarcó
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