Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova , was a Russian artist associated with the 'Constructivist

Constructivism (art)

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

' movement.

She came from peasant origins but was fortunate enough to get an education at Kazan School of Art, Odessa. There she met her lifelong friend and collaborator Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova....

. In the years before the Russian Revolution of 1917

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

 they leased an apartment in Moscow, owned by Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

. These artists became some of the main figures in the Russian avant-garde

Russian avant-garde

The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russia approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960...

. The new abstract art

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

 in Russia which began around 1909, was a culmination of influences from Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

, Italian Futurism

Futurism (art)

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...

 and traditional peasant art. She designed Cubo-Futurist

Cubo-Futurism

Cubo-Futurism was the main school of painting and sculpture practiced by the Russian Futurists.When Aristarkh Lentulov returned from Paris in 1913 and exhibited his works in Moscow, the Russian Futurist painters adopted the forms of Cubism and combined them with the Italian Futurists'...

 work for several artists' books.

In the years following the revolution, Stepanova contributed work to the Fifth State Exhibition and the Tenth State Exhibition, both in 1919. In 1920 came a division between painters like Kasimir Malevich who continued to paint with the idea that art was a spiritual activity, and those who believed that they must work directly for the revolutionary development of the society. Stepanova declared in her text for the exhibition 5x5=25

5x5=25

5x5=25 was a two-part abstract art exhibition held in September–October 1921 in Moscow. Five atists presented were Aleksandra Ekster, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Vesnin...

, held in Moscow in 1921:

Composition is the contemplative approach of the artist. Technique and Industry have confronted art with the problem of construction as an active process and not reflective. The 'sanctity' of a work as a single entity is destroyed. The museum which was the treasury of art is now transformed into an archive'.

The term 'Constructivist

Constructivism (art)

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

' was by then being used by the artists themselves to describe the direction their work was taking. The theatre was another area where artists were able to communicate new artistic and social ideas. Stepanova designed the sets for The Death of Tarelkin in 1922. She carried out her ideal of engaging with industrial production in the following year when she, with Lyubov Popova

Lyubov Popova

Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova was a Russian avant-garde artist , painter and designer. She was also a rarity in the highly male-dominated world of Soviet art.-Early life:...

, became designer

Designer

A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...

 of textiles at the Tsindel (the First State Textile Factory) near Moscow, and in 1924 became professor of textile

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 design at the Vkhutemas

VKhUTEMAS

Vkhutemas ) was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, replacing the Moscow Svomas. The workshops were established by a decree from Vladimir Lenin with the intentions, in the words of the Soviet government, "to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for...

 (Higher Technical Artistic Studios) while continuing typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

, book design and contributing to the magazine LEF

LEF (journal)

LEF was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts , a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novy LEF...

.

See also

• Anti-art
  Anti-art
  Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art...
  
   (Note: it is disputed, whether or not artwork associated with Varvara Stepanova is indeed "anti-art," or not)

Sources

• The Russian Experiment in Art, Camilla Gray, Thames and Hudson,1976
• Avant-garde Russe, Andrei Nakov
  Andrei Nakov
  Andrei Nakov, born in 1941 in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a French-Bulgarian art historian engaged principally in research on Russian non-objective art, Cubo-futurism, Dada and Constructivism, where his work as a precursor in these areas gained him an authoritative reputation.He has published numerous...
  
  , Art Data, 1986

External links

• Art engineers: Rodchenko and Stepanova (in Russian) – biographical article