Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova (; – May 20, 1958) was a Russian artist. With her husband Alexander Rodchenko, she was associated with the Constructivist branch of the Russian avant-garde, which rejected aesthetic values in favour of revolutionary ones. Her activities extended into propaganda, poetry, stage scenery and textile designs.

Biography

Varvara Stepanova who was born in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...

(in modern-day

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

) came from peasant origins but was able to get an education at Kazan Art School,

Kazan Kazan; , IPA: Help:IPA/Tatar, ɑzanis the largest city and capital city, capital of Tatarstan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka (river), Kazanka Rivers, covering an area of , with a population of over 1. ...

. There she met her later husband and collaborator Alexander Rodchenko. In the years before the

Russian Revolution of 1917 The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

they leased an apartment in Moscow, owned by

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

. These artists became some of the main figures in the

Russian avant-garde The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its e ...

. The new

abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a Composition (visual arts), composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. ''Abstract art'', ''non-figurative art'', ''non- ...

in Russia which began around 1915 was a culmination of influences from

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

, Italian

Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...

and traditional peasant art. She designed Cubo-Futurist work for several artists' books, and studied under

Jean Metzinger Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...

at Académie de La Palette, an art academy where the painters André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier also taught. In the years following the revolution, Stepanova involved herself in

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

graphic art A category of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of visual artistic expression, typically two-dimensional graphics, i.e. produced on a flat surface,stage scenery construction, and textile and clothing designs. She contributed work to the Fifth State Exhibition and the Tenth State Exhibition, both in 1919. In 1920 it came to a division between painters like

Kasimir Malevich Kazimir Severinovich 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. In 1921, together with Aleksei Gan, Rodchenko and Stepanova formed the first ''Working Group of Constructivists'', which rejected fine art in favor of graphic design, photography, posters, and political propaganda. Also in 1921, Stepanova declared in her text for the exhibition '' 5x5=25'', held in Moscow:

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' 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. Alexander Rodchenko died on December 3, 1956, and Varvara Stepanova died on May 20, 1958, both in Moscow.

Clothing design and textiles

In 1921, Stepanova moved almost exclusively into the realm of production, in which she felt her designs could achieve their broadest impact in aiding the development of the Soviet society. Russian Constructivist clothing represented the destabilization of the oppressive, elite aesthetics of the past and, instead, reflected utilitarian functionality and production. Gender and class distinctions gave way to functional, geometric clothing. In line with this objective, Stepanova sought to free the body in her designs, emphasizing clothing's functional rather than decorative qualities. Stepanova deeply believed clothing must be looked at in action. Unlike the aristocratic clothing that she felt sacrificed physical freedom for aesthetics, Stepanova dedicated herself to designing clothing for particular fields and occupational settings in such a way that the object's construction evinced its function. In addition, she sought to develop expedient means of clothing production through simple designs and strategic, economic use of fabrics.

Clothing designs

Stepanova, thus, identified clothing as occupying two groups: ''prozodezhda'' and ''sportodezhda''. Within these categories, she attended to logical, efficient production and construction of the garments. However, war-induced poverty placed economic restrictions on the Russian Constructivists’ industrial fervor, and their direct engagement with production was never fully realized. Thus, most of her designs were not mass-produced and circulated. History of Russian Design 03

The first, ''prozodezhda'', or production/working clothing in basic styles, included theater costumes as well as professional and industrial garments. In the early 1920s, Stepanova entered the clothing industry through her costume designs in theater, in which she translated her artistic affinity for geometric shapes into functional, emblematic clothing. Made of dark blue and grey material, the graphic costumes allowed actors to maximize the appearance of their movements, exaggerating them for the stage and transforming the body into a dynamic composition of geometric shapes and lines. Within this category, Stepanova began designing ''spetsodezhda'', or clothing specialized for a specific occupation. In doing so, she designed clothing for men and women in both industrial and professional capacities with meticulous consideration of seaming, pockets, and buttons to ensure each aspect of the costume maintained a functional intention. Regardless of the occupational context, her working clothing carried a distinctive geometric and linear edge, rendering the body into a graphic composition and boxy, androgynous form. The second category, ''sportodezhda'', or sports costumes, also presented bold lines, large forms, and contrasting colors to enable and emphasize the body's movements and allow spectators to easily distinguish one team from the other. Stepanova even rendered the team's emblem into a graphic design. The sports arena offered a context for Stepanova to realize an idealized bodily neutralization, and her uniforms were often unisex with pants and a belted tunic that obscured the human form.

Textile production

Stepanova carried out her ideal of engaging with industrial production in the following year when she, with Lyubov Popova, became

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

of textiles at the Tsindel (the First State Textile Factory) near Moscow, and in 1924 became professor of textile design at the Vkhutemas (Higher Technical Artistic Studios). As a constructivist, Stepanova not only transposed bold graphic designs onto her fabrics, but also focused heavily on their production. Stepanova only worked a little over a year at The First Textile Printing Factory, but she designed more than 150 fabric designs in 1924. Although she was inspired to develop new types of fabric, the current technology restricted her to printed patterns on monotone surfaces. By her own artistic choice, she also limited her color palette to one or two dyes. Although she only used triangles, circles, squares, and lines, Stepanova superimposed these geometric forms onto one another to create a dynamic, multi-dimensional design.

Graphic design

Stepanova practiced

typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

, book design and contributed to the magazine ''LEF'' throughout the early 1920s. As part of a government campaign to promote universal

literacy Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...

, Stepanova organized a "Book Evening" in 1924. This was a performance that featured characters from pre- and post-revolutionary literature battling each other.

Legacy

On October 22, 2018, Stepanova was honoured with a

Google Doodle Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running annual Bu ...

posthumously on her 124th birthday. Stepanova's work was included in the 2021 exhibition '' Women in Abstraction'' at the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

References and sources

;Notes ;References ;Sources *''The Russian Experiment in Art'', Camilla Gray, Thames and Hudson,1976 *''Avant-garde Russe'', Andrei Nakov, Art Data, 1986 *''Russian Constructivism'', Christina Lodder, Yale University Press, 1985 *''Varvara Stepanova, The Complete Works'', Alexander Lavrentiev, MIT Press, 1988

External links

*
Art engineers: Rodchenko and Stepanova
' (in Russian) – biographical article {{DEFAULTSORT:Stepanova, Varvara 1894 births 1958 deaths 20th-century Russian painters 20th-century Russian women 20th-century Russian women painters 20th-century women photographers Academic staff of Vkhutemas Artists from Kaunas Modernist theatre Russian avant-garde Russian scenic designers Russian women artists Russian women photographers Soviet artists Soviet women artists