Lyubov Popova's most famous painting was Painterly architectonic. painted in 1917 using oil paint on canvas, this painting can be considered an important milestone in the history of the revolutionary movement of Russian avant-garde and depicts the moment when the artist departed from purely European concept of Cubo-Futurism and moved on to a non-objective form of painting.
In contrast to the big and light empty spaces typical for the works of Malevich, Popova creates her painting in the shallow pictorial plane. A complicated geometry of aggressive polygons which includes sharp triangles and postmodern trapezes of bright colors—pink, white, red, and deep grey—is superimposed over the neutral background.
The contrast within the work of Popova creates a mental tension in her work. The heavy geometric figures appear to have a life of their own in spite of being painted on the flat canvas. Popova constructs special diagonal lines and highlights the shadow on the red shape to force the viewer’s eye to see the three-dimensional object instead of plane painting. The contrast of colors gives birth to the energy which hints that the forms of shapes are fighting among themselves and want to escape off the frame.
The painting as a part of trailblazing movement of putting multiple perspectives on a two-dimensional paper or canvas medium is revolutionary for it makes the subject of the painting absent. In this piece there is the dilemma for the observer as to what is the foreground and background of the picture.
