One of the year’s most important exhibitions brings together works by two influential figures in defining the aesthetics and theories of Russian Constructivism: Lyubov Popova (1889 - 1924) and Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891 – 1956). Organized by the Tate Modern of London in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and curated by Margarita Tupitsyn, the exhibition offers an extensive overview of an artistic movement that changed the face of Russian art.

This wide-reaching exhibition, the most complete to date in Spain, brings together some 350 works created by both artists between 1917 and 1929: paintings, cinema and theater posters, sketches of clothing designs, furniture, books, photography and sculpture. Complementing the exhibition are film screenings from the era, related to the artists and other exhibited works by their contemporaries.

One of the exhibition’s noteworthy features is its exploration of equality between the sexes (in accordance with the Russian Revolution’s ideals); Popova has been granted the same space and importance as Rodchenko, and in terms of their works’ quality and innovation, there is no difference between the two.

The exhibition begins in 1917, the year of the October Revolution, when Popova and Rodchenko started to apply their previous experiments in abstract geometry to design. With the conviction that the artistic language of abstraction could potentially alter everyday life, both artists transformed painting into a laboratory for testing abstract forms that influenced the first theories of constructivist architecture and new experimental designs for socialist cities.

The exhibition opens with a showing of the artists’ early works: an extraordinary collection of canvasses and graphic designs created from 1917 to 1921, which demonstrate architectural influences in their initial application of this abstract vocabulary.

Further into the exhibition, we find a room dedicated to one of abstract art’s greatest pioneers Wassily Kandinsky, a central figure for both Rodchenko and Popova, who had a patent influence on the early stages of Russian Constructivism.

Later on, after traversing a gallery dedicated to sculpture, the exhibition displays a section titled “5x5 = 25” which Rodchenko and Popova produced in Moscow in 1921 together with Varvara Stepanova, Aleksandr Vesnin and Aleksandra Exter, at which point they would abandon painting. After this moment, we find ourselves in transition from painting to other media like graphic design and fashion. Thereby, the two artists promoted a multi-media praxis that included film and theater design to posters, books, clothes, textiles and furniture. For example, here we find book cover designs for writers like Trotsky and Mayakovsky.

Likewise, the exhibition brings together both artists’ original contributions in these media while emphasizing their commitment to collective ways of working and their involvement in local industries. The showing of Rodchenko and Popova’s utilitarian work demonstrates the degree to which both artists influenced twentieth-century fashion, audiovisual media, theater and cinema.

Popova’s premature death in 1924 never allowed her to participate in Constructivism’s second period. After this moment, Rodchenko would dedicate his work exclusively to photography and cinema. The exhibition explores how he used the camera to mirror contemporary forms in new Soviet architecture and to identify and enthusiastically portray prominent figures in the constructivist movement. Finally, the exhibition includes a projection of the film Moscow in October (1927) by Boris Barnet, in which Rodchenko participated as the film’s art director and designer for the credit sequence.