Beschreibung:

Attributed to Varvara Fedorovna Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958) Three Geometric Fabric Designs: Red/Blue, Green/Fuchsia, and Red/Black. Signed or inscribed with the artist's name in Russian and numbered "17," stamped "GIULIANA ANTONIOZZI LOMBI/...MILANO/..." on the reverse. Gouache on paper, sizes to 3 1/2 x 5 in., matted, unframed. Condition: Hinged to back mats, Green/Fuchsia and Red/Black presented together in a single mat. N.B. Textile and clothing designs by Constructivist artist Varvara Fedorovna Stepanova are documented starting from the early 1920s. At the First State Textile Printing Factory, she designed more than 150 different fabrics, with about two dozen being put into factory production. She sought a new philosophy of fabric design, in which the artist was not simply a decorator of the fabric, but was involved in developing new dyeing processes, new fabric structures, and new materials for fabrics, to put into practice the slogan "art into production." In her textile designs, Stepanova selected only one or two colors and used geometric forms of the circle, triangle, and rectangle, often combined in layers, as building blocks of the complex-looking designs. The points of intersection of the geometric forms were left as either white or the color of the paper or ground. The fabric designs at hand, if dated 1917, would be very early examples of Stepanova's work. The stamp on the reverse of the works appears to be from the fashion design atelier in Milan, Antoniozzi Lombi Giuliana. For a full discussion of the artist's work and life, please consult Alexander Lavrentiev, Varvara Stepanova The Complete Work (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1988).