A Tate Modern exhibition in London, is holding a Rodchenko and Popova music event(Sat 9, May, 2009)
"Composers such as Dmitri Shostakovitch, Nikolai Roslavets and Arthur Lourie gave muscial expression to many of the themes" that the Russion painters Rodchenko and Popova explored in their paintings.
"Liubov Popova (1889-1924) and Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956) were pivotal figures in the debates and discussions that defined Constructivism. ...
"The Constructivists compared the artist to an engineer, arranging materials scientifically and objectively, and producing art works as rationally as any other manufactured object...
There was already a distinct strain of utopianism in the Russian avant-garde – a determination to reinvent art, as if from zero. Kasimir Malevich's abstract paintings freed art from what he called 'the dead weight of the real world'...
[The] Constructivists rejected all ideas of illusory representation. Rodchenko focused on faktura, the physical qualities of the painting: the use of different paints and different textures, and how these related to other elements such as the painting surface, or the choice of colour. His experiments led to the 'Black on Black' series, in which the elimination of colour focused attention on the texture of the painting's surface, and its interaction with light. In these works, Stepanova wrote, 'nothing but painting exists'....
Popova's Painterly Architectonics respond to some of Malevich's ideas, but push them further. Geometric shapes jostle together, overlapping,intersecting, their edges pressing beyond the frame. A dynamic sense of instability and movement is matched by her use of strong colour. As the title suggests, Popova was already looking beyond painting, into architecture and three-dimensional structures, yet cramming that expansive energy onto the flat surface of a painting."
Check out the writeup of the exhibition online - Rodchenko & Popova Defining Constructivism
Tate Modern 12, Feb - 17, May 2009, London