popova makes buck

“We are break­ing with the past, be­cause we can­not ac­cept its hypotheses.”
—Li­ubov Popo­va (1889–1924)
 

What news to wake up to!

On Wednes­day, 14 Oc­to­ber 2026, Li­ubov Popo­va’s mas­ter­piece Painter­ly Ar­chi­tec­ton­ic (1918) sold for a his­toric $10.1 mil­lion (£7,640,000).

Ex­e­cut­ed in 1918, Painter­ly Ar­chi­tec­ton­ic rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of Popo­va’s ca­reer as a Con­struc­tivist and Cubo-Fu­tur­ist pi­o­neer. Popo­va trag­i­cal­ly died from scar­let fever at the young age of 35, her com­plet­ed oil works are ex­ceed­ing­ly rare, mak­ing this Lon­don ap­pear­ance a ma­jor mile­stone for the in­ter­na­tion­al art market.

The work was fea­tured as one of the stand­out lots in Mon­soon: The Pe­ter Si­mon Col­lec­tion Evening Sale, a high­ly pub­li­cised auc­tion show­cas­ing the art col­lec­tion of the late founder of the re­tail chains Mon­soon and Ac­ces­sorize.

The paint­ing smashed its ini­tial low es­ti­mate of $2.38 mil­lion (£1.8 mil­lion), spark­ing an in­tense eight-minute bid­ding war across the sales room and tele­phones be­fore ul­ti­mate­ly sell­ing to Alex Rot­ter, glob­al pres­i­dent at Christie’s.

This re­sult shat­tered Popo­va’s pre­vi­ous world auc­tion record of $3.52 mil­lion (£1.7 mil­lion), which had stood since 2007.

Fi­nal­ly,

some recog­ni­tion for the Rus­sia avant-garde women of the ear­ly 20th-century! 

 

—juli­ja svetlova

Flom­mist Juli­ja Svet­lo­va is an art his­to­ri­an, free­lance re­searcher and a founder of Neja’s Art Walks, a be­spoke provider of art and his­to­ry-re­lat­ed tours and ex­pe­ri­ences in Lon­don. Juli­ja pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a col­lec­tion re­search as­sis­tant at the Tate. Copy­right © 2026 Juli­ja Svetlova.

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