Rating and value of paintings and drawings by Varvara Fiodorovna Stepanova

If you own a work by or based on the artist Varvara Fiodonova Stepanova and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers can help you.

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Artist's rating and value

Varvara Fiodonova Stepanova's work is uncommon and quite highly rated on the auction market. Her works arouse interest among collectors and art lovers, particularly those who appreciate 20th-century Russian painting.

The price at which his works sell on the art market ranges from €380 to €1,722,000, a considerable delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's work.

Thus, a painting by Stepanova can fetch thousands of euros at auction, like her painting Figure with guitar, which sold for €1,722,000 in 2014, while it was estimated at between €310,000 and €430,000.  

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova's style and technique    

In her graphic and textile compositions of the 1920s, Varvara Fiodorovna Stepanova favors the rigor of line and the structured arrangement of forms, reminiscent of the Constructivist principles formulated by Rodchenko and Tatline.

In her sketches for the stage - notably for La Mort de Tarelkine in 1922 - she modulates space with sharp lines and stark contrasts of black, white and red, where the human figure, reduced to a play of angular volumes, almost fades behind the geometry of the set.

Following the example of Lissitzky's typographic experiments, she integrates text into the composition, juxtaposing letters and solid colors to inscribe the image in a visual rhythm akin to photomontage. 

But while her contemporaries favored pure abstraction, Stepanova maintained a functional logic that carried over into textiles and clothing.

In his designs printed for Soviet industry, the serial repetition of elementary figures - chevrons, diagonals, superimposed circles - is driven by a quest for legibility and efficiency, where ornament disappears in favor of a refined graphic language.

Through these experiments, his style oscillates between construction and dynamism, where the line, sharp and cutting, inscribes the body and the object in an aesthetic of movement.

As with Popova, color is reduced to a few primary tones, arranged in clean, unmodelled surfaces, abolishing all illusionist residue. Painting gave way to structure, the image became a diagram, and art, now linked to industry, imposed a new formal grammar on Soviet modernity.

Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova: her life, her work

Born in 1894 in the province of Kovno, Varvara Fiodorovna Stepanova studied in Kazan before moving to Moscow, where she immersed herself in the artistic effervescence of the avant-garde.

Trained in progressive circles at the turn of the century, she befriended Rodchenko, with whom she shared a radical conception of art as an instrument of social transformation.

From 1917 onwards, his pictorial research moved towards dynamic abstraction, where line, freed from all figuration, becomes a structural force.

An active member of the Constructivist group, she took part in the debates that redefined the function of the artist in the nascent Soviet Union, gradually abandoning the easel canvas for graphics, typography and textile design. 

In the 1920s, his commitment was reflected in close collaboration with state institutions, notably in the design of utilitarian garments, where the geometric cut responded to the principles of efficiency and mass production.

At the same time, she developed a distinctive visual language in publishing and set design, notably for revolutionary theater.

But with the ideological shift of the 1930s, constructivism gave way to socialist realism, and his work adapted to the new cultural guidelines.

Despite this retreat, Stepanova remained active until her death in 1958, continuing her research into the printed image and state graphics.

Through her experiments, she made her name in the history of the Russian avant-garde, where art, freed from individual subjectivity, became a structured language and a tool of collective modernity.

Focus on Sportsmen, Stepanova, 1923.

In Sportsmen (1923, Russian National Museum, St. Petersburg), Varvara Stepanova composes a scene in which the human figure dissolves into a succession of dynamic forms, reduced to the essential.

The body is nothing more than a sequence of planes and volumes, articulated by a play of curves and angles, where color intervenes in clean flat tints, structuring the space with rigor.

Inspired by the principles of constructivism, it eschews any attempt at naturalism: here, movement takes precedence over the individual, and rhythm replaces narration. 

In this painting, the influence of machinismo can be seen in the simplification of the silhouettes, where arms and legs become functional segments, devoid of superfluous expressivity.

In the same way as her typographic experiments, Stepanova strives for a stripped-down plastic style, where each element obeys a logic of efficiency and visual impact. The image becomes a schema, reduced to its fundamental tensions.

Far from a simple sports illustration, Sportsmen translates the utopia of a humanity regenerated by speed and the rational organization of the body in motion. 

This work is part of the dynamic of the 1920s, when Constructivism advocated socially-oriented art designed for the collective. By transposing these principles onto the human figure, Stepanova anticipated the experiments in graphic design and utilitarian clothing that she would later develop.

The sharp, uncluttered line is in keeping with the desire for formal simplicity that characterizes the Russian avant-garde, where the image, broken down, becomes a tool in the service of modernity.

The context of Stepanova's artistic creation

In Russia between 1910 and 1920, Varvara Stepanova was part of a burgeoning avant-garde, where art was seen as a driving force for social transformation.

A product of the Stroganov Institute, she joined the Constructivist circles, sharing with Rodchenko and Popova the ambition of a functional art, free from any academic tradition.

After the 1917 revolution, the political context imposed new imperatives: artistic production had to align itself with the needs of the proletariat, abolishing the distinction between fine art and industry. 

In this climate, Stepanova seized upon the geometric language of Suprematism, but turned away from its mystical impetus to anchor her work in a materialist dynamic.

His compositions, whether paintings, fabrics or typography, obey a structural rigor where each element is thought out in terms of efficiency and reproducibility.

The studio becomes a laboratory, the artist a form engineer. As early as 1921, she took part in the experiments of the INKhUK group, which redefined the function of art in a collectivist society. 

Constructivism, to which she actively contributed, rejected the idea of individual, autonomous creation. Stepanova transposed these principles to textiles, posters and page layouts, multiplying media to inscribe art in everyday life.

Production had to be standardized, devoid of superfluous ornamentation, in line with the imperatives of Soviet modernity. In this way, it illustrates the period when art, far from being a space for contemplation, became a propaganda tool and an instrument of social change.

Stepanova's imprint on her period

Varvara Stepanova was a key figure in Constructivism, embodying the fusion of art and industry that marked the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Through her research into mass production, she places artistic creation within a logic of rationalization and social utility, rejecting all forms of individual expression in favor of a collective, functional visual language.

Alongside Alexander Rodchenko, she rethinks the aesthetic object within a strictly material framework, whether posters, textiles or typography, where each graphic element responds to a structural necessity. 

Her work on clothing revolutionized the relationship between form and use: she designed streamlined models adapted to the demands of movement and work, rejecting bourgeois ornamentation in favor of a rigorous aesthetic.

His typographic experiments, particularly evident in his compositions for the French State publishing house, set the principles of constructivist graphic design based on legibility and immediate impact.

This standardization, albeit driven by a progressive ideology, also heralds the drift of an art subjected to political imperatives, where creation becomes first and foremost an instrument of propaganda. 

Although the evolution of the Soviet regime gradually relegated constructivism to the background, Stepanova's legacy remains.

His radical approach had a lasting influence on graphic and textile design, laying the foundations for a modernism that, beyond the Soviet context, would find echoes in Bauhaus and 20th-century industrial design.

Today, she has established herself as a key figure on the French art market, alongside other Russian artists such as Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Deineka or even Seraphim Soudbinin. 

His signature

Not all Stepanova's works are signed. It is also possible that they are copies or that the inscription has faded over time, which is why expert appraisal is essential.

Appraising your property

If you own a work by Varvara Fiordonorva Stepanova, feel free to request a free appraisal by filling in our online form.

A member of our team of experts and certified auctioneers will contact you to provide an estimate of the market value of your work.

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