Iakov Chernikhov was a constructivist architect and graphic designer born in Pavlograd in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1889.

Chernikhov wrote many books highlighting his ideas and interests in the Russian futurist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Russian Futurism rejected the past and focused on an interest in speed, machinery, industry and the destruction of academies, museums and urbanism.

Only a small number of Chernikhov’s projects were ever built and of those that were, very few survive. One of his surviving buildings is the tower of the 'Red Nailer' factory in St. Petersburg. Chernikhov was distrusted by the Stalinist regime leading the Soviet Union at the time of his work being produced due to his unique and avant-garde ideas.

This drawing is part of a series of compositional studies he made, in which he uses “lines to free architecture from the rectangle and perhaps the ground, and propose a newly liberated dynamic order” as Niall Hobhouse, founder of Drawing Matter, puts it.

These drawings appear to represent both liberation , and constraint, represented in the tiny scale and the addition of a secondary boundary - the orange border. We love the energy this series exudes, the forms seem to whirl and almost jump off the paper.