Kazimir Severinovich Malevich[nb 1] (23 February [O.S. 11 February] 1879[1] – 15 May 1935) was anavant-garde artist andart theorist, whose pioneering work and writing influenced the development ofabstract art in the 20th century.[2] His concept ofSuprematism sought to develop a form of expression that moved as far as possible from the world of natural forms (objectivity) and subject matter in order to access "the supremacy of pure feeling"[3] and spirituality.[4][5] Born inKiev, modern-dayUkraine, to anethnic Polish family, Malevich was active primarily in Russia and became a leading artist of theRussian avant-garde.[nb 2] His work has been also associated with theUkrainian avant-garde, and he is a central figure in the history ofmodern art in Central and Eastern Europe more broadly.[6]
Early in his career, Malevich worked in multiple styles, assimilatingImpressionism,Symbolism,Fauvism, andCubism through reproductions and the works acquired by contemporary Russian collectors. In the early 1910s, he collaborated with other avant-garde Russian artists, includingMikhail Larionov andNatalia Goncharova. AfterWorld War I, Malevich gradually simplified his approach, producing key works of pure geometric forms on minimal grounds. His abstract paintingBlack Square (1915) marked the most radically non-representational painting yet exhibited and drew "an uncrossable line (…) between old art and new art".[7] Malevich also articulated his theories in texts such asFrom Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism (1915) andThe Non-Objective World (1926).
His trajectory mirrored the upheavals around theOctober Revolution of 1917. In 1918, Malevich began teaching inVitebsk along withMarc Chagall. In 1919, he founded theUNOVIS artists collective and had a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow in 1919. His reputation spread westward with solo exhibitions inWarsaw andBerlin in 1927. This marked the first and only time Malevich ever left Russia.[nb 3] From 1928 to 1930 he taught at theKiev Art Institute alongsideAlexander Bogomazov,Victor Palmov, andVladimir Tatlin, while publishing in the Kharkiv magazineNova Generatsiia (New Generation). Repression of the intelligentsia soon forced him back toLeningrad. By the early 1930s,Stalin's restrictive cultural policy and the subsequent imposition ofSocialist Realism had prompted Malevich to return to figuration and to paint in a representational style. Diagnosed with cancer in 1933, he was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to seek treatment abroad. While constrained by his progressing illness and Stalin's cultural policies, Malevich painted and exhibited his work until his death. He died from cancer on 15 May 1935, at age 56.
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born on either 23 (O.S. 11) February or 26 (O.S. 14) February 1879, to Severin (Seweryn) Antonovich and Liudviga (Ludwika) Alexandrovna.[9]: 5 [2] His parents, who werePolish, had fled Poland following the failedJanuary Uprising of 1863 against Russian rule.[10]: 32 Lucjan Malewicz, Kazimir's uncle, was aCatholic priest and one of the leaders of the 1863 insurrection.[11]: 92 The family subsequently settled near Kiev (modern-day Kyiv, Ukraine) inKiev Governorate of theRussian Empire. Kazimir was the first of fourteen children, only nine of whom survived into adulthood.[10]: 32 His parents wereRoman Catholic, though his father attended Orthodox services as well.[2][12] The primary language spoken within Malevich’s household was Polish,[13]: 40 but he also spoke Russian,[14] as well as Ukrainian due to his childhood surroundings.[15]
Malevich's father worked as manager at several differentsugar refineries.[9]: 5 Between 1889 and 1896, Malevich's family relocated multiple times due to his father's job. In 1889, they moved toParkhomovka nearKharkov (modern-day Ukraine).[9]: 5 In Parkhomovka, Malevich attended a two-yearagricultural school and taught himself to paint in a simple peasant style, drawing inspiration fromrural surroundings.[9]: 5 About four years later, the family relocated to Voltochok nearKonotop, which was near centers of Polish cultural activity at the time.[10]: 32 There, Malevich met the composerNikolai Roslavets. He later briefly attended classes at the Kiev School of Drawing under the encouragement of the realist painterMykola Pymonenko.[9]: 5
Kursk and Moscow (1896-1905)
In 1896, the family moved toKursk (modern-day Russia), where Malevich encountered several Russian artists, such as Lev Kvachevsky, with whom he often worked outdoors.[9]: 5 By Malevich's own admission, his dedication to painting would make him the "black sheep" of the family.[10]: 32 Through reproductions, Malevich also became familiar with the work of thePeredvizhniki (Wanderers), includingIvan Shishkin andIlia Repin, two leading RussianRealist painters.[9]: 5 In 1896, he began working as atechnical draughtsman at the Moscow-Kursk-Voronezh railway company.[10]: 32
Malevich would later describe 1898 as the year he began exhibiting his work, although there is no evidence for this claim.[10]: 32 In 1899, he met his first wife, Kazimira Ivanovna Zgleits, who was eight years his senior. They had two children, Galina and Anatolii, the latter of whom dies oftyphoid in his early childhood.[9]: 5–6 His father died in 1902, at the age of fifty-seven, and in 1903, Malevich held an exhibition at the Society for the Support of Primary Education in Kursk.[10]: 32
Recognizing his style as increasingly more Impressionistic, Malevich intended to receive academic training inMoscow.[9]: 5–6 By 1904, as more French art was being reproduced and discussed in Russia in the magazineMir iskusstva, Malevich had also become acquainted with the work ofPaul Gauguin.[16]: 2–4 Malevich and other artists in Moscow gained an early exposure to Western modern art through the private collections ofSergei Shchukin andIvan Morozov.[9]: 10 Their acquisitions ranged from French Impressionism to paintings byPaul Cézanne and Gauguin, and were later expanded to include the works of the keyParisian avant-garde artists, such asPablo Picasso andHenri Matisse.[17]
Malevich is said to have visited both collections soon after his first arrival in Moscow in the fall of 1904.[16]: 5–6 Similarities between hisApple Tree in Blossom (1904) andAlfred Sisley’sVilleneuve-la-Garenne (1872), then in Shchukin’s collection, have been cited as an early indication of the collectors’ influence on Malevich’s oeuvre.[16]: 5–6 In October 1904,Vladimir Lenin, theBolshevik leader and political activist, returns to Russia from exile. At the time, anti-government sentiment in Russia was gaining momentum, intensifying afterBloody Sunday inSt. Petersburg in January 1905, when Tsarist forces killed numerous protesters. On October 17, 1905,Nicholas II issued theOctober Manifesto, granting limited voting rights to the middle class.[10]: 32 In November, the government suppressed further revolutionary activity through military force. In his autobiography, Malevich later claimed to have taken part in the Battle of the Barricades in Moscow in December 1905, an attempt to sustain the revolution against the Tsarist regime.[10]: 32
Malevich settled in Moscow, along with his family and his mother, in the spring of 1906.[10]: 32 There, Malevich attended the studio of Fedor Rerberg, who was known to prepare his students for applications to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Despite Malevich's multiple attempts to apply to the Moscow art school, however, he was never offered admission.[10]: 32 In 1907, theBlue Rose Exhibition of a group of MoscowSymbolist painters—part of a broader early 20th-century movement that rejected naturalism in favor of mystical themes and dreamlike imagery—left a deep impression on the artist.[10]: 33 [nb 4] The impact of Symbolism on Malevich during that period is evident in paintings such asThe Triumph of Heaven (1907) andThe Shroud of Christ (1908).[16]: 9
By 1908, he developed a strong interest inRussian icons andRussian folk art.[10]: 33 At the same time, more Western avant-garde influences reached Moscow, including through the activities of theGolden Fleece group, who in 1908 organized a major exhibition of Russian and Western European art that included works byVincent van Gogh, Matisse,Georges Braque, Gauguin, and Cézanne.[10]: 33 In 1909, the group also published in their journal a Russian translation of Matisse's treatiseNotes on Painting (1908) and Shchukin opened his collection to the public.[10]: 33 In September 1909, Malevich's planned visit to Paris was cancelled when a sale of his painting fell through. Later that year, he met his future second wife Sofia Mikhailovna Rafalovich.[10]: 33
Triumph of Heaven (1907,Russian Museum), an example of Malevich's early Symbolism-inspired work
Rest. Society with Cylinders (1908, Russian Museum)
Knave of Diamonds andDonkey’s Tail (1910–1912)
In December 1910, Malevich took part in the first of a series of exhibitions of an artistic collectiveKnave of Diamonds. According to Malevich the name "Knave" (or "Jack") "stood for youth" and "diamonds" for "beautiful youth".[10]: 33 The group was founded byNatalia Goncharova andMikhail Larionov, leading figures of the Moscow avant-garde, who sought to combine the modernist Western vocabularies of artists like Cézanne with the traditions of Russian folk art.[18] Years later, in 1924, Malevich claimed that theKnave of Diamonds exhibition "shook severely the aesthetic foundations and consequently the foundation of art in society and criticism".[19] During that time, Malevich took on some commercial projects as a way to support himself financially. In 1911, he worked with the company Brocard & Co., designing a bottle for theireau de cologne calledSeverny, which was used by the company through the mid-1920s.[20] The base of the bottle consisted of a jagged form resembling aniceberg and the stopper featured a small figurine of apolar bear.[21]
Also in 1911, Malevich participated in the second exhibition of the avant-garde groupSoyuz Molodyozhi (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg, where he showed some of his Cubist-inspired paintings. Other artists included Goncharova, Larionov,Vladimir Tatlin, andDavid Burliuk.[10]: 33 That year, Goncharova and Larionov—both of whom had a strong influence on Malevich during that period—broke away from theKnave of Diamonds to establish theDonkey's Tail collective.[22] Intending to focus more on Russian subject matter, they embraced a deliberately "primitive" approach, favoring flattened forms and simplified visual structures.[16]: 32–35 Unlike their Western European counterparts—such as Picasso, whose turn to the "primitive" appropriated non-Western imagery mediated throughFrench colonial conquests—the MoscowNeo-Primitivists drew on domestic sources, especially Russian peasant culture and folk imagery like thelubok.[22] Art historians have since noted that even as Russian artists sought to ground their work in local traditions, they continued to rely heavily on the formal vocabularies of the Western avant-garde.[22] In March 1912, Malevich took part inDonkey’s Tail exhibition in Moscow that ran through April, which included his recent works, such as the figurative and peasant-inspiredgouache paintings titledFloor Polishers (1911-12) andWasherwoman (1911).[16]: 32–35
Floorpolishers (1911-1912,Stedelijk Museum) exhibited at theDonkey's Tail in Moscow in 1912
By 1913, the influence of Italian Futurism on Russian contemporary art had become more pronounced. Excerpts of theManifesto of Futurism, written byFilippo Tommaso Marinetti, were already published in Russia in 1909.[16]: 33 Its call to reject the past, glorify modernity, and embrace speed, dynamism, and aggressive provocation resonated with the Russian avant-garde. Adapting some of the futurist rhetoric, artists like Burliuk and Malevich shifted Marinetti’s celebration of machines and violence more toward linguistic experimentation and cognitive transformation.[23] Among such experiments was a technique calledzaum, or “transrational” language, wherein Russian Futurist technique used invented sounds and words to bypass reason and evoke a higher reality.[23] In a letter sent to his friend, composerMikhail Matyushin, in the spring of 1913, Malevich wrote:[24]: 40
We have come to reject reason, but we have rejected reason because a different kind of reason has arisen within us, one which might be called transrational [zaum] if compared with the one which we have rejected; it also has its own law, construction and meaning, and only when we have cognized it will our works be founded on the truly new law of transrationalism.
— Kazimir Malevich's letter to Mikhail Matyushin, spring 1913
Around that time, Burliuk led a Russian futurist parade in Moscow, where artists with painted faces recited futurist poetry.[10]: 64 In March 1913, Malevich participated in theTarget exhibition in Moscow together with Goncharova and Larionov, continuing to reinterpret Futurist vocabularies to "suggest movement by breaking cone shapes into almost unrecognizable forms".[9]: 8 Malevich described himself in this period as working in a “Cubo-Futurist” style.[25] Among other paintings, Malevich exhibitedMorning in the Country after Snowstorm andKnifegrinder or Principle of Glittering, both made in 1912, atTarget for the first time.[9]: 8–9 That same year, the Cubo-Futurist opera,Victory Over the Sun, debuted in at Luna Park Theater in St. Petersburg.[10]: 64 The opera featured a libretto byAleksei Kruchenykh written inzaum, dissonant music by Matyushin, and stage and costume designs by Malevich.[26] Itsallegorical plot depicts theSun—symbolizing the old order—being captured and buried, reflecting the Futurist celebration of technological progress and the rejection of past traditions.[27] For one scene Malevich designed a curtain with the outline of a square, which he later identified as the first appearance of hisBlack Square.[10]: 64 Although the production was poorly received by contemporary audiences, it prefigured Malevich’s subsequent development of abstract painting.[26]
Paris Salon and Wartime Works (1914)
In March 1914, Malevich was invited by Nikolai Kubin to participate in theSalon des Indépendants in Paris.[10]: 65 He sent several of his works to be shown at the Salon, includingSamovar from 1913, a Cubist depiction of a traditional Eastern Europeanmetal container used to heat boil water.[10]: 65 Malevich also co-illustrated, withPavel Filonov,Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914 byVelimir Khlebnikov and another work by Khlebnikov in 1914 titledRoar! Gauntlets, 1908–1914, withVladimir Burliuk.[28][29] On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand wasassassinated in Sarajevo, precipitating the outbreak of theGreat War (later known as World War I). Sometime in the fall or winter of 1914, Malevich madeReservist of the First Division, an Cubo-Futurist work that incorporatedcollage, a post stamp with an image of Tsar Nicholas, printed text, and athermometer affixed to the canvas, among other non-traditional compositional elements.[16]: 111–113 Scattering multiple political, cultural, and military references across abstract geometric planes, the work has been interepreted by some as reflecting Malevich's own status as an armyreservist.[30] He also created a series ofpropagandisticchromolithographs in various formats in support ofRussia's entry into the war.[31]: 407 These prints were accompanied by captions byVladimir Mayakovsky and published by the Moscow-based publication house Segodniashnii Lubok (Contemporary Lubok). While the prints drew on folk-art traditions of thelubok and emphasized bold blocks of pure color, theReservist relied on Cubo-Futurist collage and abstraction; together, these works signaled formal strategies of flat planes and geometric ordering that further anticipated Malevich’s turn to Suprematism the following year.[30][31]: 407
Malevich exhibited his firstBlack Square, now at theTretyakov Gallery in Moscow, at theLast Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) in 1915.[25] A black square placed against the sun appeared for the first time in the 1913 scenic designs for theFuturist operaVictory over the Sun.[25] The secondBlack Square was painted around 1923. Some believe that the thirdBlack Square (also at the Tretyakov Gallery) was painted in 1929 for Malevich's solo exhibition, because of the poor condition of the 1915 square. One moreBlack Square, the smallest and probably the last, may have been intended as a diptych together with theRed Square (though of smaller size) for the exhibition Artists of the RSFSR: 15 Years, held in Leningrad (1932). The two squares, Black and Red, were the centerpiece of the show. This last square, despite the author's note1913 on the reverse, is believed to have been created in the late twenties or early thirties, for there are no earlier mentions of it.[33]
While Malevich's ideas and theories behind Suprematism were grounded in a belief in the spiritual and transformative power of art, he saw Suprematism as a way to access a higher, more pure realm of artistic expression and to tap into the spiritual through abstraction. Thus, the overarching philosophy of Suprematism expressed in various manifestos would be that he "transformed himself in the zero of form and dragged himself out of the rubbish-heap of illusion and the pit of naturalism. He destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of objects, moving from the horizon-ring to the circle of spirit".[34]
According to an observation by radiologist and art historian Milda Victurina, one of the features of Kazimir Malevich's painting technique was the layering of paints one on another to get a special kind of colour spots. For example, Malevich used two layers of colour for the red spot—the lower black and the upper red. The light ray going through these colour layers is perceived by the viewer not as red, but with a touch of darkness. This technique of superimposing the two colours allowed experts to identify fakes of Malevich's work, which generally lacked it.[37]
Suprematist works by Malevich at the 0.10 Exhibition, Petrograd, 1915
Suprematism, oil on canvas, 1915, Russian Museum
Suprematist Composition: White on White, oil on canvas, 1918, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Post-revolutionary years (1918-1935)
Kazimir Malevich with his paintings in Leningrad (1924)
After theOctober Revolution (1917), theRussian Civil War ensued. Between 1918 and 1919, Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts ofNarkompros, the Commission for the Protection of Monuments and the Museums Commission. He taught at theVitebsk Practical Art School inBelarus (1919–1922) alongsideMarc Chagall,[38] theLeningrad Academy of Arts (1922–1927), the Kiev Art Institute (1928–1930),[39] and the House of the Arts in Leningrad (1930). He wrote the bookThe Non-Objective World, which was published inMunich in 1926 and translated into English in 1959. In it, he outlines his Suprematist theories.[40]
Following theBolshevik victory in the Civil War, theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics was established in 1922, led byVladimir Lenin. In 1923, Malevich was appointed director of Petrograd State Institute of Artistic Culture, which was forced to close in 1926 after a Communist party newspaper called it "a government-supported monastery" rife with "counterrevolutionary sermonizing and artistic debauchery." The Soviet state was by then heavily promoting an idealized, propagandistic[41] style of art calledSocialist Realism—a style Malevich had spent his entire career repudiating. Nevertheless, he swam with the current, and was quietly tolerated by the Communists.[42]
Stalinism and censorship
Malevich's assumption that a shifting in the attitudes of theSoviet authorities toward themodernist art movement would take place after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 andLeon Trotsky's fall from power was proven correct in a couple of years, when the government ofJoseph Stalin turned against forms of abstraction, considering them a type of "bourgeois" art, that could not express social realities. As a consequence, many of his works were confiscated and he was removed from his teaching position.[citation needed]
In autumn 1930, he was arrested and interrogated by theOGPU in Leningrad, accused of Polish espionage, and threatened with execution. He was released from imprisonment in early December.[15][43] Critics derided Malevich's art as a negation of everything good and pure: love of life and love of nature. The Westernizer artist and art historianAlexandre Benois was one such critic. Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art's sake alone, saying that "art does not need us, and it never did".[citation needed] In 1934,Socialist Realism was officially imposed as the only permissible form of artistic expression in the Soviet Union, effectively banning avant-garde art.[44]
Travel to Poland and Germany (1927)
Banquet celebrating Kazimir Malevich's 1927 exhibition atHotel Polonia in Warsaw, with multiple Suprematist paintings seen hung on the wall in the back
In March 1927, Malevich traveled toWarsaw where he exhibited his work at the Polish Arts Club housed in thePolonia Hotel.[45]: 248 He met with several Polish artists, including his former studentsWładysław Strzemiński (whose own theory of Unism was highly influenced by Malevich), sculptorKatarzyna Kobro andHenryk Stażewski, a prominent abstract painter associated with the Polish Constructivist movement.[46][47]
While generally greeted with enthusiasm, Malevich faced criticism from some contemporary artists, includingMieczysław Szczuka, who argued that Suprematism, as understood by Malevich, was no longer relevant for Polish utilitarianism-oriented avant-garde and that the artist was "a Romantic who loves painterly means for their own sake".[45]: 247–249 Art historianMatthew Drutt notes that despite these criticisms, Malevich's Warsaw exhibition and the lecture on Suprematism he had delivered during his visit had a lasting effect on Polish modernism.[48]: 19 At the end of March 1927, Malevich andTadeusz Peiper, a Polish poet and art critic who was the editor of the literary journalZwrotnica, left Warsaw for Berlin. In April that year, him and Peiper visited theBauhaus in Dessau, where they met withWalter Gropius andLászló Moholy-Nagy.[48]: 19
Malevich returned to Berlin in May 1927 to participate in the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. Over seventy of his works, including paintings, gouaches, charts, and drawings that spanned the entirety of the artist's oeuvre, were displayed at the exhibition.[48]: 20 The Berlin show has been described as "a defining moment in Malevich's career in terms of the reception of his work in the West" and it became a "primary source of knowledge of Malevich's oeuvre for the next fifty years".[48]: 21 He arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union.[49]
Death
Malevich died ofcancer in Leningrad on 15 May 1935.[50] On his deathbed, Malevich had been exhibited with theBlack Square above him, and mourners at his funeral rally were permitted to wave a banner bearing a black square.[42] Malevich had asked to be buried under an oak tree on the outskirts ofNemchinovka, a place to which he felt a special bond.[51] His ashes were sent to Nemchinovka, and buried in a field near hisdacha. Nikolai Suetin, a friend of Malevich's and a fellow artist, designed a white cube with a black square to mark the burial site. The memorial was destroyed duringWorld War II. The city of Leningrad bestowed a pension on Malevich's mother and daughter.
In Nazi Germany his works were banned as "Degenerate Art".[49][52][53] In 2013, an apartment block was built on the place of the tomb and burial site of Kazimir Malevich. Another nearby monument to Malevich, put up in 1988, is now also situated on the grounds of agated community.[51]
Girl with a Comb in her Hair (1933, Tretyakov Gallery)
Nationality and ethnicity
Malevich signed himself in Polish (asK. Malewicz) on the back...
...of his self-portrait entitled "Artist" (1933, Russian Museum)
Most academic literature and museum collections identify Malevich as a Russian painter, based on his integral role in shaping the Russian avant-garde, centered primarily around Moscow and Petrograd (modern-day St. Petersburg), and the fact that he achieved prominence while living and working in the Russian Empire and later, from 1922 until his death in 1935, the Soviet Union. However, his nationality has been a subject of scholarly dispute.[54][55] Based on surviving correspondence, some scholars have also suggested that Malevich considered Russia an "adopted place to live and work" rather than a "true homeland".[56]
Polish
Malevich's family was one of the millions ofPoles who lived within the Russian Empire following thePartitions of Poland. Kazimir Malevich was born nearKiev[57] on lands that had previously been part of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth[58] of parents who were ethnicPoles.[2] Both Polish and Russian were native languages of Malevich,[59] who would sign his artwork in thePolish form of his name asKazimierz Malewicz.[60] His mother Ludwika wrote poetry in Polish and sang Polish songs, and kept a record of the Polish families living in the area.[12] In a 1926 visa application to travel to France, Malewicz claimedPolish as his nationality.[58] French art historianAndrei Nakov, who re-established Malevich's birth year as 1879 (and not 1878), has argued for restoration of the Polish spelling of Malevich's name.
In 1985, Polish performance artist Zbigniew Warpechowski performed "Citizenship for a Pure Feeling of Kazimierz Malewicz" as an homage to the great artist and critique of Polish authorities that refused to grant Polish citizenship to Kazimir Malevich.[61] In 2013, Malevich's family in New York City and fans founded the not-for-profitThe Rectangular Circle of Friends of Kazimierz Malewicz, whose dedicated goal is to promote awareness of Kazimir's Polish ethnicity.[58]
Ukrainian
According to Russian scholars Tatiana Mikhienko andIrina Vakar [ru], the secret police file from Malevich's arrest on September 20, 1930 indicates that Malevich declared his nationality as Ukrainian.[15][43] Scholar Marie Gasper-Hulvat notes that this may have been in part motivated by Malevich's desire to avoid anti-Polish discrimination, since Ukraine was at that time part of the Soviet Union.[56] It is sometimes claimed that he self-identified as a Ukrainian throughout his life.[62] Similarly, the French art historianGilles Néret claimed that Malevich, while at times identifying as Polish "out of tact or mischief" and using the Polish spelling of his name, always emphasized his Ukrainian background.[63]: 7
Following theRussian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 there has been more political and cultural pressure to reconsider his Russian nationality and to identify him instead as Ukrainian painter.[64] This push resulted in theMetropolitan Museum of Art relabeling him as Ukrainian painter, and later Stedelijk Museum labeling him as "Ukrainian painter of Polish origin". The relabeling caused a backlash from Russia, including a statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[55] However, the consensus among art historians, including those of Ukrainian origin, is that whereas the discussion (related to theRussian colonialism) clearly needs to take place among all involved parties, it has not yet occurred, and the question concerning the identity of Malevich has not been solved as of 2023.[65]
Legacy
Alfred H. Barr Jr. included several paintings in the groundbreaking exhibition "Cubism and Abstract Art" at theMuseum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. In 1939, theMuseum of Non-Objective Painting opened in New York, whose founder,Solomon R. Guggenheim—an early and passionate collector of the Russian avant-garde—was inspired by the same aesthetic ideals and spiritual quest that exemplified Malevich's art.[66]
The first U.S. retrospective of Malevich's work in 1973 at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum provoked a flood of interest and further intensified his impact on postwar American and European artists.[66] However, most of Malevich's work and the story of the Russian avant-garde remained under lock and key untilGlasnost.[57] In 1989, theStedelijk Museum in Amsterdam held the West's first large-scale Malevich retrospective, including the paintings they owned and works from the collection of Russian art criticNikolai Khardzhiev.[57]
Black Square, the fourth version of hismagnum opus painted in the 1920s, was discovered in 1993 inSamara and purchased byInkombank for US$250,000.[67] In April 2002, the painting wasauctioned for an equivalent of US$1 million. The purchase was financed by the Russian philanthropistVladimir Potanin, who donated funds to the Russian Ministry of Culture,[68] and ultimately, to theState Hermitage Museum collection.[67] According to the Hermitage website, this was the largest private contribution to state art museums since theOctober Revolution.[68]
In 2008, theStedelijk Museum restituted five works to the heirs of Malevich's family from a group that had been left in Berlin by Malevich, and acquired by the gallery in 1958, in exchange for undisputed title to the remaining pictures.[69] On 3 November 2008, one of these works entitledSuprematist Composition from 1916, set the world record for any Russian work of art and any work sold at auction for that year, selling atSotheby's in New York City for just over US$60 million (surpassing his previous record of US$17 million set in 2000). In May 2018, the same painting,Suprematist Composition (1916), sold at Christie's New York for over US$85 million (including fees), a record auction price for a Russian work of art.[70]
Malevich's life inspires many references featuring events and the paintings as players. The smuggling of Malevich paintings out of Russia is a key to the plot line of writerMartin Cruz Smith's thrillerRed Square.Noah Charney's novel,The Art Thief tells the story of two stolen MalevichWhite on White paintings, and discusses the implications of Malevich's radical Suprematist compositions on the art world. British artistKeith Coventry has used Malevich's paintings to make comments on modernism, in particular his Estate Paintings. Malevich's work also is featured prominently in theLars von Trier film,Melancholia. At the Closing Ceremony of the2014 Winter Olympics inSochi, Malevich visual themes were featured (via projections) in a section on 20th century Russian modern art.
In 2015, a local businessman inKonotop,Sumy Oblast, Ukraine commissioned Yurii Vedmid to create a monument of Kazimir Malevich, who lived there from 1894 to 1895. In 2016, it became the communal property of the Konotop community and was relocated to the city square outside the House of Trade.[71]
Autobiographies
Malevich wrote two biographical essays, a shorter one in 1923–25, and a much longer account in 1933, representing the artist's explanation of his own evolution up to the appearance of suprematism at the 1915 "0–10" exhibition in Petrograd.[72]Both are published in:
Vakar, I. A.; Mikhienko, T. N., eds. (2004).Malevich o sebe: Sovremenniki o Maleviche (in Russian). Vol. 1. Moscow: RA. pp. 17–45.ISBN5269010283.
Abridged and revised translations are published in:
Malevich, Kazimir (1990). "From 1/42: Autobiographical Notes, 1923–1925". In D'Andrea, Jeanne (ed.).Kazimir Malevich, 1878–1935 : [exhibition], National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 16 September 1990-4 November 1990, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 28 November 1990–13 January 1991, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 7 February 1991–24 March 1991. Los Angeles. pp. 169–75.ISBN0-295-97066-9.OCLC22999015.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
The 1923–25 autobiography appears in:
Malevich, Kazimir (1968). "IZ 1/42: Avtobiograficheskie zametki, 1923–1925". In Troels, Andersen (ed.).K. S. Malevich: Essays on Art: 1915–1933. Vol. 2. Translated by Glowacki-Prus, Xenia; McMillin, Arnold. Copenhagen: Borgen. pp. 147–54.ISBN978-0815004196.
The 1933 autobiography appears in:
Khardzhiev, Nikolai; Malevich, Kazimir; Matiushin, Mikhail (1976). Khardzhiev, Nikolai (ed.).K istorii russkogo avangarda (in Russian). Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. pp. 85–127.ISBN9122000836.
^Malevich's nationality has been a matter of scholarly dispute. However, most art historians consider Malevich—who was born in the Russian Empire (modern-day Ukraine) and who worked in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union for most of his life—a Russian avant-garde artist. For further information on recent debates regarding the artist's nationality, particularly in the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, see theNationality and ethnicity section.
^Some sources mention Malevich's alleged trip to Paris in 1912, although that claim is not corroborated by documentary evidence. While Malevich is said to have made plans to travel abroad, including Paris, multiple times, the only documented travel outside of Russia (or the Soviet Union) was his 1927 trip to Poland and Germany. Sources:
Charlotte Douglas, Preface, p. i inRethinking Malevich: Proceedings of a Conference in Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of Kazimir Malevich’s Birth, Pindar Press, 2007.
Kazimir Malevich in the Russian Museum, Gosudarstvennyĭ russkiĭ muzeĭ, eds. Evgeniia Andreevna Petrova, Elena V. Basner, Kazimir S. Malevich, Irina Arskaia, St. Petersburg: State Russian Museum, 2000, p. 20.
Marie Gasper-Hulvat, "State-Sanctioned Trips of Soviet Artists to the West in the Late 1920s: The Unusual Case of Kazimir Malevich,"The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945, Volume 15, General Issue, 2019.
Erik Kruskopf,Shaping the Invisible: A Study of the Genesis of Non-representational Painting, 1908–1919, Vol. 55, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1976, p. 132.
David W. Galenson,Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 292.
^Malevich submitted a single painting to the exhibition, although it was rejected.
^abcdefghijklD'Andrea, Jeanne, ed. (1990).Kazimir Malevich, 1878-1935. Los Angeles: The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center.ISBN0-9626953-0-0.
^Tarasov, Olga (13 November 2017). "Kazimir Malevich, Symbolism, and Ecclesiastic Orthodoxy". In Hardiman, Louise; Kozicharow, Nicola (eds.).Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives. Open Book Publishers.doi:10.11647/obp.0115.ISBN978-1-78374-338-4.
^Kovtun, Evgenii (1974). "Kazimir Malevich to Matyushin, Spring 1913"."The Beginning of Suprematism": From Surface to Space, Russia 1916-24. Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska.
^abcHonour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009)A World History of Art. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing, pp. 794–795.ISBN9781856695848
^Julia Bekman Chadaga (2000). Conference paper, "Art, Technology, and Modernity in Russia and Eastern Europe". Columbia University, 2000. "the Suprematist is associated with a series of aerial views rendering the familiar landscape into an abstraction…"
^"Фальшак".www.sovsekretno.ru. Archived fromthe original on 4 July 2019. Retrieved22 November 2021.
^Malevich, Kazimir Severinovich; Drutt, Matthew; Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Menil Collection (Houston, Tex ) (2003).Kazimir Malevich : suprematism. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Library. New York, N.Y. : Guggenheim Museum ; Distributed by Harry N. Abrams.ISBN978-0-89207-265-1.
^Lodder, Christina (2018). "Henryk Stażewski: The Suprematist Dimension". In Szczepaniak, Andrzej (ed.).Henryk Stażewski. Milan: Skira Editore. pp. 25–37.ISBN978-88-572-3735-0.
^abGasper-Hulvat, Marie (2019). "State-Sanctioned Trips of Soviet Artists to the West in the Late 1920s: The Unusual Case of Kazimir Malevich".Space Between: Literature & Culture, 1914-1945.15: 14.
^Shkandrij 2019,Kazimir Malevich's Autobiography and Art, pp. 102–115.
Bibliography
Crone, Rainer, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich and David Moos.Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Dreikausen, Margret,Aerial Perception: The Earth as Seen from Aircraft and Spacecraft and Its Influence on Contemporary Art (Associated University Presses:Cranbury, NJ;London, England;Mississauga, Ontario: 1985).ISBN0-87982-040-3
Das weiße Rechteck. Schriften zum Film, herausgegeben von Oksana Bulgakowa. PotemkinPress, Berlin 1997,ISBN3-9804989-2-1
The White Rectangle. Writings on Film. (In English and the Russian original manuscript). Edited by Oksana Bulgakowa. PotemkinPress, Berlin / Francisco 2000,ISBN3-9804989-7-2
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