Kazimir Malevich

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Kazimir Severinovich Malevich<ref group="nb">Template:Langx; Template:Langx Template:IPA; Template:Langx Template:IPA.</ref> (Template:OldStyleDate<ref name="cdiak">Запись о рождении в метрической книге римско-католического костёла св. Александра в Киеве, 1879 год // ЦГИАК Украины, ф. 1268, оп. 1, д. 26, л. 13об—14.Template:In lang</ref> – 15 May 1935) was an avant-garde artist and art theorist, whose pioneering work and writing influenced the development of abstract art in the 20th century.<ref name="Schwartz p. 84">Milner and Malevich 1996, p. X; Néret 2003, p. 7; Shatskikh and Schwartz, p. 84.</ref> His concept of Suprematism 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"<ref name="Malevich Non">Malevich, Kazimir. The Non-Objective World, Chicago: Theobald, 1959.</ref> and spirituality.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Born in Kiev, modern-day Ukraine, to an ethnic Polish family, Malevich was active primarily in Russia and became a leading artist of the Russian avant-garde.<ref group="nb">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 the Nationality and ethnicity section.</ref> His work has been also associated with the Ukrainian avant-garde, and he is a central figure in the history of modern art in Central and Eastern Europe more broadly.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early in his career, Malevich worked in multiple styles, assimilating Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, and Cubism through reproductions and the works acquired by contemporary Russian collectors. In the early 1910s, he collaborated with other avant-garde Russian artists, including Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. After World War I, Malevich gradually simplified his approach, producing key works of pure geometric forms on minimal grounds. His abstract painting Black Square (1915) marked the most radically non-representational painting yet exhibited and drew "an uncrossable line (…) between old art and new art".<ref name="Tolstaya">Tolstaya, Tatiana. "The Square," Template:Webarchive New Yorker, 12 June 2015. Retrieved 21 March 2018.</ref> Malevich also articulated his theories in texts such as From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism (1915) and The Non-Objective World (1926).

His trajectory mirrored the upheavals around the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918, Malevich began teaching in Vitebsk along with Marc Chagall. In 1919, he founded the UNOVIS artists collective and had a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow in 1919. His reputation spread westward with solo exhibitions in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927. This marked the first and only time Malevich ever left Russia.<ref group="nb"> 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:

  • Rosamund Bartlett, "Malevich blazed a path into the future," The Telegraph, 12 July 2014, (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10957847/Malevich-blazed-a-path-into-the-future.html).
  • Charlotte Douglas, Preface, p. i in Rethinking 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.

</ref> From 1928 to 1930 he taught at the Kiev Art Institute alongside Alexander Bogomazov, Victor Palmov, and Vladimir Tatlin, while publishing in the Kharkiv magazine Nova Generatsiia (New Generation). Repression of the intelligentsia soon forced him back to Leningrad. By the early 1930s, Stalin's restrictive cultural policy and the subsequent imposition of Socialist 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.

His art and his writings influenced Eastern and Central European contemporaries such as El Lissitzky, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko and Henryk Stażewski, as well as generations of later abstract artists, such as Ad Reinhardt and the Minimalists. He was celebrated posthumously in major exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art (1936), the Guggenheim Museum (1973), and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1989), which has a large collection of his work. In the 1990s, the ownership claims of museums to many Malevich works began to be disputed by his heirs.<ref name="Wood">Wood, Tony. "The man they couldn't hang". The Guardian, 10 May 2000. Retrieved 21 March 2018.</ref>

Early life (1879-1905)

File:Kazimir Malevich, c.1900.jpg
Kazimir Malevich (c.1900)

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.<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page<ref name="Schwartz p. 84" /> His parents, who were Polish, had fled Poland following the failed January Uprising of 1863 against Russian rule.<ref name=":8">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Reference page Lucjan Malewicz, Kazimir's uncle, was a Catholic priest and one of the leaders of the 1863 insurrection.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Reference page The family subsequently settled near Kiev (modern-day Kyiv, Ukraine) in Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire. Kazimir was the first of fourteen children, only nine of whom survived into adulthood.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page His parents were Roman Catholic, though his father attended Orthodox services as well.<ref name="Schwartz p. 84" />Template:Sfn The primary language spoken within Malevich’s household was Polish,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Reference page but he also spoke Russian,<ref>Shatskikh, Aleksandra Semenovna. 2013. Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. p. 51. Template:ISBN</ref> as well as Ukrainian due to his childhood surroundings.<ref name="Radio Svododa-2019">Template:Citation</ref>

Malevich's father worked as manager at several different sugar refineries.<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page Between 1889 and 1896, Malevich's family relocated multiple times due to his father's job. In 1889, they moved to Parkhomovka near Kharkov (modern-day Ukraine).<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page In Parkhomovka, Malevich attended a two-year agricultural school and taught himself to paint in a simple peasant style, drawing inspiration from rural surroundings.<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page About four years later, the family relocated to Voltochok near Konotop, which was near centers of Polish cultural activity at the time.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page There, Malevich met the composer Nikolai Roslavets. He later briefly attended classes at the Kiev School of Drawing under the encouragement of the realist painter Mykola Pymonenko.<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page

Kursk and Moscow (1896-1905)

In 1896, the family moved to Kursk (modern-day Russia), where Malevich encountered several Russian artists, such as Lev Kvachevsky, with whom he often worked outdoors.<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page By Malevich's own admission, his dedication to painting would make him the "black sheep" of the family.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page Through reproductions, Malevich also became familiar with the work of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), including Ivan Shishkin and Ilia Repin, two leading Russian Realist painters.<ref name=":0" />Template:Reference page In 1896, he began working as a technical draughtsman at the Moscow-Kursk-Voronezh railway company.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page

Malevich would later describe 1898 as the year he began exhibiting his work, although there is no evidence for this claim.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page 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 of typhoid in his early childhood.<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp 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.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page

Recognizing his style as increasingly more Impressionistic, Malevich intended to receive academic training in Moscow.<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp By 1904, as more French art was being reproduced and discussed in Russia in the magazine Mir iskusstva, Malevich had also become acquainted with the work of Paul Gauguin.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Malevich and other artists in Moscow gained an early exposure to Western modern art through the private collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov.<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp Their acquisitions ranged from French Impressionism to paintings by Paul Cézanne and Gauguin, and were later expanded to include the works of the key Parisian avant-garde artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Malevich is said to have visited both collections soon after his first arrival in Moscow in the fall of 1904.<ref name=":2" />Template:Reference page Similarities between his Apple Tree in Blossom (1904) and Alfred Sisley’s Villeneuve-la-Garenne (1872), then in Shchukin’s collection, have been cited as an early indication of the collectors’ influence on Malevich’s oeuvre.<ref name=":2" />Template:Reference page In October 1904, Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader and political activist, returns to Russia from exile. At the time, anti-government sentiment in Russia was gaining momentum, intensifying after Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg in January 1905, when Tsarist forces killed numerous protesters. On October 17, 1905, Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, granting limited voting rights to the middle class.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page 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.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page

Moscow and the avant-garde (1906-1915)

Early years in Moscow (1906–1910)

Malevich settled in Moscow, along with his family and his mother, in the spring of 1906.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page 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.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page In 1907, the Blue Rose Exhibition of a group of Moscow Symbolist 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.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page<ref group="nb">Malevich submitted a single painting to the exhibition, although it was rejected.</ref> The impact of Symbolism on Malevich during that period is evident in paintings such as The Triumph of Heaven (1907) and The Shroud of Christ (1908).<ref name=":2" />Template:Rp

By 1908, he developed a strong interest in Russian icons and Russian folk art.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page At the same time, more Western avant-garde influences reached Moscow, including through the activities of the Golden Fleece group, who in 1908 organized a major exhibition of Russian and Western European art that included works by Vincent van Gogh, Matisse, Georges Braque, Gauguin, and Cézanne.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page In 1909, the group also published in their journal a Russian translation of Matisse's treatise Notes on Painting (1908) and Shchukin opened his collection to the public.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page 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.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page

Knave of Diamonds and Donkey’s Tail (1910–1912)

In December 1910, Malevich took part in the first of a series of exhibitions of an artistic collective Knave of Diamonds. According to Malevich the name "Knave" (or "Jack") "stood for youth" and "diamonds" for "beautiful youth".<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page The group was founded by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Years later, in 1924, Malevich claimed that the Knave of Diamonds exhibition "shook severely the aesthetic foundations and consequently the foundation of art in society and criticism".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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 their eau de cologne called Severny, which was used by the company through the mid-1920s.<ref>Alexandra Shatskikh, Translated in English by Marian Schwartz. Black Square, Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism Template:Webarchive, Malevich’s perfume bottle for the eau de cologne Severny, Page 94. Yale University Press. November 2012. Template:ISBN</ref> The base of the bottle consisted of a jagged form resembling an iceberg and the stopper featured a small figurine of a polar bear.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Also in 1911, Malevich participated in the second exhibition of the avant-garde group Soyuz Molodyozhi (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg, where he showed some of his Cubist-inspired paintings. Other artists included Goncharova, Larionov, Vladimir Tatlin, and David Burliuk.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page That year, Goncharova and Larionov—both of whom had a strong influence on Malevich during that period—broke away from the Knave of Diamonds to establish the Donkey's Tail collective.<ref name=":7">Template:Cite web</ref> Intending to focus more on Russian subject matter, they embraced a deliberately "primitive" approach, favoring flattened forms and simplified visual structures.<ref name=":2" />Template:Rp Unlike their Western European counterparts—such as Picasso, whose turn to the "primitive" appropriated non-Western imagery mediated through French colonial conquests—the Moscow Neo-Primitivists drew on domestic sources, especially Russian peasant culture and folk imagery like the lubok.<ref name=":7" /> 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.<ref name=":7" /> In March 1912, Malevich took part in Donkey’s Tail exhibition in Moscow that ran through April, which included his recent works, such as the figurative and peasant-inspired gouache paintings titled Floor Polishers (1911-12) and Washerwoman (1911).<ref name=":2" />Template:Rp

Target Exhibition and Cubo-Futurism (1913)

By 1913, the influence of Italian Futurism on Russian contemporary art had become more pronounced. Excerpts of the Manifesto of Futurism, written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, were already published in Russia in 1909.<ref name=":2" />Template:Reference page 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.<ref name=":9">Template:Cite web</ref> Among such experiments was a technique called zaum, or “transrational” language, wherein Russian Futurist technique used invented sounds and words to bypass reason and evoke a higher reality.<ref name=":9" /> In a letter sent to his friend, composer Mikhail Matyushin, in the spring of 1913, Malevich wrote:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Reference page

Template:BlockquoteAround that time, Burliuk led a Russian futurist parade in Moscow, where artists with painted faces recited futurist poetry.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page In March 1913, Malevich participated in the Target exhibition in Moscow together with Goncharova and Larionov, continuing to reinterpret Futurist vocabularies to "suggest movement by breaking cone shapes into almost unrecognizable forms".<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Malevich described himself in this period as working in a “Cubo-Futurist” style.<ref name="HF">Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) A World History of Art. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing, pp. 794–795. Template:ISBN</ref> Among other paintings, Malevich exhibited Morning in the Country after Snowstorm and Knifegrinder or Principle of Glittering, both made in 1912, at Target for the first time.<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp That same year, the Cubo-Futurist opera, Victory Over the Sun, debuted in at Luna Park Theater in St. Petersburg.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page The opera featured a libretto by Aleksei Kruchenykh written in zaum, dissonant music by Matyushin, and stage and costume designs by Malevich.<ref name=":11">Template:Cite journal</ref> Its allegorical plot depicts the Sun—symbolizing the old order—being captured and buried, reflecting the Futurist celebration of technological progress and the rejection of past traditions.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> For one scene Malevich designed a curtain with the outline of a square, which he later identified as the first appearance of his Black Square.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page Although the production was poorly received by contemporary audiences, it prefigured Malevich’s subsequent development of abstract painting.<ref name=":11" />

Paris Salon and Wartime Works (1914)

In March 1914, Malevich was invited by Nikolai Kubin to participate in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page He sent several of his works to be shown at the Salon, including Samovar from 1913, a Cubist depiction of a traditional Eastern European metal container used to heat boil water.<ref name=":8" />Template:Reference page Malevich also co-illustrated, with Pavel Filonov, Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914 by Velimir Khlebnikov and another work by Khlebnikov in 1914 titled Roar! Gauntlets, 1908–1914, with Vladimir Burliuk.<ref name="WDL">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="WDL2">Template:Cite web</ref> On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, precipitating the outbreak of the Great War (later known as World War I). Sometime in the fall or winter of 1914, Malevich made Reservist of the First Division, an Cubo-Futurist work that incorporated collage, a post stamp with an image of Tsar Nicholas, printed text, and a thermometer affixed to the canvas, among other non-traditional compositional elements.<ref name=":2" />Template:Reference page 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 army reservist.<ref name=":14">Template:Cite web</ref> He also created a series of propagandistic chromolithographs in various formats in support of Russia's entry into the war.<ref name=":13" />Template:Reference page These prints were accompanied by captions by Vladimir Mayakovsky and published by the Moscow-based publication house Segodniashnii Lubok (Contemporary Lubok). While the prints drew on folk-art traditions of the lubok and emphasized bold blocks of pure color, the Reservist 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.<ref name=":14" /><ref name=":13">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Reference page

Suprematism (1915-1918)

In 1915, Malevich laid down the foundations of Suprematism when he published his manifesto, From Cubism to Suprematism. In 1915–1916, he worked with other Suprematist artists in a peasant/artisan co-operative in Skoptsi and Verbovka village. In 1916–1917, he participated in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow together with Nathan Altman, David Burliuk, Aleksandra Ekster and others. Famous examples of his Suprematist works include Black Square (1915)<ref>Drutt and Malevich 2003, p. 243.</ref> and White On White (1918).

Malevich exhibited his first Black Square, now at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) in 1915.<ref name=HF/> A black square placed against the sun appeared for the first time in the 1913 scenic designs for the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun.<ref name=HF/> The second Black Square was painted around 1923. Some believe that the third Black 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 more Black Square, the smallest and probably the last, may have been intended as a diptych together with the Red 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 note 1913 on the reverse, is believed to have been created in the late twenties or early thirties, for there are no earlier mentions of it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Malevich's student Anna Leporskaya observed that Malevich "neither knew nor understood what the black square contained. He thought it so important an event in his creation that for a whole week he was unable to eat, drink or sleep".<ref name="Neret2003">Template:Cite book</ref> In 1918, Malevich decorated a play, Mystery-Bouffe, by Vladimir Mayakovskiy produced by Vsevolod Meyerhold. He was interested in aerial photography and aviation, which led him to abstractions inspired by or derived from aerial landscapes.<ref name="chadaga">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…"</ref>

Painting technique

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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Post-revolutionary years (1918-1935)

File:Kazimir Malevich with his paintings in Leningrad 1924.jpg
Kazimir Malevich with his paintings in Leningrad (1924)

After the October Revolution (1917), the Russian Civil War ensued. Between 1918 and 1919, Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts of Narkompros, the Commission for the Protection of Monuments and the Museums Commission. He taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in Belarus (1919–1922) alongside Marc Chagall,<ref name="Wall Street Journal">Template:Cite news</ref> the Leningrad Academy of Arts (1922–1927), the Kiev Art Institute (1928–1930),<ref name=Filevska2>Filevska, Tetiana. "The Ukrainian Museum will be displaying new materials highlighting artistic modernism in Ukraine: Kazimir Malevich.Kyiv Period" Template:Webarchive 11 February 2017. Retrieved 30 January 2020.</ref> and the House of the Arts in Leningrad (1930). He wrote the book The Non-Objective World, which was published in Munich in 1926 and translated into English in 1959. In it, he outlines his Suprematist theories.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite book</ref>

Following the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established in 1922, led by Vladimir 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<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> style of art called Socialist Realism—a style Malevich had spent his entire career repudiating. Nevertheless, he swam with the current, and was quietly tolerated by the Communists.<ref name="JAMA">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Stalinism and censorship

Malevich's assumption that a shifting in the attitudes of the Soviet authorities toward the modernist art movement would take place after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and Leon Trotsky's fall from power was proven correct in a couple of years, when the government of Joseph 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.Template:Citation needed

In autumn 1930, he was arrested and interrogated by the OGPU in Leningrad, accused of Polish espionage, and threatened with execution. He was released from imprisonment in early December.<ref name="Radio Svododa-2019" /><ref name="Rudzytskyi" /> 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 historian Alexandre 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".Template: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.<ref name=":10">Template:Cite book</ref>

Travel to Poland and Germany (1927)

File:Banquet in honor of Malevich's solo exhibition at the Hôtel Polonia, 1927.jpg
Banquet celebrating Kazimir Malevich's 1927 exhibition at Hotel Polonia in Warsaw, with multiple Suprematist paintings seen hung on the wall in the back

In March 1927, Malevich traveled to Warsaw where he exhibited his work at the Polish Arts Club housed in the Polonia Hotel.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp He met with several Polish artists, including his former students Władysław Strzemiński (whose own theory of Unism was highly influenced by Malevich), sculptor Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski, a prominent abstract painter associated with the Polish Constructivist movement.<ref name=":12">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="A.T.">Template:Cite book</ref>

While generally greeted with enthusiasm, Malevich faced criticism from some contemporary artists, including Mieczysław 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".<ref name=":1" />Template:Rp Art historian Matthew 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.<ref name=":5">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp At the end of March 1927, Malevich and Tadeusz Peiper, a Polish poet and art critic who was the editor of the literary journal Zwrotnica, left Warsaw for Berlin. In April that year, him and Peiper visited the Bauhaus in Dessau, where they met with Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy.<ref name=":5" />Template:Rp

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.<ref name=":5" />Template:Rp 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".<ref name=":5" />Template:Rp He arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union.<ref name="lootedart.com">Template:Cite web</ref>

Death

Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad on 15 May 1935.<ref name="THE PROPHET">Template:Cite magazine</ref> On his deathbed, Malevich had been exhibited with the Black Square above him, and mourners at his funeral rally were permitted to wave a banner bearing a black square.<ref name="JAMA" /> Malevich had asked to be buried under an oak tree on the outskirts of Nemchinovka, a place to which he felt a special bond.<ref name="artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com">Sophia Kishkovsky (30 August 2013), Malevich’s Burial Site Is Found, Underneath Housing Development Template:Webarchive The New York Times.</ref> His ashes were sent to Nemchinovka, and buried in a field near his dacha. 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 during World 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".<ref name="lootedart.com" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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 a gated community.<ref name="artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com" />

Nationality and ethnicity

Template:Multiple image 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref> 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".<ref name=":6" />

Polish

Malevich's family was one of the millions of Poles who lived within the Russian Empire following the Partitions of Poland. Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev<ref name="nytimes1">Nina Siegal (5 November 2013), "Rare Glimpse of the Elusive Kazimir Malevich" Template:Webarchive. The New York Times.</ref> on lands that had previously been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth<ref name="dziennik.com">Template:Cite web</ref> of parents who were ethnic Poles.<ref name="Schwartz p. 84" /> Both Polish and Russian were native languages of Malevich,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> who would sign his artwork in the Polish form of his name as Kazimierz Malewicz.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His mother Ludwika wrote poetry in Polish and sang Polish songs, and kept a record of the Polish families living in the area.Template:Sfn In a 1926 visa application to travel to France, Malewicz claimed Polish as his nationality.<ref name="dziennik.com" /> French art historian Andrei 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2013, Malevich's family in New York City and fans founded the not-for-profit The Rectangular Circle of Friends of Kazimierz Malewicz, whose dedicated goal is to promote awareness of Kazimir's Polish ethnicity.<ref name="dziennik.com"/>

Ukrainian

According to Russian scholars Tatiana Mikhienko and Template:Ill, the secret police file from Malevich's arrest on September 20, 1930 indicates that Malevich declared his nationality as Ukrainian.<ref name="Radio Svododa-2019" /><ref name="Rudzytskyi">Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name=":6">Template:Cite journal</ref> It is sometimes claimed that he self-identified as a Ukrainian throughout his life.<ref name="Myroslav Shkandrij">Template:Cite web</ref> Similarly, the French art historian Gilles 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

Following the Russian 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> This push resulted in the Metropolitan 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.<ref name=":3" /> However, the consensus among art historians, including those of Ukrainian origin, is that whereas the discussion (related to the Russian 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Legacy

Alfred H. Barr Jr. included several paintings in the groundbreaking exhibition "Cubism and Abstract Art" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. In 1939, the Museum 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.<ref name="gagosian1">Malevich and the American Legacy, March 3 – April 30, 2011 Template:Webarchive Gagosian Gallery, New York.</ref>

The first U.S. retrospective of Malevich's work in 1973 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum provoked a flood of interest and further intensified his impact on postwar American and European artists.<ref name="gagosian1"/> However, most of Malevich's work and the story of the Russian avant-garde remained under lock and key until Glasnost.<ref name="nytimes1"/> In 1989, the Stedelijk 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 critic Nikolai Khardzhiev.<ref name="nytimes1"/>

Collections

Malevich's works are held in several major art museums, including the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and in New York, the Museum of Modern Art<ref name="nytimes1"/> and the Guggenheim Museum. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam owns 24 Malevich paintings, more than any other museum outside of Russia.<ref name="nytimes1"/> Another major collection of Malevich works is held by the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.<ref name="nytimes1"/>

Art market

Black Square, the fourth version of his magnum opus painted in the 1920s, was discovered in 1993 in Samara and purchased by Inkombank for US$250,000.<ref name=KIS/> In April 2002, the painting was auctioned for an equivalent of US$1 million. The purchase was financed by the Russian philanthropist Vladimir Potanin, who donated funds to the Russian Ministry of Culture,<ref name=HER/> and ultimately, to the State Hermitage Museum collection.<ref name=KIS>Template:Cite news</ref> According to the Hermitage website, this was the largest private contribution to state art museums since the October Revolution.<ref name=HER>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2008, the Stedelijk 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On 3 November 2008, one of these works entitled Suprematist Composition from 1916, set the world record for any Russian work of art and any work sold at auction for that year, selling at Sotheby'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.<ref>A Malevich and a Bronze by Brancusi Set Auction Highs for the Artists Template:Webarchive, The New York Times, 15 May 2018</ref>

File:Malevich perfume bottle.jpg
Original Malevich-designed frost glass bottle with craquelure for "Severny eau de cologne" (1911–1922)

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 writer Martin Cruz Smith's thriller Red Square. Noah Charney's novel, The Art Thief tells the story of two stolen Malevich White on White paintings, and discusses the implications of Malevich's radical Suprematist compositions on the art world. British artist Keith Coventry has used Malevich's paintings to make comments on modernism, in particular his Estate Paintings. Malevich's work also is featured prominently in the Lars von Trier film, Melancholia. At the Closing Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Malevich visual themes were featured (via projections) in a section on 20th century Russian modern art.

In 2015, a local businessman in Konotop, 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.Template:Sfn Both are published in:

Abridged and revised translations are published in:

The 1923–25 autobiography appears in:

The 1933 autobiography appears in:

See also

Footnotes

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References

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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). Template:ISBN
  • Drutt, Matthew; Malevich, Kazimir, Kazimir Malevich: suprematism, Guggenheim Museum, 2003, Template:ISBN
  • Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) A World History of Art. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing. Template:ISBN
  • Malevich, Kasimir, The Non-objective World, Chicago: P. Theobald, 1959. Template:ISBN
  • Malevich and his Influence, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2008. Template:ISBN
  • Milner, John; Malevich, Kazimir, Kazimir Malevich and the art of geometry, Yale University Press, 1996. Template:ISBN
  • Nakov, Andrei, Kasimir Malevich, Catalogue raisonné, Paris, Adam Biro, 2002
  • Nakov, Andrei, vol. IV of Kasimir Malevich, le peintre absolu, Paris, Thalia Édition, 2007
  • Néret, Gilles, Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism 1878–1935, Taschen, 2003. Template:ISBN
  • Petrova, Yevgenia, Kazimir Malevich in the State Russian Museum. Palace Editions, 2002. Template:ISBN. (English Edition)
  • Shatskikh, Aleksandra S, and Marian Schwartz, Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism, 2012. Template:ISBN
  • Shishanov, V.A. Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art: a History of Creation and a Collection. 1918–1941. – Minsk: Medisont, 2007. – 144 p.Mylivepage.ru
  • Template:Cite book
  • Tedman, Gary. Soviet Avant Garde Aesthetics, chapter from Aesthetics & Alienation. pp 203–229. 2012. Zero Books. Template:ISBN
  • Tolstaya, Tatyana, The Square Template:Webarchive, The New Yorker, 12 June 2015
  • Das weiße Rechteck. Schriften zum Film, herausgegeben von Oksana Bulgakowa. PotemkinPress, Berlin 1997, Template:ISBN
  • The White Rectangle. Writings on Film. (In English and the Russian original manuscript). Edited by Oksana Bulgakowa. PotemkinPress, Berlin / Francisco 2000, Template:ISBN

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