Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich
Self-portrait, 1912
Birth name	Kazimir Severinovich Malevich
Born	(1879-02-23)23 February 1879 Kiev Governorate of Russian Empire, now Ukraine
Died	15 May 1935(1935-05-15) (aged 56) Leningrad, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Field	Painting
Training	Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture
Movement	Suprematism
Works	Black Square, 1915; White On White, 1918

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich^{[nb 1]} (23 February 1879—15 May 1935) was a Russian painter and art theoretician. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde, Suprematist movement.^[1][2][3]

Early life

Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (today Ukraine)^[4] His parents, Ludwika and Seweryn Malewicz, were ethnic Poles.^[5] Both parents were Roman Catholic and they had fled from Kopyl Region of Belarus to Kiev in the aftermath of the January Uprising of 1863.^[6] His native languages were Russian and Polish.^[7]

Kazimir's father managed a sugar factory. Kazimir was the first of fourteen children,^[8] only nine of whom survived into adulthood. His family moved often and he spent most of his childhood in the villages of Ukraine, amidst sugar-beet plantations, far from centers of culture. Until age twelve he knew nothing of professional artists, although art had surrounded him in childhood. He delighted in peasant embroidery, and in decorated walls and stoves. He was able to paint in the peasant style. He studied drawing in Kiev from 1895 to 1896.

Later career

From 1896 to 1904 Kazimir Malevich lived in Kursk. In 1904, after the death of his father, he moved to Moscow. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1904 to 1910 and in the studio of Fedor Rerberg in Moscow (1904 to 1910). In 1911 he participated in the second exhibition of the group, Soyuz Molodyozhi (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg, together with Vladimir Tatlin and, in 1912, the group held its third exhibition, which included works by Aleksandra Ekster, Tatlin, and others. In the same year he participated in an exhibition by the collective, Donkey's Tail in Moscow. By that time his works were influenced by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Russian avant-garde painters, who were particularly interested in Russian folk art called lubok. Malevich's described himself as painting in a "Cubo-Futuristic" style in 1912.^[9] In March 1913 a major exhibition of Aristarkh Lentulov's paintings opened in Moscow. The effect of this exhibition was comparable with that of Paul Cézanne in Paris in 1907, as all the main Russian avant-garde artists of the time (including Malevich) immediately absorbed the cubist principles and began using them in their works. Already in the same year the Cubo-Futurist opera, Victory Over the Sun, with Malevich's stage-set became a great success. In 1914 Malevich exhibited his works in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris together with Alexander Archipenko, Sonia Delaunay, Aleksandra Ekster, and Vadim Meller, among others.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[10][11]

Suprematism

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)^[12] 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 in 1915.^[9] A black square placed against the sun appeared for the first time in the 1913 scenery designs for the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun.^[9] 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.^[13]

In 1918, Malevich decorated a play, Mystery Bouffe, by Vladimir Mayakovskiy produced by Vsevolod Meyerhold.

He also was interested in aerial photography and aviation, which led him to abstractions inspired by or derived from aerial landscapes. As Professor Julia Bekman Chadaga (now of Macalaster College ) writes:

In his later writings, Malevich defined the "additional element" as the quality of any new visual environment bringing about a change in perception... In a series of diagrams illustrating the "environments" that influence various painterly styles, the Suprematist is associated with a series of aerial views rendering the familiar landscape into an abstraction... (excerpted from Ms. Bekman Chadaga's paper delivered at Columbia University's 2000 symposium, "Art, Technology, and Modernity in Russia and Eastern Europe")

Some Ukrainian authors claim that Malevich's Suprematism is rooted in the traditional Ukrainian culture.^[14][15]

Post-revolution

After the October Revolution (1917), Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts of Narkompros, the Commission for the Protection of Monuments and the Museums Commission (all from 1918–1919). He taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in the USSR (now part of Belarus) (1919–1922), the Leningrad Academy of Arts (1922–1927), the Kiev State Art Institute (1927–1929), and the House of the Arts in Leningrad (1930). He wrote the book The World as Non-Objectivity, which was published in Munich in 1926 and translated into English in 1959. In it, he outlines his Suprematist theories.

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 a politically sustainable style of art called Social Realism—a style Malevich had spent his entire career repudiating. Nevertheless, he swam with the current, and was quietly tolerated by the Communists.^[16]

International recognition and banning

In 1927, Malevich traveled to Warsaw where he was given a hero's welcome.^[17] There he met with artists and former students Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro, whose own movement, Unism, was highly influenced by Malevich.^[18] From there the painter ventured on to Berlin and Munich for a retrospective which finally brought him international recognition. He arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union. 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 and Leon Trotsky's fall from power, was proven correct in a couple of years, when the Stalinist regime 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 banned from creating and exhibiting similar art.

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".

Malevich's work only recently reappeared in art exhibitions in Russia after a long absence. Since then, art followers have labored to reintroduce the artist to Russian lovers of painting. A book of his theoretical works with an anthology of reminiscences and writings has been published.

Death

Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad on 15 May 1935. On his deathbed he was exhibited with the black square above him, and mourners at his funeral rally were permitted to wave a banner bearing a black square.^[16] Malevich had asked to be buried under an oak tree on the outskirts of Nemchinovka, a place to which he felt a special bond.^[19] 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 2013, a luxury apartment block was built on the place of tomb and burial site of Kazimir Malevich. Another nearby monument to Malevich, put up in 1988, is now also on the grounds of a gated community.^[20]

Posthumous exhibitions

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.^[21]

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.^[22] However, most of Malevich’s work and the story of the Russian avant-garde remained under lock and key until Glasnost.^[23] In 1989, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam held the West’s first large-scale Malevich retrospective, including its own paintings and works from the collection of Russian art critic Nikolai Khardzhiev.^[24]

Collections

Malevich's works are held in several major art museums, including the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[25] The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam owns 24 Malevich paintings, more than any other museum outside of Russia.^[26] Another major collection of Malevich works is held by the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.^[27]

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.^[28] 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,^[29] and ultimately, to the State Hermitage Museum collection.^[28] According to the Hermitage website, this was the largest private contribution to state art museums since the October Revolution.^[29]

On 3 November 2008 a work by Malevich 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).

He was awarded the highest category "1A - a world famous artist" in "United Art Rating".

Malevich in popular culture

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.

In 1911 Brocard & Co. produced eau de cologne called Severny, with the packing and label designed by Malevich. This cologne was produced until the beginning of the 1990s.^[30]

Selected works

• 1912 Morning in the Country after Snowstorm
• 1912 The Woodcutter
• 1912-13 Reaper on Red Background
• 1914 The Aviator
• 1914 An Englishman in Moscow
• 1914 Soldier of the First Division
• 1915 Black Square and Red Square
• 1915 Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack - Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension
• 1915 Red Square: Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions
• 1915 Suprematist Composition
• 1915 Suprematism (1915)
• 1915 Suprematist Painting: Aeroplane Flying
• 1915 Suprematism: Self-Portrait in Two Dimensions
• 1915-16 Suprematist Painting (Ludwigshafen)
• 1916 Suprematist Painting (1916)
• 1916 Supremus No. 56
• 1916-17 Suprematism (1916–17)
• 1917 Suprematist Painting (1917)
• 1918 White on White
• 1928-32 Complex Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt
• 1932-34 Running Man

Gallery

• 

  Flower Girl, 1903

• 

  Bathers, 1908

• 

  Winter, 1909

• 

  Taking in the Rye, 1911

• 

  The Knifegrinder, 1912

• 

  Head of a Peasant Girl, 1912-1913

• 

  Bureau and Room, 1913

• 

  Portrait of Matiushin, 1913

• 

  Cow and Fiddle, 1913

• 

  Englishman in Moscow, 1914

• 

  Composition with the Mona Lisa, 1914

• 

  Black Square, c.1923, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

• 

  Black Circle, 1915, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

• 

  Suprematist Composition, painted 1915

• 

  Red Square: Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions, 1915.

• 

  Suprematist Composition, 1916

• 

  Suprematist Painting: Eight Red Rectangles, 1915

• 

  Suprematism, Museum of Art, Krasnodar 1916

• 

  Suprematism, 1921-1927

• 

  Boy, 1928-1932

• 

  Red-cavalry, 1928-1932

• 

  Summer Landscape, 1929

• 

  Mower, 1930

• 

  Running man, 1932

• 

  Complex Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt, 1928-1932

See also

Footnotes

References

• Andrei Nakov Kasimir Malevich, Catalogue raisonné, Paris, Adam Biro, 2002
• Andrei Nakov vol. IV of Kasimir Malevich, le peintre absolu, Paris, Thalia Édition, 2007
• The Non-objective World, Kasimir Malevich, trans. Howard Dearstyne, Paul Theobald, 1959. ISBN 0-486-42974-1
• Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism 1878-1935, Gilles Néret, Taschen, 2003. ISBN 0-87414-119-2
• 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). ISBN 0-87982-040-3
• Drutt, Matthew; Malevich, Kazimir, Kazimir Malevich: suprematism, Guggenheim Museum, 2003, ISBN 0-89207-265-2
• Milner, John; Malevich, Kazimir, Kazimir Malevich and the art of geometry, Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-300-06417-9
• Shatskikh, Aleksandra S, and Marian Schwartz, Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism, 2012. ISBN 9780300140897
• Shishanov V.A. Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art: a history of creation and a collection. 1918–1941. - Minsk: Medisont, 2007. - 144 p.Mylivepage.ru
• Kazimir Malevich in the State Russian Museum. Palace Editions. ISBN 978-3-930775-76-7. (English Edition)
• Malevich and his Influence, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2008. ISBN 978-3-7757-1877-6
• Ivanov, Sergei."Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School". Saint Petersburg: NP-Print, 2007, ISBN 978-5-901724-21-7
• Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) A World History of Art. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing. ISBN 9781856695848

External links and references

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kazimir Malevich.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Kazimir Malevich

• All Paintings of Kazimir Malevich
• Andrei Nakov's works on Kazimir Malevich
• Guggenheim: Kazimir Malevich
• "White on White"
• DA Collection
• Kazimir-Malevich.org - 128 works by Kazimir Malevich
• "Victory Over the Sun" discussed
• Das schwarze quadrat (The Black Square) - Exhibition at Kunsthalle Hamburg
• Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of painting. Historical outline

v t e Painters of the Leningrad Union of Artists of 1932–1991 Semion Abugov Taisia Afonina Piotr Alberti Nathan Altman Vladislav Anisovich Evgenia Antipova Mikhail Avilov Sergei Babkov Irina Baldina Andrei Bantikov Nikolai Baskakov Leonid Baykov Evgenia Baykova Vsevolod Bazhenov Yuri Belov Piotr Belousov Dmitry Belyaev Mikhail Bernshtein Zlata Bizova Mikhail Bobyshov Olga Bogaevskaya Lev Bogomolets Veniamin Borisov Nikolai Brandt Isaak Brodsky Dmitry Buchkin Piotr Buchkin Lev Chegorovsky Vladimir Chekalov Evgeny Chuprun Irina Dobrekova German Egoshin Oleg Eremeev Alexei Eriomin Pavel Filonov Boris Fogel Rudolf Frentz Sergei Frolov Nikolai Galakhov Irina Getmanskaya Ivan Godlevsky Vasily Golubev Vladimir Gorb Tatiana Gorb Elena Gorokhova Abram Grushko Mikhail Kaneev Yuri Khukhrov Tatiana Kopnina Maya Kopitseva Boris Korneev Alexander Koroviakov Victor Korovin Elena Kostenko Nikolai Kostrov Gevork Kotiantz Vladimir Krantz Yaroslav Krestovsky Mikhail Kozell Engels Kozlov Marina Kozlovskaya Aleksandr Laktionov Valeria Larina Boris Lavrenko Ivan Lavsky Vladimir Lebedev Felix Lembersky Anatoli Levitin Piotr Litvinsky Oleg Lomakin Alexander Lubimov Dmitry Maevsky Kazimir Malevich Gavriil Malish Eugene Maltsev Boris Maluev Mikhail Matyushin Evsey Moiseenko Valentina Monakhova Alexei Mozhaev Nikolai Mukho Andrei Mylnikov Mikhail Natarevich Alexander Naumov Piotr Nazarov Vera Nazina Anatoli Nenartovich Samuil Nevelshtein Yuri Neprintsev Yaroslav Nikolaev Dmitry Oboznenko Lev Orekhov Victor Oreshnikov Sergei Osipov Victor Otiev Vecheslav Ovchinnikov Vladimir Ovchinnikov Filaret Pakun Genrikh Pavlovsky Varlen Pen Boris Petrov Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin Nikolai Pozdneev Evgeny Pozdnekov Stepan Privedentsev Alexander Pushnin Semion Rotnitsky Maria Rudnitskaya Galina Rumiantseva Kapitolina Rumiantseva Lev Russov Arcady Rylov Ivan Savenko Alexander Savinov Gleb Savinov Vladimir Sakson Alexander Samokhvalov Vladimir Seleznev Arseny Semionov Alexander Semionov Joseph Serebriany Yuri Shablikin Boris Shamanov Alexander Shmidt Nadezhda Shteinmiller Elena Skuin Kim Slavin Galina Smirnova Alexander Sokolov Alexander Stolbov Alexander Tatarenko German Tatarinov Victor Teterin Nikolai Timkov Leonid Tkachenko Mikhail Tkachev Mikhail Trufanov Vitaly Tulenev Yuri Tulin Boris Ugarov Ivan Varichev Anatoli Vasiliev Piotr Vasiliev Valery Vatenin Nina Veselova Igor Veselkin Rostislav Vovkushevsky Lazar Yazgur Vecheslav Zagonek Ruben Zakharian Sergei Zakharov Alexander Zaytsev Elena Zhukova Maria Zubreeva

v t e Years in the history of fine arts of the USSR 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 14773228 LCCN: n80028265 ISNI: 0000 0001 2121 4081 GND: 118640836 BNF: cb119140946 ULAN: 500004959 NDL: 00470953 NKC: jn19990210401

Persondata
Name	Malevich, Kazimir
Alternative names
Short description	Polish artist Russian artist
Date of birth	23 February 1879
Place of birth	Kiev Governorate of Russian Empire
Date of death	15 May 1935
Place of death	Leningrad, Soviet Union