Éva Forgács - Malevich and Interwar Modernism - Russian Art and The International of The Square-Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2022)

Malevich and Interwar Modernism
Malevich and Interwar Modernism

Russian Art and the International
of the Square
Éva Forgács
BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
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First published in Great Britain 2022
Copyright © Éva Forgács, 2022
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Cover design: Toby Way

Cover Image: Malevic, Kasimir (1878–1935): Painterly Realism. Boy with Knapsack - Color
Masses in the Fourth Dimension, 1915. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Oil on
canvas, 28 x 17 1/2’ (71.1 x 44.5 cm). Acquisition confirmed in 1999 by agreement with the
Estate of Kazimir Malevich and made possible with funds from the Mrs. John Hay Whitney
Bequest (by exchange). 816.1935 © 2021. Digital image,The Museum of Modern Art,
New York/Scala, Florence
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Contents
List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
1 The Sky Is the Limit: Malevich at the Vitebsk Junction, 1919 11

Malevich’s Road to Vitebsk 11
Taking Off: Victory over the Sun 15
Suprematism 18
Conceptualizing Suprematism 23
Entering the Soviet World 28
Vitebsk, 1919 32
Launching UNOVIS 34
Suprematism: The New Imagination 35
2 The Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party and El Lissitzky’s

Grasp of Suprematism, 1919 39
Lissitzky’s Road to Vitebsk 39
The Bolshevik Policy of Nationalities 43
Suprematism as Ultimate Redemption 51
Lissitzky’s Rationalized Suprematism 57
3 Theo van Doesburg, Artist and Strategist 59

Van Doesburg’s Early Career 59
Elementary Dissent 65
The Antiauthoritarian Authorities of the Avant-Garde 65
Generational Issue in the Avant-Garde 70
The Russian-Dutch Connection 70
The International of the Square 72
4 The Irreconcilable Conflict between Constructivism and

Suprematism in Moscow 77
Postrevolutionary Moscow: The New State, the New Art, and the
New Concept of the Artist 77
vi Contents
The “Construction-versus-Composition Debate” at INKhUK 80

Lissitzky’s Attempt to Reconcile Suprematism and Constructivism 85
5 The Mirage of World Revolution: Postrevolution, Postwar Berlin,

and Moscow, 1918–1922 91
The World Revolution Will Happen in Berlin 91
The Mirage of Internationalism and the Political Reality 97
The “Silent Majority” and the War Experience 100
Reins on the Avant-Garde in Russia 105
The Russian Emigration in Berlin 106
Concepts of Constructivism as Kinetic Structure versus Static
Geometry in Berlin 109
The Magic of Words 112
6 As Many Narratives as Narrators: Russian Accounts of New

Russian Art in the West 115
The First Accounts 115
Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand 117
Ivan Puni’s Fierce Critique of Malevich 126
“New Russian Art”: A Talk by Lissitzky, Berlin, December 1922 127
7 The First Russian Exhibition in Berlin, 1922, and Its Reception 131
The History of the Exhibition 131
The Selection of the Artworks 135
Reception and Major Press Reviews of the First Russian Exhibition 137
8 Respectfully Challenging the Master: Lissitzky and Malevich 147

A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares: Surpassing Malevich 147
Proun Room, 1923, as a Further Riposte 152
Victory over the Sun on Paper, 1923 155
The Lenin Tribune, 1924 156
Malevich’s Lasting Influence 158
9 The Book That Was Not. Van Doesburg’s Thumbs-Down on the

Malevich Volume 161
Translating Malevich’s Writings 161
Van Doesburg Kills the Malevich Volume 164
Van Doesburg’s Reasons 167
Public Intellectual versus Prophet 169
The End of a Friendship 173
Personal or Cultural Issues? 177
Contents vii
10 Enter Malevich: Exhibitions in Post-Utopian Warsaw and Berlin,

and the Bauhaus Book, 1927 179
1923: A Watershed Year 179
Malevich in Warsaw 184
The Berlin Exhibition’s Context 188
Visit to the Dessau Bauhaus 192
Reception of the Berlin Exhibition 195
Volume 11 of the Bauhaus Books Series: Malevich’s
The Non-Objective World and Suprematism 197
11 The Postwar Scene and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam’s

Malevich Exhibition, 1957 201
Three Decades after the Berlin Exhibition 202
The Stedelijk Museum’s Tour de Force 205
The First Building Blocks of a New Narrative 211
The Manuscripts Left in Berlin 215
12 The New Left’s Role in Retrieving the Interwar Avant-Gardes and

Reclaiming the Russian Avant-Garde in the 1960s 219
Reconquering Everyday Life 220
The Russian Avant-Garde in Galleries and Museums 225
“It’s Only a Beginning!” 231
Notes 237
Bibliography 290
Index 307
Illustrations
1.1 Malevich: Painterly Realism of a Football Player, 1915 20

1.2 Malevich: Suprematist Painting (with black trapezoid and red square),
191520
1.3 Malevich: Self-Portrait. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 1908–1910 29
2.1 UNOVIS group photo, Vitebsk, 1920 44
2.2 The first Soviet post stamp 48
2.3 El Lissitzky: “Had Gadya” (“The Only Kid”), illustration to
Verse 10. 1919 48
3.1 Theo van Doesburg, photo, 1927 60
3.2 Theo van Doesburg: Design of Fountain, photo, 1917 64
3.3 Malevich: Architekton, 1924–1926 64
3.4 Theo van Doesburg: Study for Arithmetic Position, 1929 75
8.1 El Lissitzky: Tale of Two Squares, 1922 149
8.2 El Lissitzky: “New Man,” from Figurinen Cabinet Victory over
the Sun, 1923 151
8.3 El Lissitzky, Ilya Chashnik: Lenin Tribune, pencil, photo on paper, 1924 157
9.1 El Lissitzky: MACHINE, MACHINE, MACHINE, Merz
(Band 2, Nr.8/9), April–July 1924 176
9.2 Theo van Doesburg: Kazimir Malevich: BAZAR, BAZAR,
BAZAR, De Stijl, 1926–1927 176
10.1 Welcome reception for Malevich in the Polonia Hotel, Warsaw,
March 1927 187
11.1 Willem Sandberg, director of the Stedelijk Museum, 1945–1962 205
12.1 Cover page of Cimaise, spring issue, 1968 230
Acknowledgments
Work on this book has taken many years of discussions with friends and
colleagues who were willing and interested to discuss various details of it, on
both sides of the Atlantic. The far from complete list of them includes Timothy
O. Benson, Hubert van den Berg, the late Ákos Birkás, Margo Bistis, Ralf
Burmeister, Pál Deréky, Marina Dmitrieva, Charlotte Douglas, Ljiljana Grubisic,
Nina Gourianova, Luke Hartmann, Cornelia Klinger, Éva Kovács, Christina
Lodder, Rose-Carol Long, Ádám Nádasdy, István Nádler, Klaus Nellen, Peter
Nisbet, Krisztina Passuth, Carrie Paterson, Marjorie Perloff, Nancy Perloff, Jane
Sharp, and the late Margit Szilvitzky. I received help from wonderful librarians
like Wietse Coppes at the RKD, and Geurt Imanse at the Stedelijk Museum.
I owe thanks to the grant of EURIAS - European Institutes of Advanced
Study – that made it possible for me for almost a year to have no other duties
than writing the first draft of this book at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom
Menschen in Vienna, whose leaders and scholars created a vibrant intellectual
environment, and its staff provided me with the space and library privileges that
are hardly possible to overestimate. I am indebted to The Malevich Society’s
generous grant, with which I could do research in archives in Holland.
I am deeply grateful for the patience of my family during this work and all the
help I received from Peter and Gyula, and the encouragement from Julia.
Abbreviations
Andersen 1968: Troels Andersen, ed., Malevich, Essays on Art 1915-1928,

Vol. I, II. translated by Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold
McMillan, Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968
Andersen 1976: Troels Andersen, ed., K.S. Malevich: The World of Non-
Objectivity. Unpublished Writings 1922-25. Vol. III.
translated by Xenia Glowacki-Prus, Edmund T. Little,
Copenhagen: Borgen, 1976.
Andersen 1978: Malevich, The Artist, Infinity, Suprematism. Unpublished

Writings 1913–1928, edited by Troels Andersen. Vol. IV.,
Copenhagen: Borgen, 1978.
AK: Akademie der Künste, Berlin
BW: Timothy O. Benson, Éva Forgács, eds., Between Worlds. A

Source Book of Central European Avant-Gardes 1910-1930,
Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press – Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, 2002
GRI: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
RKD: Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The

Hague.
SMA: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
VM: Irina Vakar, Tatiana Mikhienko, eds., Kazimir Malevich.

Vol. 1: Memoirs and Criticism, Vol. 2: Letters and
Documents. London: Tate Publishing, 2015.
Translations, unless otherwise referenced, are by the author.

Introduction
In the exceptional moment of history that followed the epic bloodshed of the
First World War, unprecedented possibilities opened up for the generation that
survived the Great War. No degree of radical innovation was unimaginable. The
energy for restarting was as great as the losses and shock caused by the war. For
the new imagination that was inspired by prewar radicalism and gained ground
in the first years of the peace, not even the sky was the limit.
The avant-garde of the early interwar years is not a rarely addressed topic in
art history; nonetheless, there are still underexamined parts and unconnected
dots in its narrative. This book reexamines a segment of the interwar avant-
gardes with emphasis on previously overlooked facts that arguably played an
important role in shaping the art history of the period. Newly found documents
reveal new aspects of what has already been known, urging a more detailed and
more comprehensive history of the progressive arts of the early 1920s. It is rarely
mentioned that the decade entailed dramatically different periods even for the
avant-gardes: while its beginning featured universalist progressivism, the year
1923 marked a switch to a more pragmatic social commitment, new styles, and
new media.
The revival of the avant-garde after the Second World War and the delayed
rediscovery of its Russian chapter are interrelated. Therefore, the 1950s and
1960s retrieval of the progressive art of the interwar period will be discussed in
this book as part and parcel of the avant-garde project.
The staple of this narrative is, to a great extent, the motif of the square as a
highly charged form of choice for the post–First World War avant-garde. The
square as the sole form to occupy the picture space was introduced by Kazimir
Malevich and independently from him also by Piet Mondrian. The changing
symbolism of the square by both artists and their followers throughout the post–
First World War years indicated the level of the revolutionary disposition of the
avant-garde.
Whichever way it may be interpreted, Malevich’s 1915 Black Square,
simultaneously familiar and enigmatic, sits in the history of twentieth-century
2 Malevich and Interwar Modernism
art like some heavy stone, a meteorite out of the unknown or as if intuitively
evoked from faraway cultures; the history of the square as symbol of the cardinal
directions and the four seasons spanning several millennia; the Platonist symbol
of harmony, a symbol of transfiguration in Byzantine tradition, a symbol which
represents the four-letter name of God in the Cabbala as well as harmonious
proportions in Eastern spirituality. Malevich in effect reinvented it. In his
paintings, the square appears as a cosmic symbol and became a building block of
the visual lingua franca of the post–First World War international avant-garde.
In the wake of the cataclysm of the Great War and the 1917 Russian Revolution,
artists felt responsible for the construction of a new culture and believed that a
great deal of the world’s future well-being was in their hands. Major pre–First
World War art trends merged with postwar and postrevolutionary concepts and
artistic practices, involving a new awareness of technology in these new times.
This was not only the new “age of mechanical reproduction” due to photography
and film as Walter Benjamin stated but also the era of modern industrialism
and a new kind of universalism. Simple and enigmatic, the square became an
insignia of modernist progress, solidarity over borders and languages, and faith
in a future of justice and equality in the early 1920s. Its display identified an
artist’s work or a publication with the international avant-garde.
Optimism notwithstanding, the post–First World War era was stained by the
bitter, indelible experience that art and culture, no matter how highly elevated
and respected, had not been capable to prevent an all-out war. Art and education
may have failed to improve humans and the world—but that was now seen as the
past. Having experienced the inevitable consequences of rampant nationalism
and war profiteering, the artists of the post–First World War avant-gardes hoped
to restore and further advance a humanist civilization. Relying on the culture of
Enlightenment, the spectacular development of sciences, and inspired by the
October Revolution in Russia, they dreamed up a universal fraternity and social
equality. They felt compelled to imagine the opposite of what had happened
between 1914 and 1918 and aspired to convert the rest of the world to that new
imagination.
As the Enlightenment inspired the progressive artists of the 1920s, that
avant-garde in turn inspired the rebellious cultures of the 1960s in Europe. The
Western reception of Kazimir Malevich is a case in point: in the early 1920s it
was as enthusiastic as, in many cases, misunderstood. His personal appearance
and exhibition in Berlin in 1927, however, came after the tidal wave of the avant-
gardes in Europe, at a time when the great utopian ideas were going downhill.
His exceptional rediscovery after the Second World War made possible by the
Introduction 3
body of works that survived in Germany was, to a great extent, due to the hunger
for restoring the interwar avant-garde’s legacy. His art historic saga along with
that of the Soviet-Russian avant-garde thus illuminates the continuity of an
avant-garde that straddles the Second World War and connects the pre– and
post–Second World War periods as well.
It is a challenge to trace Malevich’s reception and perception west of Russia
in varying political and personal contexts. In the following chapters, the pieces
of the puzzle will be reassembled somewhat differently than they may be in a
monograph, amounting to a different picture, and so allowing some hitherto
un-interpreted pieces to fall into place. Since Malevich’s disciple El Lissitzky and
Lissitzky’s one-time friend Theo van Doesburg played key roles in Malevich’s
Western reception as well as in the shaping of the avant-gardes of the 1920s,
I will address some crucial questions related to Malevich’s interpretation and
reception to which we do not currently have sufficient answers in scholarship.
There are pivotal questions which have gone entirely overlooked or been
altogether unaddressed in the art history of this period. One of these concerns the
reasons for El Lissitzky’s fascination with Malevich’s art. Why did he abandon his
expressive style of Yiddish book illustration overnight for the abstract geometry of
suprematism in the fall of 1919? Furthermore, once he had devoted considerable
work to translating a collection of Malevich’s writings into German, why did that
volume ultimately go unpublished? What did the plans for this volume include?
Why was there confusion about constructivism and suprematism in Western
Europe? Why did Malevich’s 1927 Berlin exhibition and his Bauhaus book not
receive more praise and acclaim? What political factors and other circumstances
played a role in the rediscovery of Malevich after the Second World War? This
last question is all the more important because Malevich’s reappearance in
museums and galleries about a quarter of a century after his death was the first
significant step to the rediscovery of the entire Russian avant-garde, which until
then had been abandoned to almost total oblivion.
In an attempt to answer these questions, I will examine the original dramatic
influence of suprematism on El Lissitzky. As Lissitzky was the first and most
enthusiastic Russian artist in Germany who championed Malevich and laid the
groundwork for his subsequent reception, it is important to understand why
he saw suprematism as nothing less than an epiphany. El Lissitzky’s specific
personal and historic reasons that have so far not been integrated into the
narrative of the period must be considered, especially with regard to the Soviet
politics affecting minorities, and Jews and Jewish culture in particular. Another
aspect of Lissitzky’s activities on behalf of the Russian avant-garde abroad that
has been hitherto underexamined, is his long absence from the Russian art scene
during his study years in Germany before the First World War. This absence may
have resulted in his rather naïve attempts to reconcile the Russian constructivists
and suprematists. As Lissitzky was not part of the thriving Russian avant-garde
art movements in 1912–1913, he was not familiar with the wide range of deeply
rooted personal dynamics and conflicts of its protagonists.
However, Lissitzky’s presentation of the young Russian art in the West
shaped the international perception and narrative of the Russian avant-garde
to a great extent for decades. While he may not have been the only source, he
was, nevertheless, during the early 1920s, arguably the most vocal, most well
connected, and most authoritative one. The narrative he presented was further
complicated by his dramatically changing personal relationship with one of the
most influential artists who was a masterful organizer of the avant-garde and to
a great extent controlled the Western discourse and interpretation of Malevich
and Lissitzky: Theo van Doesburg, the Dutch artist, author, and editor. Van
Doesburg’s activity shaped the international reception of the Russian avant-
garde in a definitive way.
The conditions and the trajectory of Malevich’s extraordinary, posthumous
comeback in the international art scene after an almost total eclipse of three
decades that passed between his solo exhibition in Berlin, 1927, and his next one
in Amsterdam in 1957 are so unusual in the world of art and the history of culture
that they merit closer examination. Post–Second World War efforts to recover
the interwar avant-gardes provided the preconditions to the exponentially
growing public attention and scholarly interest toward the works of Malevich,
and the Russian avant-garde in general, since the late 1950s, and the increasing
visibility of their works in a number of exhibitions since then. Following the
narrative of Malevich’s reception west of Russia during his lifetime, as well as in
posterity, reveals both similarities and differences between the ambitions of the
avant-gardes in the early 1920s and those of the radicals and reformists of the
1960s. Thus, Malevich’s rediscovery will be examined in the framework of post–
Second World War antifascism and the New Left movements of that period.
The fact that El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, and Theo van Doesburg shaped
a significant segment of the interwar avant-garde and its legacy is in no way
meant to imply that they were the only ones to have formed that history. Their
activities and motivations were embedded in the context of their fellow artists’
work and that of interwar German and Russian history. Their legacy has become
part of the post–Second World War and 1960s culture, a time in which Paris
once again played a decisive role. One of the goals of this book is to reveal the
Introduction 5
continuity between the aspirations of the arts and art concepts of the 1920s and
the 1960s, going as far as to suggest that the artistic revival and the rediscovery
of the political power of art in the 1960s could hardly have happened without
inspiration from the 1920s.
It seems hardly possible to address the history and concepts of the future-
bound avant-gardes of the early twentieth century without first pointing
out their relations to historical artistic tradition, especially that of medieval
times. Recent scholarship has challenged the concept of the “originality of
the avant-garde,”1 revealing that many radical modernists had studied and
acknowledged the historic past of their respective cultures, seeking patterns and
ideas of universal, cosmic validity, whether in religion, theosophy, or Russian
cosmism. With the dialectics of radically transcending the past and constructing
something new, many avant-garde artists proceeded on dual tracks, inventing
radically new visual and poetic forms and syntax while also tracing their lineage
from tradition.2 Both Russian and Western modernists who interacted with each
other in interwar Europe rediscovered their respective medieval traditions with
a sense of political dissent.
The inconceivable horrors and losses suffered in the First World War, to which
people saw no rational explanation, generated irrationalism across Europe as
well as Russia. Post–First World War Germany’s medievalists—to whom the
neologism Bauhaus was a nod of acknowledgment3—were adversarial to the
Weimar Republic and its modernist efforts. Mysticism as well as the cult of
medievalism abounded all over Germany including the early Bauhaus, where
Johannes Itten and Lothar Schreyer resorted to religious and quasi-religious
irrationalism.
In a similar vein, many Russian avant-garde artists reached back to pre-
Petrin, or pre-Enlightenment Russian tradition as the most valid source of their
culture. While Malevich claimed an entirely new beginning with his 1915 Black
Square on White Ground, which cleaned the picture surface of all vestiges of
previous painterly image-making, historically speaking his thinking had roots in
religion adopting the rich and varied Russian tradition of icons and spirituality.
Enlightenment, imported to Russia by Peter the Great (1682–1725) as well as
the persecution of those who rejected it, provoked a backlash among subsequent
modernists. While they were intensely interested in modern Western art,
they also asserted their Russian roots and identity. “Westernizing” and being
a “Slavophile” were conflicting attitudes, sometimes even in one and the same
person’s views. The great intellectual and formal variety of early twentieth-
century Russian art boldly mixed tradition and innovation, spirituality and
pragmatism, and had room for the artist-prophet as well as the artist-engineer,
even if on a collision course.
Elements of Russian Orthodoxy were not only significant for artists; they
were present in politics as well. Many members of the bolshevik leadership
understood religion in a particular cultural sense. Elements of folkloric as well
as Russian Orthodox traditions were tacitly approved by the atheist bolshevik
Party that saw these traditions transformed into the quasi-religious cult of
Lenin, turning, for example, the “red (or ‘beautiful’) corner” of the icon in
the Russian house into “Lenin corner” after Lenin died in January 1924. As
Nina Tumarkin relates,4 Stalin, who had been trained at the Tiflis theological
seminary, purposely used religious symbolism to be recognized as the legitimate
successor of the deceased leader on the popular level, too. The mythologizing
of Lenin not only used motives from fairy tales but also was the foundation
of the myth of Stalin as well. The committee responsible for Lenin’s funeral in
1924 consisted of individuals who had a deep commitment to religiousness
as a Russian tradition. Exhibiting Lenin’s body in a mausoleum reflected their
actual belief in physical resurrection. They merged belief systems and science:
one of them, Leonid Krasin, shared the conviction of Nikolai F. Fodorov (1828–
1903) that science will make it possible to physically recreate deceased human
organisms in the future. Another member of the committee was none other than
Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875–1933), commissar of the People’s Enlightenment.
Lunacharsky, along with his brother-in-law, philosopher, physician, and writer
Alexander Bogdanov, regarded Marxism as well as socialism as new, secular
religions. He was convinced that the leaders of the revolution had to engage in
a new “god building” (bogostroitelstvo).5 Thus Lenin’s corpse was in the hands of
individuals who believed in the immortality of humans and actively propagated
his emerging cult.
Russian artists turned to icons with renewed interest even prior to the First
World War. The icon, Oleg Tarasov6 and Nina Gourianova,7 among many other
authors, attest, was the holiest object in Russia—not a representation of but a
direct presentation of divinity. Enlightenment was particularly opposed by the
“Old Believers” in Russia, who were persecuted by Patriarch Nikon (1605–1681)
but were respected by the young avant-garde of the early twentieth century. Icons
were beginning to be appreciated aesthetically rather than liturgically and seen
as works of art only in the late nineteenth century.8 It was then, Tarasov argues,
that the ornate frames of the icons “began to reflect new aesthetic conceptions,
[setting] the icon face to face with the surrounding world, with poetry,
philosophy, and the whole worldly culture.”9 Anatoly Strigaljov also underlines
Introduction 7
that many differences between Russian artists who belonged to a wide array of
groups in the early twentieth century were overwritten by their common interest
in the “broadly understood Russian, or Eastern artistic tradition,”10 that they
did not regard as past but very much as being a part of their present. As the
Russo-Byzantine tradition gained new ground and became widely popular,
many artists as prominent as Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov valued
its legacy higher than that of Western modernism. Goncharova, who included
religious motifs in her futurist book illustrations, confided: “At the beginning of
my development I learned most of all from my French contemporaries. ( . . . )
Then I realized the great significance and value of the art of my own country.”11
Goncharova and Larionov launched Russian “neo-primitivism” and in their
1913 Manifesto of Rayonism, declared: “Hail beautiful Orient! We unite ourselves
with contemporary Oriental artists for communal work. Hail nationalism!
(. . . ) We are against the West, vulgarizing our Oriental forms, and rendering
everything valueless.”12 Referring to folk art, for example the visual language
of popular lubki (peasant woodcuts), they announced: “Our future is behind
us”13—that is, the past history forecasts the future.
Priest and religious philosopher Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), who combined
theology and aesthetics in the study of Russian icons, directed attention to the
“simultaneous planes” and what he perceived as “reverse perspective”14 of the
icons in his 1920 essay Reverse Perspective.15 He claimed the absence of European
renaissance one-point perspective as being specifically Russian.
The topic of time and space in the visual arts was one of the central issues
of the international art discourse in the early 1920s. A series of lectures was
dedicated to it at the Psycho-Physical Department of RAKhN (Russkaia
Academia Khudozhestvennykh Nauk, the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences)
between 1921 and 1924. The department was founded by Vasily Kandinsky;
the papers delivered in the series included Malevich’s talk on color, light, and
pointillism in time and space.16
The sense of vocation of the artists that united religious, moral, and
philosophical motifs had also been a long tradition not only in Russia but
also in Germany, especially in the programmatic idealism of early German
Romanticism. On the other hand, the new claim of the artist’s autonomy required
that art be freed from serving or illustrating thought systems. The nineteenth-
century Russian painter Alexander Ivanov (1806–1858) represented the concept
of the autonomous artwork, pioneering the idea of presentation rather than
representation in art, pointing to the original function of the Russian icon versus
its later concept as a piece of art.17 The rejection of the institutionalized and
professional art world in order to validate inner, individual vision also originates
from Romanticism’s aesthetic and political dissent in Europe that entailed scorn
for the established institutions of art, while promoting high esteem for the depth
of human emotion. Anti-institutionalism was also part of anarchism, the many
varieties of which were ubiquitous in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
Europe and Russia. Kandinsky, for example, labeled a “German Romanticist”
by his fellow Russian artists,18 was also an anarchist, as was Arthur Lehning,
publisher of the avant-garde journal international revue i 10, and many avant-
garde artists who contributed to the short-lived Russian journal Anarkhiia in
1917–1918. As will be shown, Alexander Rodchenko, one of the regular artist
contributors of Anarkhiia, kept on protesting against the new, postrevolutionary,
centralized political power on its pages, as did several other members of the
avant-garde, including Malevich and Alexei Gan. Political anarchism in Russia
pervaded the communist movement and the factory committees that were
formed after the revolutions. These committees took the bolshevik Party’s
promise to put the working class to power at face value, expecting de facto self-
government. As a delegate at the First All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions
held in Petrograd, January 7–14, 1918, expressed, “the very idea of socialism
is embodied in the concept of workers’ control.”19 A strong anti-establishment
stance was as vigorous in the political and artistic movements after the October
Revolution as they were in 1960s France.
Energizing the progressive artists of the post–First World War years was the
unprecedented pace of development in human knowledge during the previous
decades. Thinking on a cosmic scale and radically reimagining the universe
rather than imitatively representing specific details of the given natural and
man-made world encompassed modernism. Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and
other members of Der Blaue Reiter and De Stijl groups, as well as a number of
other thinkers and artists in Russia and the West, shared this concept. Many
artists, including members of De Stijl as well as Kandinsky, drew inspiration
from theosophy and Eastern spiritual currents with the ultimate goal to achieve
“universal harmony.” Universal thinking in Russia entailed the expectation
that art and the artists will be the agents of a radical universal and social
re-creation of the world. Visionary thought-constructions that evaded scientific
evidence such as the ideas of Fedorov who, as mentioned previously, believed
in mankind’s future in the cosmos and the resurrection of every human being
who ever lived inspired scientists as well as artists. Nothing seemed impossible.
Russian space physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) and, among
others, mathematician Piotr Ouspensky (1878–1947) extended inquiry into
Introduction 9
cosmic space and new, yet unknown dimensions, providing the preexisting
broader context of Malevich’s ideas.20 Mathematicians challenged the pillars of
rational modernist thinking such as Euclidian geometry, suggesting different
models like Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792–1856) in his Imaginary Geometry and
the resumé of his works, the 1855 Pangeometry,21 which may have inspired El
Lissitzky’s 1924 essay “A[rt] and Pangeometry.” Investing art with the potential
to be instrumental in the creation of a new, egalitarian society was also rooted in
late eighteenth-century utopian socialist ideas.22 Soloviev, similarly to the Count
Saint-Simon, anticipated art having a vanguard function as the propaganda task
force of the future state that would sell the new values to the populace during
the time lag between the establishment of the new state and the materialization
of its promised benefits. In such anticipations, vanguard art was not seen as
oppositional, as an art in permanent progress or “permanent revolution” in a
later Trotskyite sense, but as the official art of the future state.23 Saint-Simon’s
friend and correspondent Olinde Rodrigues (1795–1851) clearly stated: “It is
we, artists, that will serve as your avant-garde; the power of the arts is indeed the
most immediate and the fastest. We have weapons of all sorts: when we want to
spread the new ideas among people, we carve them in marble or paint them on
canvas; we popularize them by means of poetry and music.”24 At this very first
concept of the avant-garde as weaponized aesthetics, we cannot fail to see how
far the merger of the artist and the political leader went in the cases of Mussolini
and Hitler, in whose hands “the masses [were] like wax ( . . . ) to control the
masses like an artist”25 and in what Boris Groys calls Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin, the
total artwork of Stalin.26 The interrelationship of the avant-gardes and the issue
of power as well as the competition for the position of cultural hegemony are
much discussed in the literature of art history and are manifest in many debates
during the 1920s. The square secured a supreme standing to artists who, with the
best intentions, used this emblematic motif as a sign of higher knowledge and
future harmony. Aspiring to secure its undisputed, absolute validity, however,
also implied the danger of working for a future dominated by an ersatz religion
of superhuman order—that eventually registered with most of the avant-garde
artists.
A rapid succession of intertwined aesthetical and philosophical ideas
circulated in the first decade of the twentieth century in both Russia and the
West. The unprecedented wave of technological inventions since the last
quarter of the nineteenth century directed attention to such invisible but
tangibly efficient phenomena as electricity, the X-ray, and the microscopic
world, awakening mankind to the power of previously unthought-of things like
electric current and rays of newly explored potentials. Einstein’s special theory of
relativity, constructed in 1905, informed the cubists as well as later generations
of artists and expanded the imagination with more emphasis on cosmic space
and time. Henri Bergson, whose works were translated into Russian by 1914,
brought the concept of intuition into the fore27 as the tool to get a sense of
the world beyond earthly existence. Inquiries into the infinity of the universe
challenged Enlightenment rationalism and confronted it with the possibility of
a new kind of thought system. New scientific and technological results, with
special emphasis on flying, an age-old dream of humankind, and the successes
of early aviation, also fueled the imagination, leading to a radical reassessment
of the future perspectives of human knowledge.28 The ambition to conquer what
has yet been unknown pervaded the nascent culture of progressive thinking and
artistic expression.
The avant-gardes of the early twentieth century opened a new era in the
methods of interpreting artworks as well. Visual arts, throughout most of
the history of Western culture, had been buttressed by the solid system of
Christian iconography and the transparent subject matters of secular art, so
verbal interpretation was not a new discipline. As Klaus van Beyme points
out, however, the avant-gardes necessitated the explanation of the meaning
of abstract paintings, which was not obvious to their viewers.29 The influence
of the commentators increased, as did the pressure on artists’ groups to issue
manifestos because verbal statements not only offered a clue to the artworks
but also raised their ranking in the international hierarchy. Many artists had
the ambition to double as theorists and manifestos abounded in the avant-
garde movements. Thus, the artists’ own writings were soon regarded as the
most, or the only, authentic interpretation of their works. Van Doesburg is
straightforward in stating that it is impossible for the public “to lift itself to the
artist’s level,”30 therefore “it is up to [the artist] to provide his own explanations”31
of his works. As van Beyme notes, in the absence of self-interpreting texts, other
primary sources such as letters and various verbal paraphernalia like diaries or
notes of artists were also coveted and, if it was possible, artists were interviewed
to offer authentic interpretations of their own work.32
This feature of our current art history writing is informing the way we look
for the actual truth of a narrative, and such research has been a substantial
part of the present book, in which I am striving to balance historical facts and
the artists’ own statements.
1
The Sky Is the Limit

Malevich at the Vitebsk Junction, 1919
With the surprising inauguration of suprematism as early as 1915, Malevich

claimed a superior position for his art and achieved a distinguished position for
himself. Radically innovative, ambitious, and controversial, his work generated
passionate debates. By the time he arrived in Vitebsk in the fall of 1919, armed
with a shockingly new visual system and radical views, Malevich was a leading
prophetic figure of the new Russian art. Aside from his groundbreaking work,
he had expressed polemical views in a number of articles, pamphlets, and
manifestos. He had teamed up with some of the most progressive artists and
poets of his time, had scandalous conflicts with others, and already had many
enthusiastic, deeply committed young followers.
Malevich’s Road to Vitebsk
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born on February 26, 1879,1 near Kiev (the
Russian name of Kyiv, capital of Ukraine), to parents of Polish descent.2 His
father worked at a sugar-beet factory. From 1895 to 1896 Malevich studied at the
Kiev Art School,3 and in 1898 he moved to Moscow where he studied at various
art academies, including the Stroganoff School of Art. Since 1907 he was an
increasingly active participant of the emerging new art scene in Russia. During
1908–1914, Malevich was intensely involved in the unfolding art movements
and events. He joined Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova in their early
naive-folklorist and cubist endeavors. Moscow artists, led by Larionov, formed
the Bubnovii valet (Jack of Diamonds) group in 1910 to mark their difference
from the new Western art, which was admittedly the model of the formerly
dominant Mir iskusstva (World of Art) group. Larionov and his followers
embraced both urban and popular culture. They drew on icon painting, but
directly religious subject matter was censored from their shows.4 The group’s
December 1910 exhibition was harshly attacked for being vulgar and even
allegedly insane.5 Malevich participated in the exhibition along with Larionov,
Goncharova, David and Vladimir Burliuk, Piotr Konchalovsky, Ilia Mashkov,
Alexandra Exter, and others including contemporary French artists. Following
the show’s controversy, a faction of the group spearheaded by Larionov and
Goncharova that included Malevich as well as his later adversary Vladimir
Tatlin split and launched a more radical program that materialized in March
1912 when they organized the provocatively named Oslinii khvost (Donkey’s
Tail) exhibition—a tongue-in-cheek reference to the general public’s view that
innovations of the modern painter were little better than the mindless wagging
of a donkey’s tail throwing around paint on a canvas.6 In 1912, on his way to
further radicalization, Malevich associated with the Petersburg-based Sojuz
molodozhi (Union of Youth) movement and befriended its leader, painter, and
musician Mikhail Matyushin, who would become one of his closest friends and
mentor in the coming years. In this same year, the Hylea group of cubo-futurist
poets Alexei Kruchenikh, Velimir (Victor) Khlebnikov, Benedikt Livshitz,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the multitalented Burliuk brothers David, Vladimir,
and Nikolai also contacted the Union of Youth.7 Having chosen the ancient
name of a Ukrainian province (Hylea, an estate near Kherson) for their modern
group, they radically disrupted and reassessed the concept of art along with the
elementary units of expression, dissecting the grammatical and semantic system
of the aesthetic and the Russian language. Breaking the Russian language down
to “the word as such”8 and further to “the letter as such”9 was the fundamental
gesture of defying the existing culture and inaugurating a more innovative use
of the language. These shifts reflected the Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti’s parole in libertà (words-in-freedom), a deliberate bias from the
application of the existing syntax and linear typography. The Russian cubo-
futurists’ 1912 almanac Slap in the Face of Public Taste10 opens with a manifesto
of the same title in which they declare: “We alone are the face of our time,”11 and
express “insurmountable hatred for the language existing before [their] time.”12
Kruchenikh and Khlebnikov’s 1913 pamphlet “The Word as Such” mentions
Malevich among the new like-minded artists. In this same text, Kruchenikh’s
transrational poem of non-existing words, “dyr bul shchyl,” similarly radical to
Marinetti’s “Zang Tumb Tumb” (also known as “Zang Tumb Tuuum,” written
between 1912 and 1914, published in 1914) was first published as an alternative
“model for another sort of sound and word combination.”13 The consequent
pamphlet “The Letter as Such” raises the stakes, and while breaking down words
The Sky Is the Limit 13
into letters, it brings into play the typeface as a graphic presence, pointing out
that handwriting, as opposed to printing, conveys the author’s—and, as in the
case of the Russian futurist books, the visual artist’s—mood “that changes during
the process of writing ( . . . ) independently from the words.”14
In a process parallel to that of the poets, Malevich went through phases of
painterly expression—from impressionism to Cézannian structure to Russian-
revival-related neo-primitivism to cubism, until in 1912 he formed a closer
friendship with the transrational poets Kruchenikh and Khlebnikov who,
along with Matyushin, became his closest creative partners. Transrationalism—
zaum, short for zaumennii, or “beyond reason,” in apt English translation
“beyonsense”15—radically overthrew the relationship of form and content, the
traditional use of which they saw as the literary materialization of the current
power structure. The Russian cubo-futurists declared:
We abolished punctuation marks, which for the first time brought to the fore the
role of the verbal mass and made it perceivable. ( . . . ) We understand vowels
as time and space ( . . . ) and consonants as color, sound, and smell. ( . . . ) We
believe the word to be a creator of myth; in dying, the word gives birth to myth,
and not vice versa.16
The concept of “verbal mass” forecast and inspired Malevich’s concept of

“painterly masses” or the “color masses”17 of his suprematist work, in which he
would have color detached from the object and handle the color as an autonomous
entity which acts in a way similar to that in which sound detaches from meaning
in zaum poetry in order to have its own independent vocal presence.
In the summer of 1913, Malevich and Kruchenikh visited the recently
widowed Matyushin in his dacha at Uusikirkko, in Finland. The three of them—
Khlebnikov was also expected to join but had lost his travel money—ambitiously
called their private meeting the First All-Russian Congress of the Poets of the
Future (The Poet-Futurists). They issued a program that included, among other
radical points, “To swoop down on the stronghold of artistic weakness—on the
Russian theater—and decisively to reform it.”18 Following up on this Malevich,
also on behalf of Mayakovsky, wrote to Matyushin asking him to solicit the
Union of Youth’s support “for backing us in our first show”19—a move that
proved instrumental in the realization of the stage performance of Victory over
the Sun, as well as the production of Vladimir Mayakovsky. A Tragedy in the
same year.
Malevich at that time was eager to invent a term for his own endeavors. In
1914 he coined the term “fevralism,”20 inspired by an incident when, according
to a memoir of his, “On February 19, 1914, I rejected reason in a public lecture.”21
Malevich thus engaged in “absurdism and provocative attacks against generally
accepted taboos.”22 He transferred the concept of zaum into painting as “alogism”—
the juxtaposition of motifs that had no logical connection. Malevich wrote on
the back of his (probably) 1915 painting Cow and Violin, which followed (or
rather paralleled) Vasily Kamensky’s alogical poem Tango with Cows, published
in 1914: “Alogical comparison of two forms, ‘violin’ and ‘cow’ as a moment of
battle with logism, naturalness, philistine meaning and prejudice.”23 Juxtaposing
unrelated objects as a revolt against conventional linearity and straightforward
meaning, Malevich preceded the surrealists’ methodology without the Freudian
interpretation of such compositions’ connection to dreams and the unconscious.
Deconstruction of the old aesthetic structure and appeal to “beyonsense,” the
intuitive recognition or perception of different realities, were the backbone of
the new artistic culture. “A work of the highest art is written in the absence of
reason,”24 Malevich wrote in 1916 in the spirit of zaum—a statement he soon
corrected as he invented, instead, the concept of “intuitive reason.” “The square
is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive reason,” he wrote,25
creating an oxymoron in an attempt to reconcile opposing concepts so that
neither intuition nor reason would be given up entirely: intuition must be
controlled by reason, and reason is enriched by the instinctive. “Beyonsense”
was meant to straddle the rift between the intuitive and the rational by a move
tantamount to squaring the circle. Malevich’s alogism demonstrated that he
considered himself above the perceived rules of thinking. Such transgression
greatly contributed to the enigmatic perception of the Square.
The cubo-futurist poets sought to deliberately reinvent and retexture the
language to make it flexible in order to convey what they perceived to be
radically new meanings. This was an all-out attack on linguistic clarity and
the transparency of the fabric of rational, enlightened communication as Kant
understood it, who pointed out that “Caesar non est supra grammaticos,”26 “not
[even] the king stands above grammar.” Disregard for the rules of language was
a rebellious anti-Enlightenment and anticultural stance. Jane Sharp points out
that the Jack of Diamonds group’s attitude was already “in distinct contrast to the
World of Art group, who invoked the aristocratic, eighteenth-century European
Enlightenment as their cultural model,”27 and, consistently with this, the defiance
of logic and systems of rules was at the core of the cubo-futurist agenda as well.
In an anti-Petrine political gesture, Enlightenment rationalism was rejected—
this time not for religion but in favor of occultism, intuition, or trans-scientific
spirituality, each of which was considered as ranking higher than reason. As in
early romanticism, only the artist of superior talent and sensitivity—a genius—
could have access to such higher knowledge. Positioning himself in the virtual
space of the future whence the existing culture could be seen as obsolete and
underdeveloped, Malevich claimed to have superseded cubo-futurism, too.
Using language acoustically rather than to convey meaning—similarly to
the Italian futurists but predating Dada—the cubo-futurist poets inspired and
encouraged Malevich to recreate visual language likewise, from the ground
up. “We started to endow words with content on the basis of their graphic and
phonic characteristics,” the cubo-futurist poets’ untitled manifesto declared.28
They held that existing bits of knowledge and cognitive methods barred real, free
perception. Matyushin urged the development of new sensual and intellectual
capacities laid out in his “zor-ved,” or “see-hear,” concept that aimed, through
the training of the eyes and the eye muscles, to achieve 180- or ultimately 360°
vision. The new program was immersion into the unknown. At the same time,
the cubo-futurists aspired to own a new authority over the new language that
would not be shared with the guardians of the old system.
Malevich’s alogical paintings of 1912–1913 were followed by what Shatskikh
calls his fevralist alogism, attempts to break free of all existing painterly systems.
His new suprematist works, which he developed from early 1915 on, introduced
an entirely new visual grammar and vocabulary. He had a keen interest in higher
dimensions and the notion of space-time. Piotr Uspensky’s 1911 treatise Tertium
Organum29 and studies in the fourth dimension and hyperspace,30 as well as the
wonders of early aviation, opened up new perspectives for the cubo-futurists
and specifically for Malevich who, in his suprematist works, claimed to have
virtually relocated into the white space of the cosmos.
Malevich gave up his neo-primitivist art—which was not unlike the German
expressionism of the Die Brücke painters—for the painterly language of cubism
and futurism around 1910–1911, and participated, along with Goncharova and
Larionov, in the illustration of handmade books by the cubo-futurist poets.31
Taking Off: Victory over the Sun
Malevich was one of the creators of the “first futurist opera,” Victory over the Sun—
in Charlotte Douglas’s words: “Russia’s first absurdist spectacle”32—performed in
St. Petersburg’s Luna Park Theater on December 3 and 5, 1913. Victory over the
Sun was a quintessential Gesamtkunstwerk written by Kruchenikh, with music
by Matyushin, costumes and stage settings by Malevich, and a prologue by
Khlebnikov. This ambitiously, absurdly, and ironically titled opera outlined the
utopia of a future without any memory of the past, integrating notions of the
fourth dimension, space-time continuum, and an anarchist vision of uprooting
the existing social and political system symbolized on stage by the defeat of
nothing less than the center of the solar system.
The simple and linear action of the opera is centered around the capture and
defeat of the sun, the symbol of old energy and “traditional” three-dimensional
existence, and, like Sarastro’s kingdom in The Magic Flute, a source of light and
clarity, Enlightenment rationalism. As Matyushin and Malevich related to a
journalist of a St. Petersburg daily,
The futurists want to free themselves from this ordered quality of the world. ( . . . )
They want to transform the world into chaos, to smash the established values to
pieces and from these pieces create new values by making new generalizations
and discovering new, unexpected, and invisible connections. Take the sun—this
is a former value—it therefore constrains them, and they want to overthrow it.33
Overthrowing the sun, intended or not, paralleled and complemented Marinetti’s

1909 manifesto “Let’s Murder the Moonshine,”34 where the moon is cast in the
role of traditional, carnal feminine beauty, shunned by the futurists. Matyushin
explained to his friend Nikolai Khardzhiev that
[Victory over the Sun] had a profound inner content, that Nero and Caligula in
one person represented the eternal esthete, seeking “the beautiful” or “art for
art’s sake” outside of “life”; that the character of the Time Traveler was the bold
poet, artist, and sage; and that Victory over the Sun symbolized victory over the
conventional notion of the sun as “beauty.”35
The “New Man” in the opera who appears in the “tenth house of the future” is
the representative of what seems to be a new species, speaking a strange new
language that lacks emotions yet exudes poignancy. The main event of the opera,
the defeat of the sun, happens offstage. Act Two opens with the musings of the
“Elocutionist,” who declares:
how extraordinary life is without a past

with danger but without regrets and memories . . .
Forgotten are mistakes and failures.36
Deleting the past was one of Malevich’s core ideas. Shortly before the performance
of Victory over the Sun Malevich published an article titled “On the Museum,”
where he combined the antihistorical stance of Italian futurism with a new
vision of the future beyond the earth: “Our job is to always move towards what
is new, not to live in museums. Our path lies in space. And if we do not have
recollections it will be easier to fly away with the whirlwind of life.”37 Victory over
the Sun was an attempt to negate not only the existing language but also to erase
the entire cultural narrative the destruction of which, the anarchist hope would
suggest, could open the road to a new world of new rules.
Much could be said about the motif of defying gravity in Russian art and literature
from Khlebnikov’s 1914–1915 fantasy drawings of flying houses inhabited by
easily flying citizens;38 Pavel Miturich’s 1921 model of The Flyer and his subsequent
airplane designs; Mikhail Bulgakov’s 1928 (but until 1966 unpublished) novel
The Master and Margarita that ends with the two protagonists flying away; to
Tatlin’s 1931 flying-aid structure Letatlin and Vasilii Zhuravlev’s 1936 film Cosmic
Voyage, based on Tsiolkovsky’s 1920 novel Extraterrestrial; to Ilya Kabakov’s
1970s Albums, with drawings of flying citizens who easily walk in the air and his
1986 installation The Man Who Escaped into Space from His Room. The list does
not include many paintings, further cinematic examples, or early historic fantasies
of flying.39 Malevich’s fascination with aviation is not escapist, rather that of an
explorer. “After me, comrade aviators!,” he calls in 1919,40 ready to depart into the
space and time of the future. Picasso and Braque, who greatly inspired Malevich,
had also been fascinated with aviation during their early cubist period. They
admired the Wright brothers and were enthralled with the new vistas one can
experience from airspace.41 During his own cubist period, Malevich shared the
cubist painters’ admiration for floating mid-air and seeing both the earth and sky
from above. This experience resonated as an anticipation of the future, and the
borderline between the earth’s atmosphere and the cosmic void was blurred in this
enthralled vision. Malevich’s fascination with the extraterrestrial void had been
grounded in the suddenly futuristic phantasies of the early twentieth century.
Victory over the Sun reveals the conflict between fascination with the future
and the simultaneous anxiety of the changes it may bring. The play celebrates
a new age so fundamentally different from that of its time as to be amnesiac,
and the facilitation of travel in space and time, along with the new freedom of
expression consisting of jumbled words that had already appeared in the texts
of Kruchenikh, Khlebnikov, and other cubo-futurist poets. Malevich’s geometric
stage sets and costumes for Victory over the Sun generalized the human figure in
terms of geometric forms and used light to cut and reshape these forms. Fellow
artist Benedikt Lifshitz, who attended the performance, described his experience
of the play’s originality:
The novelty and distinction of Malevich’s method lay primarily in the utilization
of light to create form. [The] figures were cut up by the blades of light and were
deprived alternately of hands, legs, head, etc., because, for Malevich, they were
merely geometric bodies subject not only to disintegration into their component
parts, but also to total dissolution in painterly space.42
Malevich designed a black backcloth to create complete darkness in the theater

in order to mark the moment when the sun is cast down. About a year and
a half after the performance, having absorbed the cubists’ elimination of one-
point perspective and the Hylea group’s radical deconstruction of the language,
Malevich came to see the black rectangle as a visual concentration of futuristic
contents. It would be logical to think that subsequently, in 1915, he created the
Black Quadrilateral to reshape what may have been the rectangle of a stage curtain
and turned it into the painting that became known as Black Square on White
Ground, comprising the “zero of form,” or “the basic suprematist element.”43 This
minimal form was, however, derived from earlier works such as 1915 drawings
titled Fevralism as Emotionism and Sensation of Electricity, later realigned into
Malevich’s own strategic system of chronology—“his characteristic re-creation
of the sequence of events.”44 The act of creating the Black Quadrilateral, only later
mentioned as the Black Square, has been mythologized by Malevich as well as his
friends,45 and was seen as the actual point of origin of suprematism and what it
meant to introduce: the new imagination of the future.
Suprematism
Using the Black Square as the fundamental building block of a new imagery,
Malevich started to develop a visual system and chart out a metaphysical
path into an unearthly future world free of gravity or any sort of limitations
altogether. However, as of early 1915, he was not yet ready to publicly reveal
his plans and had no brand name for his new body of works. Malevich was
concerned that his colleagues could easily appropriate the simple abstract
language of his works. He gave an account of the following event to Matyushin
with some desperation:
Dear Mikhail Vasilievich, I’m in hot water. I’m sitting, I’ve hung up my works
and I’m working. All of a sudden, the doors open and in walks Puni46. This
means the works have been seen. Now I need to put out a booklet on my work
no matter what and christen it, thereby giving notice of my copyright.47
As organizer of the Moscow section of the show as well as an exhibiting artist,

Malevich participated in the Tramway V (Streetcar “V”). The First Futurist
Exhibition that opened in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was called from 1914 to
1924) on March 15, 1915, however, he chose not to show pieces of his new body of
paintings there. He presented some of his fevralist paintings as rivals of Larionov
and Goncharova’s Rayonism.48 His more recent works he perceived as being either
too new for public display yet, or he was still preparing to paint them. Malevich
first showed the paintings christened “suprematist” in November 1915 at an
exhibition of decorative arts49 and then in December 1915 at the 0.10 The Last
Futurist Exhibition, of which he was one of the curators, in Dobychina’s Gallery
in Petrograd. This time, he declared that every art form other than his objectless
(bezpredmetnii) painting was obsolete. As his paintings included an increasing
number of geometric compositions against a bottomless white background, it
became clear that Malevich attempted to explore a new kind of white space as the
cosmic void, rather than place his forms on the picture plane or in the traditional
one-point perspective box. Colored shapes floating in a white void not imitating
any existing object presented artistic autonomy (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2).
This was “pure creation,”50 unrelated to any segment of the visual tradition or
vocabulary. Flat geometric shapes floating weightlessly in a gravity-free space
shown at various angles exude lightness and freedom. The “stabs,” as the colored
lines of the paintings are referred to in the Malevich literature, appear to be
the edges of further flat shapes turned into space, perpendicular to the picture
plane. Aware of the utter novelty of his work, Malevich proposed suprematism
as a new “philosophy” or quasi-religion. He indicated this claim by placing the
Black Square on White Ground at the 0.10 exhibition in the krasny ugol, the
“beautiful” or “red” upper corner in the Russian house: the shrine, the place
of the icon. Andrei Nakov argues that the World of Art movement’s Alexander
Benois (1870–1960), who derided suprematism in his January 1916 review of
the 0.10 exhibition, seeing the entire show as a sign of a “civilizational crisis,”51
is solely responsible for introducing a “Christian, fundamentally anti-modernist
term” in the early interpretation of suprematism. “We should remember that
Malevich was Catholic, not Orthodox [and his] philosophical attitude in
1915 was downright mystical,”52 Nakov writes. Benois critiqued the exhibition,
and personally Malevich, on the grounds of his Enlightenment-bound views,
reproaching Malevich for “arrogance . . . [aspiring] to some kind of divine
accolades,” and for the Black Square which, he wrote, is “not a mere prank, not
a simple challenge [ . . . ] but one of many self-assertive acts of a principle that
should more properly be called the audacity of desolation.”53 In the same journal,
critic Alexander Rostislavov (1860–1920) praised suprematism because, among
other new trends in the exhibition, “In terms of ingenuity, the dynamism of the
Figure 1.1 Malevich: Painterly Realism of a Football Player, 1915, oil on canvas. Photo:
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Figure 1.2 Malevich: Suprematist Painting (with black trapezoid and red square),
1915, oil on canvas. Photo: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
latest trends is like a whirlwind: yesterday’s innovators—referring to the World

of Art—are today’s ‘old-timers’,”54 including Benois.
The white ground around the black square also appeared as the frame around
traditional Russian icons. While Christina Lodder argues that this was “an
iconoclastic action, annihilating the old values and shocking the public,”55 it was
also a bold claim on renewed recognition of a new kind of icon in a futurist
avant-garde context. Maria Taroutina suggests that Malevich was “parodying
the sacred placement directly under the ceiling, parodying the sacred placement
of icons in traditional Russian homes.”56 Whether parodying or partaking, with
this gesture the Polish catholic Malevich assumed and addressed the Russian
Orthodox tradition, claiming to have created the origin and first element of a new
religious or mythic iconography while also acting as iconoclast and innovator.
He may have claimed to inaugurate a new faith, but for announcing that he laid
claim to the holy place of a thousand-year-old religion.
A surprising turn in the historiography of the Black Square has been the
Tretiakov Gallery’s curator Irina Vakar’s announcement in 2015 of a find
achieved by digital technology that revealed an inscription by Malevich’s own
hand around the black square: “Negroes’ fight in a cave at night.”57 This might be,
Vakar suggests, a reference to a notorious 1897 joke attached to a black rectangle
by French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais: “Combat de nègres dans une
cave, pendant la nuit.” The cynically sounding sentence, if it can be considered
authentic, something that Vakar, long familiar with Malevich’s handwriting,
warrants, may question Malevich’s positioning himself as an almost holy man,
nearly a prophet, as Alexandra Shatskikh relates.58 If Malevich added this hidden
line with his own hand before over-painting it, both Lodder and Taroutina may
be right about the Black Quadrilateral being iconoclastic and a parody of the
sanctity of the icon. Thus, placing it in the shrine can be seen as an ambiguous as
well as sarcastic message. Irony and sarcasm—especially self-deprecation—have
not been typical features of Malevich’s, but, Vakar also suggests, they cannot be
ruled out entirely.59
According to Shatskikh, not only was the Black Square positioned meaning
fully, with a gesture that was simultaneously sacrosanct and sacrilegious, as the
new icon, but Malevich designed the two walls he had at his disposal at the 0.10
exhibition clearly as an “installation,” dividing his paintings into “dynamic”
and “static” groups,60 so that his intentionality of positioning each would be
apparent. Fellow artist Ivan Kliun remembered Malevich as saying: “Perhaps I
am the Patriarch of some new religion,”61 which, he may have inferred, would
be above both Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox faith. Responding to the
argument, that by addressing religion Malevich competed with Tatlin’s counter-

reliefs which equally occupied corners, though not upper ones, at the same
exhibition, Shatskikh explains that nobody was able to see Tatlin’s works until
after the opening of the show because, outsmarting all the other artists who also
wanted to surprise their colleagues, he put them up at the last minute before the
doors opened.62 However, as Taroutina remarks, Tatlin was no less innovative
with his corner-counter-reliefs than Malevich because, she proposes, their rich
materiality, including various metals, is also evocative of icons. Many scholarly
studies point out Tatlin’s intense interest in, and familiarity with, Russian
medieval murals and icons.63 Most of his corner-counter-reliefs, however, have
been lost or destroyed, and among the few works left to posterity it is his model
for the Building of the Third International, the “Tatlin Tower,” that has come to be
seen as his emblematic construction. Tatlin opposed Malevich’s work, both the
concept and the actual pieces of suprematism, holding it all “nonprofessional.”
He was not willing to exhibit in the same rooms as Malevich: they even
famously engaged in a fistfight before the opening of the 0.10 exhibition.64
Tatlin soon organized a counter-exhibition in Moscow in March 1916, titled
The Store (Magazine) for its actual location, meant “to de-suprematize the
Russian avant-garde.”65 He also gathered “The Store Group” around himself,
as opposition to Malevich and his emerging suprematist group. Malevich,
however, participated at the exhibition, but with markedly non-suprematist
works. Scathed by the ban of the word “suprematism” from the 0.10 exhibition’s
catalog by the organizers Ivan Puni and his wife Xenia Boguslavskaia, as well
as the ban of his suprematist paintings from the Store exhibition, Malevich is
remembered to have appeared at the opening of the Store with “0.10” written
on his forehead and a declaration pasted on his back that read: “I the Apostle
of New Concepts in Art and the surgeon of reason have sat on the throne of
pride in art and declare the Academy a stable of Philistines.”66 As the sanctity of
the word “apostle” hardly aligns with the profanity of “stable,” he thus insulted
his fellow avant-garde artists, sarcastically calling them representatives of the
Academy.
As “apostle” of the new, Malevich persevered. “Malevich is a powerhouse that
fills himself as well as others with energy for creating something new,” Matyushin
recalled.67 Kliun had similar memories, and both remembered the extraordinary
persuasive power that Malevich mustered.68 From most of the memoirs Malevich
comes across as a figure of high personal charisma, fascinating and even
mesmerizing others who may not have always clearly understood his utterances
but were nonetheless ready to follow him.69 He had adversaries for the same
reason: the intensity of personally or conceptually rejecting him had to match

his own persuasive powers.
Conceptualizing Suprematism
Malevich “gradually became aware that it was important to establish a

philosophical basis for his own achievements in painting and to investigate the
consequences of nonobjective painting,”70 Troels Andersen observed. When he
coined the term “suprematism,” meaning the “supremacy of pure sensation,”71
Malevich accompanied his paintings at the 0.10 exhibition by a text, a published
artist’s statement, “From Cubism to Suprematism” brought out by Matyushin’s
publishing enterprise72 and perhaps cowritten by him as well. Aware of his own
weakness as a thinker, in May 1915 Malevich turned to Matyushin for guidance:
All the many things that I staged in 1913 in your opera Victory over the Sun
gave me a mass of innovations, except no one noticed. I am collecting material
concerning this, which ought to be published somewhere. But I need someone
whom I could talk to openly and who would help me set out a theory on the
basis of its origins in painting. I think that this someone could only be you.73
Matyushin was indeed of great help to him with “setting out a theory,” helping to
put it in words, editing Malevich’s suprematist manifestos as well as publishing
them.74
The creation of suprematism established Malevich as a leading representative
of radically new art in Russia, as powerful as Tatlin, but antithetical to the
latter’s use of material and spatial three-dimensionality. His contemporaries
remember Malevich as a divisive figure. Nadezhda Udaltsova recalled him as
“slyly political,”75 Mikhail Bakhtin remembered him as “ascetic, infatuated with
his ideas,” and also “somewhat mad,” while he appreciated his writings on art.76
Malevich was seen as both a radically progressive revolutionary and a mystic—
the latter feature costing him a rather early rejection by the Soviet officialdom.
People’s Commissar for Enlightenment Anatoly Lunacharsky characterized him
in 1927 as someone who “tried to make god and the revolution compatible but
bungled it up.”77 On the other hand Alexei Gan, one of his main opponents in
1921, saw Malevich in a different perspective a few years later, when he reviewed
his 1929 Moscow exhibition. This time when the avant-gardes declined, and
the officially supported realism was on the rise, Gan recognized the innovative
efforts of Malevich and his creation of a new, independent painterly direction “at
a time of the sharpest opposition among various schools and directions [and]
a war between the abstracts and the naturalists.”78 These words, positioning
Malevich as a modernist hero and crediting him with being in opposition to
mainstream establishment art, anticipate the stance of Malevich’s post–Second
World War rediscovery.
Malevich aggressively and efficiently revised the history of art, buttressing his
artistic work with declarations claiming absolute freedom for the artist as well
as infinite space for his vision. To secure solid ground for suprematism amidst
the thriving and competing artists’ groups in Russia, Malevich made efforts
to develop it into a wide movement and to this end he started to organize the
Supremus group in 1916. Realizing how important it was to have a forum of
his own as a communication platform and power base, he was preparing the
publication of the Supremus journal. He hoped that it would be financed either
by the wealthy Natalia Mikhailovna Davydova or, as both the Tramway “V” and
the 0.10 exhibitions were, by Puni and Boguslavskaia. In a draft to advertise
the planned periodical, he wrote: “Contributors to Supremus will be those who
have turned aside the rays of yesterday’s sun from their faces. Kazimir Malevich,
Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Kliun, Liubov Popova, Mikhail
Menkov, Ivan Puni, Ksenia Boguslavskaia, Aleksei Kruchenikh, Vera Pestel,
Yurkevich, Nikolai Roslavets, Mikhail Matyushin, Natalia Davydova.”79
Supremus was not Malevich’s first attempt to launch a journal. In May 1915,
before coining the term “suprematism,” he planned a publication the title of
which was to be Nul’, that is, Zero,80 centered around the Black Square as “the zero
of form.”81 Neither journal became reality, but the organizational work invested
in bringing to life a group of loyal artists reveals these efforts in retrospect to
have been the anticipation of the 1919 UNOVIS group, Malevich’s ideological
and artistic base.
Malevich assumed to have achieved a work of nearly final reduction with the
Black Square on White Ground and declared: “I have transformed myself into
the zero of form”82—that is, he could mark a point of genesis in the universe of
modernist art. The Black Square can be seen as the dense concentration of forms
and meanings that were to unfold and issue forth from this point of genesis; or,
by contrast, as the locus cleansed of all preexisting forms and motifs, a clean
slate of point zero, which Malevich declared it to be. Whether it was one or the
other—or both—remains an open question; and it is this lingering ambiguity
of the Black Square and the subsequent suprematist works between committed
revolutionary art and mystical-religious spiritualism that has differentiated
Malevich apart from other artists of the Russian avant-garde.
Malevich appears to have cherished the concept of an artist-prophet and

had the ambition to assume a supreme position—hence, ultimately, his term
“suprematism.” Poet and philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) had urged
artists to turn art into a “real force [ . . . ] enlightening and transfiguring the
whole human world.” In this new role, he claimed, “Artists and poets must once
again become priests and prophets; [ . . . ] not only will they be possessed by
a religious idea, but they will themselves take possession of it and consciously
control its earthly incarnations.”83 Limits and boundaries crumbled, and an
unprecedentedly free realm of knowledge blending spiritualist tendencies and
rigorously methodological scientific thinking opened up that was freely and
largely extended by imagination. Malevich, for one, had gradually come to
recognize and be fascinated by the enormous appeal of these new and unlimited
horizons.
The scale of this new freedom also corresponded to Malevich’s courage and
ambition. Referring to Malevich’s ego, Charlotte Douglas observed: “underlying
Malevich’s history of style is a fundamental psychological, rather than visual,
absolutism.”84 Indeed, the sky was the limit: not only in the sciences but also in
Malevich’s vision and ambition. The anticipation of imminent epochal changes
in Russian society, the world, human thinking, and access to the cosmos met with
Malevich’s own aspirations to create and own an all-encompassing new system
of art that would correspond to the historically new concept of the universe and
the emergence of a new human society.
Malevich’s rich written oeuvre and ideational creativity unfolded in the
framework of the artist’s increasing self-interpretation. The special feature
of Malevich’s writings is that while most other artists sought to clarify their
work through texts in order to articulate their message as clearly as possible
to exclude all potential misunderstanding and preempt misinterpretation,
Malevich sustained the ambiguity of his visual work even in his texts, as, for
example, expressed in the term “intuitive reason.” The Black Square remained
as enigmatic as his entire suprematist oeuvre, even in the light of his writings.
His first manifesto, “From Cubism to Suprematism in Art to the New Realism in
Painting, to Absolute Creation,” dating from 1915, is a declarative, poetic piece
of writing. Its second version, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism.
The New Realism in Painting”85 written in 1916, offers prophetic intonation and
declares the fundamental parameters of his new art. Besides the already cited
“zero of form,” Malevich claims to “have destroyed the ring of the horizon and
escaped from the circle of things.”86 His mode of addressing the reader is that of
a prophet: “And what I reveal to you, do not conceal”87—and the text includes an
aphoristic and perfunctory history of the “savage” pre-suprematist painting heavy

with “vulgar subject matter,”88 which not even the cubists and futurists could get
rid of;89 while in the more concise 1919 text titled “Suprematism” he famously,
and also poetically, announced: “I have torn through the blue lampshade of color
limitations and come out into the white; ( . . . ) I have set up the semaphores of
suprematism.”90 These statements, however, as Felix Philipp Ingold suggests, are
not necessarily to be taken verbatim, as the claim for fundamental innovation
that negates the past is “with Malevich, like Tolstoy, not the expression of the
[predecessors’] incompetence or an iconoclastic barbarism; it results from the
[intention] to transcend the culture, consciously rejecting the results of traditional
education that is considered a burden,” so that the freedom from rationalism would
allow a way of expression without the mediation of traditionally used language
and Malevich could find “the image as ‘image’ ( . . . ) cleansed of representational
function.”91 Malevich’s painted and written works were apparently meant to
complement one another in the artist’s effort to transcend the accepted patterns
and elementary units of meaning in both linguistic and visual expression.
Although often described as a theorist, it must be agreed that Malevich was
not a student of philosophy who would use clearly defined terms consistently,
according to their function in a logically constructed system. Verena Krieger,
for example, in her analysis of the Russian avant-garde, categorizes Malevich’s
written work by four different philosophical approaches, according to what she
considers to be the most important influence on his thoughts: neo-Kantianism;
Schopenhauer’s philosophy, particularly The World as Will and Representation;92
scientific theories; and Russian religious philosophy. While Malevich may have
been familiar with many intellectual currents of his time, possibly including
some of the above, and was involved in discussions about spiritual, aesthetic, and
social ideas with his erudite friends, he was not an avid reader and even less of
a philosopher who would have applied the precision of that discipline. Malevich
may have had many ideas and insights but no overarching and consistent theory.
As Douglas points out, he never cited any thinker or philosopher,93 never referred
to the origin or the exact meaning of the terms or categories he used. Former friend
and fellow artist Pavel Mansurov is quoted to have declared at the 1976 Malevitch-
Colloque in Paris that “Malevich did not know either Schopenhauer or the others
( . . . ) He was a simple peasant.”94 While Krieger, having quoted this statement,
contradicts it, correctly arguing that Malevich was, in point of fact, not a “peasant,”
and there is evidence of his reading some theoretical works, it is also important
to hear Mansurov describe the impression Malevich apparently made on many
and to distinguish between an artist thinker’s deliberately free handling of ideas
and a philosopher’s rigorous use of philosophical terms and concepts in a system

of thought. Alexandra Shatskikh, a close reader of Malevich’s writings, also notes
that Malevich was “a-literate, and bookless, [who] tapped into traditions that he
had never worked through and never could have worked through at the level of
conscious study due to his lack of education, peculiarities of thinking, and dearth
of academic habits.”95 This is supported by Igor Terentiev, who remembers to have
lent Malevich “Lenin’s book Materialism and Empiriocriticism, suggesting that he
read this book to better understand his own ideas (in particular, on ‘economy’).
Malevich said that ‘he didn’t understand clever books’ and didn’t think he needed
to understand them, believing that his own ‘teaching’ was closer to life, that is,
he said paradoxically, ‘to death’.”96 Of course this does not mean that a critic or
historian well educated in philosophy would be wrong to draw parallels between
Malevich’s thoughts and certain philosophical systems or their elements, as long
as it is clear that it is the critic’s insight rather than Malevich’s own theoretical
contribution to the philosophy in question.
It seems safe to position Malevich as a deep and imaginative, and at the same time
freewheeling, thinker, intent on fathoming deeper connections of nature and ideas,
and sensitive to the current concepts of his time. His ideas were as interconnected
with his painterly practice as they were with his artistic and political strategies. As
the reading of his essays and articles can convince us, he was often impressionistic,
emotional, strategic, aphoristic, or simply vague. To a reader of our time, it should
be emphasized in particular that he mostly wrote by hand—his student Konstantin
Rozhdestvensky remembered him as one who “systematically worked and painted
at his desk. His handwriting was composed of small letters that he wrote in small,
thin notebooks”97—and, as is usually the case with handwriting, he did not edit
his written works. Today’s reader, not quite unlike some of Malevich’s Western
contemporaries who used mechanical typewriters with more regularity,98 is used
to clarity in succinct, edited texts and a pointed formulation of ideas free of the
kind of redundancy and repetitions that showed Malevich in yet another light to
his contemporaries with his free, unedited flow of writing. He hardly looked back
on his earlier articles for the sake of editing, or abridging, or avoiding repetitions—
or even for the sake of simply remaining consistent.
There is, for example, a fundamental contradiction between Malevich’s
radically innovative ambition to break all continuity with previous arts and
cultures in order to start suprematism from tabula rasa, or the “zero point,” and
his teleological interpretation of art history, which claimed suprematism to be
the pinnacle of the evolutionary process that had included cubism and futurism
and had jettisoned the subject matter99 in the process.
As an artist, Malevich freely adapted philosophical and art historical terms

in his own, often changing rosters of ideas, without necessarily considering the
particular contents of the terms in relation to the respective theoretical systems
of their origin. When, for instance, he introduced the already mentioned
idiosyncratic notion of “intuitive reason,” in an attempt to marry two mutually
exclusive operational modes, he blended the terms of Bergson and Kant; and in
terms of art history, overlooked the meaning of intuition in expressionism and the
role of color in the paintings of the fauves and expressionists as an independent
entity that relates to the subconscious. Malevich often used the terms of the
ongoing art discourse impulsively, freely attributing meaning to them.
The artists of the Russian avant-garde were in fierce competition to seek and
construct theoretical foundations in Western culture, which attached a high value
to articulate verbal expression. Since, similarly to their Western contemporaries,
they used new, mostly abstract visual languages, they were convinced that they
themselves had to offer clues necessary to the adequate interpretation of their
works in order to avoid misinterpretation. Self-interpretation, as previously
mentioned, was also competitive. Articulate manifestos and articles gave
gravitas to visual works and were instrumental in persuading fellow artists and
audiences as well as political leaders that their respective thinking and artistic
production was progressive, important, and relevant. It was the possession of the
visual symbol that would be the face of the emerging new country and the new
world of the future that was at stake in Russia. The efficiency of a visual symbol
could be greatly increased by strong textual clarification. The battle, in the fields
of visual and verbal expression as well as conceptually, was being fought not only
for the new language but also for its validation by the politics of culture.
Malevich was first recognized, then rediscovered posthumously by many
as a painter of the revolution for his abstract language as well as his political
activities, while others saw transcendental and mystical, spiritual dimensions as
dominating his work. During his rediscovery in the 1960s, the latter dimensions
were also attributed to the intellectual-spiritual power of the Russian Revolution
(see Figure 1.3).
Entering the Soviet World
After the February and October 1917 revolutions, Malevich plunged into
organizational and political work. As early as November 17, 1917, he “was
appointed commissar for the protection of the value in the Kremlin.”100
Figure 1.3 Malevich: Self-Portrait. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 1908–1910, The
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
As Hylea’s Slap in the Face of Public Taste expressed the cubo-futurists’ claim
to being the face of the future, Malevich in turn worked to establish suprematism
as the face of the revolution. His activities in the politics of art reveal him as,
his transcendentalist ideas notwithstanding, an ambitious and skilled cultural
bureaucrat who learned “to speak Bolshevik” when needed.101 As president of
the Art Department of the Moscow Council of Soldiers’ Deputies, Malevich
wrote to Matyushin in September 1917, shortly before the October Revolution,
about wanting to organize the First People’s Academy of Arts in Moscow.
Malevich reported: “My idea was warmly received, and the ball is rolling—soon
I’ll open several small department cells which on a broad scale will constitute
the Academy.”102 Malevich was ready and eager to become part of the new
establishment, which he was convinced was radically modern.
In the wake of the revolution, however, Malevich was still part of the anarchist
movement as well, the main venue of which was the journal Anarkhiia (Anarchy)
where Malevich published articles that vehemently attacked the new order, soon
after the October Revolution. It appears that “revolutionary” and “anarchist” were
not entirely different concepts in the wake of the revolution. Both entailed, in the
minds of many, dissent, revolt, and courage. Anarchism, however, soon became
the target of the new political power, and the journal and its headquarters were
raided on the order of the very same politicians whom Malevich had expected to
support his Academy. Nina Gurianova points out that, as some of Rodchenko’s
articles will demonstrate in the next chapter, the journal severely criticized the
bolshevik regime’s tendency to “control culture through a centralized ministry,
commissariats and state institutions,”103 already a few months after October. In
April 1918, the Café Poetov (The Poets’ Café) was closed down. This café had
initially served as the futurists’ meeting place as well as the mailing address of
the equally short-lived Gazeta Futuristov (The Futurists’ Journal), published by
Lev Grinkrug and edited by Mayakovsky, Kamensky, and David Burliuk.104 The
bolshevik Party conducted an armed raid on Anarkhiia’s editorial office, and
the journal was subsequently banned. It resumed publication, however, only to
be banned yet again a few months later, this time permanently. Bengt Jangfeldt
agrees with constructivist theorist Boris Kushner’s critique in Gazeta Futuristov
that Anarkhiia used the prerevolutionary motifs of épater le bourgeois, or
shocking and challenging bourgeois views and taste, without the new sensibility
for solidarity with the revolutionary working classes,105 which, of course, should
not have been a reason to ban it. Balancing these political gestures was a task for
all postrevolutionary artists, including Malevich. The bolshevik leadership was
uncertain about several points of its agenda when it came to practical action,
and people were uncertain as to the parameters of the new freedom, so every
subsequent curtailing of it seemed, at first, absurd.
Outraged, young theater artist and later constructivist Alexei Gan wrote
in Anarkhiia in June 1918 that the “Marxists” and “Socialists” are hypocrites,
“That’s why we, anarchist artists, ( . . . ) together with the futurists and
suprematists, destroy these new prisons of rotten ideas in the section of their
Jesuit Education.”106 In the light of this sharp and passionate voice that referred
to suprematism as an ally in the struggle against the new bureaucracy, Malevich’s
pursuit to organize a new Academy sheds light on the many different ways in
which these new developments can be assessed and the variety of strategies
that were used in attempts to dominate or at least influence the new cultural
scene. In spite of Malevich’s future rivalry with and opposition to Rodchenko,
in a June 1918 issue of Anarkhiia the latter named almost the same artists as
those whom Malevich had listed in the Supremus group as ”our true creators:
Malevich, Rozanova, Udaltsova, Vesnin, Drevin, Rodchenko, Popova, Pestel,
Davydova, Kliun.”107 A diary entry of Rodchenko’s on December 25, 1918,
still indicated cooperation between Malevich and other “nonobjectivists.”
Presumably Malevich’s 1918 White on White painting was already known
to them. “Today there was a meeting of Suprematists and non-objectivists,”

Rodchenko noted:
We decided to hold an exhibition of just suprematist and non-objective painting.

( . . . ) Malevich paints without form and color. The ultimate abstracted painting.
This is forcing everyone to think long and hard. It is difficult to surpass Malevich.
The latest announcement:
We, artists-non-objectivists, inform everyone that we have definitively discarded

limited form in painting as the last remnant of objectivity.
“Long live free color and tone!”
N. Udaltsova, A. Drevin, A. Rodchenko, L. Popova.108
Although the radical Gazeta Futuristov, published during the same months as
Anarkhiia, demanded that “Art be separated from the state,”109 the art section
IZO (izobrazitelnoe otdelenie, department of visual arts) of the February
1918-established NARKOMPROS (Narodnii Kommissariat Prosveshcheniya, the
People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment) “became a bastion of the futurists”110
by the fall of 1918. Mayakovsky began to work there and, as Jangfeldt relates,
“IZO belonged to, inter alia, David Shterenberg, its appointed head, Vladimir
Tatlin, its vice-head, Natan Altman, Nikolai Punin, Osip Brik, ( . . . ) it was
dominated by leftwing intellectuals.”111 This impressive list notwithstanding,
Lunacharsky banned IZO’s most important journal Iskusstvo kommuny (Art of
the Commune), practically dominated by Mayakovsky, in April 1919.
It was interdependence, rather than the separation of the arts from the state,
that now became recognized. “The futurists played the same role in cultural life as
the bolshevik in politics: the role of the vanguard,”112 and indeed, many futurists
now identified with the party that they saw as the leading progressive force and
power. As a result of this new position of artists, the first anniversary of the October
Revolution was celebrated by futurist artworks. The term “futurism” was then used
in a very broad sense for all radically new innovative art and poetry, displayed
in public places throughout the country, which was now named the RSFSR, the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics.113 Malevich himself was no less of a
radical than the futurists. In an article published in Iskusstvo kommuny he urged to
“strive towards the uncharted abysses of space,” declared that conservatives were
“dead,” and discarded museums as much as the Italian futurists did.114
By the time he arrived in Vitebsk in the fall of 1919, Malevich had developed
a powerful rhetoric for claiming that no art form other than suprematism was
efficient and relevant for the bolshevik Revolution and the future.
Vitebsk, 1919
The provincial People’s School of Art, located in Vitebsk, a small town in Belarus
on the Dvina River, replaced the painter Yurii (Yehuda) Pen’s former private art
school, the Artist Pen’s School of Drawing and Painting.115 A former pupil of
Pen, Marc Chagall, was appointed by NARKOMPROS116 in September 1918 as
the “authorized representative in artistic affairs of Vitebsk province” and was
invested with the right to organize a school.117
The People’s School of Art was controversial from the beginning for promoting
modernist artistic expression in a strictly traditional, small-town community. In
the new communist spirit, however, the art school also kept up with national and
international politics. The official opening of the school, planned for January 28,
1919, had been put off by two commemorations: the first was held in memory of
those shot to death during the peaceful demonstration in Petersburg on January
9, 1905; the second was a response to the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg in Germany, which reverberated through revolutionary Russia.
Everywhere in the country huge rallies, funeral ceremonies, and public meetings
were held.118
This episode was an early sign of the new communist state’s extraordinary
interest in Germany, not only because of Germany’s tacit war-time cooperation
with Lenin’s party but also because it was another newly declared republic with
a Social Democratic government and a rather strong communist (“Spartakist”)
movement that had been led by Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Lenin singled out
this country as his closest possible ally, and particular interest was given to what
was happening to communists in Germany.
In his opening speech of the Vitebsk school, Chagall emphasized that unlike
in the old days, the new art school will be open to all, and encouraged the
proletariat of Vitebsk and its neighborhood to take advantage of this and enroll.
A leading local representative of the communist Party attended the opening,
demonstrating the officialdom’s support of the school.119
The most radical modernist among the early faculty of the new school was
Ivan Puni (1892–1956), who had met many members of the Russian avant-
garde in Paris, where he had lived from 1910 to 1912. Upon his return to Russia,
he exhibited with the Union of Youth in Petersburg along with Malevich, the
Burliuk brothers, Matyushin, Tatlin, Rozanova, and others; and generously
supported exhibitions, including the 0.10. Puni and Boguslavskaia had a
series of conflicts with Malevich at the time of their cooperation with him in
Petrograd since they refused to recognize suprematism as a valid new tendency
or even as a valid term. The Punis accepted Chagall’s invitation to teach in the
People’s School of Art and promptly moved to Vitebsk, unaware that Malevich
would soon arrive to join the faculty. Puni became chief of the school’s Agitprop
(agitation and propaganda) Department, and painted vanguard, abstract
pictures, often erroneously referred to as suprematist. However, Boguslavskaia
thought it important to confirm that Puni’s abstract works had predated those
of Malevich in Vitebsk. Remembering the controversies between themselves
and Malevich, she emphasized Puni’s achievements in a letter from Berlin,
years later:
The role played by Ivan Puni was thus a unique one—he was a kind of John
the Baptist in Vitebsk’s artistic life, initiating many future members of UNOVIS
to the creative passions then seething in the two capitals, and proclaiming the
victory of the Revolution in the arts. For many of the students in the Vitebsk
school, it was from his lips that the epochal ideas and events that would soon be
decisive in their lives were first spoken of. Thus, in the script written by history,
the ground for Kazimir Malevich’s appearance in Vitebsk was prepared by the
missionary activity of Ivan Puni.120
Three women appointees, familiar with Malevich’s circle of friends, also arrived
from Petrograd: Nadezhda Liubavina, Nina Kogan, and the school’s designated
director arriving mid-April 1919, Vera Ermolaeva, who had been active in the
field of theater design. They happened to be instrumental in preparing the
school’s spirit for Malevich’s arrival in the fall of 1919.121
It was actually El Lissitzky who had invited and brought Malevich to Vitebsk.
In October 1919 the two met in Moscow, where Malevich was teaching at
the time and was also director of the SVOMAS (Svobodnye gosudarstvennye
khudozhestvennye masterskiye, the Free State Artists’ Studios), when Lissitzky
arrived to buy material supplies for the Vitebsk printing workshop.122 Malevich
had great authority among his students in Moscow and had already written
several texts, but lived with his pregnant wife in a dacha without sufficient food
or firewood. It was also out of question for Malevich’s writings to be published
in Moscow for lack of paper and printing equipment. Thus, Lissitzky thought of
accomplishing this task in the Vitebsk printing workshop, and it occurred to him
to invite Malevich to come live and work there as well, under better conditions
than in Moscow. Malevich accepted the invitation without hesitation and wrote
a letter to his employers explaining his departure.123 He arrived in Vitebsk with
Lissitzky on November 5, 1919, and was followed by one of his apprentices, Ilya
Chashnik, who subsequently became a student in Vitebsk.124
Malevich’s first appearance in the Vitebsk school was memorable for all who
were present. He had clearly designed his entrée to mark the occasion. Based on
direct accounts of witnesses, he staged his entrance:
The entire school had gathered in the school’s main hall [ . . . ], a large open
staircase led from this hall directly up to the second floor. Following Marc
Chagall’s announcement that the school had a new instructor, a figure appeared
on the landing of the second-floor stairway. Looking up, the audience saw a
round-headed, sturdy-looking man who slowly began descending the stairs,
waving his arms in wide circles as he moved. Reaching the bottom of the
stairs he directly ascended the podium and, still without speaking, continued
his gymnastic-like exercises; with his compact, thickset body he resembled a
wrestler or athlete. The effect on the audience was staggering; in the minds—and
memories—of these youths, the very way in which Malevich introduced himself
expressed “suprematist” motion.125
Launching UNOVIS
Malevich’s powerful personal presence played a great role in his de facto takeover
of the Vitebsk school before he set to do any kind of organizing. Nikolai Punin
recalled: “Malevich was convincing with a fascinating vigor that was hypnotizing
and compelled his audience to listen to him.”126 With this instant authority, which
amplified when he familiarized the students with his views printed in On New
Systems in Art, Malevich immediately organized MALPOSNOVIS (Maladye
Posledovateli Novogo Iskusstva, Young Followers of the New Art), soon renamed
UNOVIS (Utverditeli Novogo Iskusstva, Affirmers of the New Art), dropping
the word “followers” for “affirmers.” Suprematism, at this point, was not purely
transcendental anymore, nor did it, as in 1915, advocate the “intuitive [that]
should reveal itself in forms which are unconscious.”127 Nor did the term refer
to “the supremacy of pure sensation”128 anymore. “WE ARE THE SUPREMACY
OF THE NEW,” heralded an UNOVIS leaflet writ large. “The face of modernity
should be our face. . . . We bring new cities. We bring the world new things.
We will give them other names.”129 Suprematism’s original, 1915 cosmological
transcendentalism morphed into community-building and organizing work
that focused on the suprematist aesthetic and was morphing into suprematist
ideology.
UNOVIS was a collective identity. All works made by members of the group,
including those of Malevich, were exhibited anonymously, as “UNOVIS”
products. This was the case when the group participated at the 1923 Exhibition
Pictures by Artists of All Trends, in Petrograd.130
The publication of “On New Systems in Art” by the Vitebsk school marked
the beginning of the UNOVIS movement headed by Malevich. The Vitebsk
People’s School of Art was almost instantly converted into an UNOVIS unit. “On
New Systems in Art” was a text “whose ideas and conceptions were formalized,
implemented, and disseminated by [Malevich’s] students and followers.”131 The
programmatic pamphlet opens with a magic cult-chant: “I follow u-el-el-ul-el-
te-ka my new path”132 and an imperative: “Let the rejection of the old world of
art be traced on the palm of your hands,”133 ordering to wear a sect-like signage
of belonging to the movement. In this programmatic essay, Malevich leads his
readers through recent developments in art: first and foremost, Cézanne and
cubism. One of his central points is: “Intuition is the kernel of infinity. [ . . . ] the
intuitive energy conquers the infinite.”134 Once again, hard-to-define, shifting,
multifarious content is implied in a statement that addresses the movement’s
adherents on an emotional level and engages them in pursuing the conquering
of infinity.
Moreover, UNOVIS was modeled after the communist Party (it was
often called an “art party”): an UNOVIS Central Committee was set up for
propaganda and organizational work, and several “creative committees” were
designated for ideological and productive work. Slogans were approved by the
Central Committee, and in June 1920 territorial committees were organized in
several cities.135 Shatskikh points out that UNOVIS showed “many features of a
sui-generis religious fraternity or a version of a masonic lodge.”136
Suprematism: The New Imagination
As of 1919, Malevich was working on establishing suprematism as the visual

language of the revolution with the intention to spread it—as the revolution was
expected to spread— internationally. He stated: “All previous and contemporary
painting before suprematism—sculpture, the word, music—were enslaved by
the form of nature, and they await their liberation in order to speak in their own
tongue and not depend upon the intellect, sense, logic, philosophy, psychology,
the various laws of causality and technical changes in life.”137 These introductory
words of Malevich to the first exhibition where he showed suprematist paintings
in December 1915 discard all previous, centuries-old art as well as concepts
which, in the next line, he characterizes as “the time of Babel in art.”138 Enter
a new creative power, the already cited “intuitive reason” which, as opposed to
the “intellectual creations” that Malevich held to be severely limited, “is ascribed
a higher ability to prophesy and to anticipate time.”139 Intuition, for Malevich,
warrants that his art should achieve higher levels than knowledge, craft, and
reason can while still keeping the latter in operation in order to fortify intuition.
Suprematism transcended that which was “already created in nature”; its higher
quality was seen as something that “arises out of the painted mass without
repeating [ . . . ] the primary forms of the objects of nature.”140
Suprematist images are claimed to be virtual transmissions from the future,
visualizing the next step of humankind in the cosmos. Marrying geometry and
the cosmic vision of the future indicated Malevich’s claim to the highest possible
authority as an artist. Geometric abstraction, the “rhetoric of power,” as Anna C.
Chave141 aptly characterizes it, was but one facet of this claim, geometry being
unchallengeable and supra-individual, with an objectivity that no subjectivity
can bend.
As we saw in the brief chronology of Malevich’s road to Vitebsk, he
distinguished himself from the other artists of the Russian avant-garde by
adding a religious-metaphysical dimension to his suprematist work that he also
proposed to be the face of the revolution, the new Soviet reality. Boldly placing
the Black Square in the Russian shrine, the “beautiful (or red) corner”; using
religious language in some of his writings; and urging the ritual marking of the
palm of the hand with a black square, Malevich mixed religious gestures with
political ones in his activities at the Vitebsk UNOVIS and on some occasions did
not shy away from stepping up as a kind of holy man in possession of superior
wisdom.142 Malevich’s shifting approaches between construing a painting as
a matter of aesthetic creation with a political stance and painting as a divine
message have been, most likely, the key factor in his unique position among his
followers and subsequent rediscovery by posterity. At the same time, he blurred
the boundaries between the above categories in a way that made it difficult for
his fellow Russian artists as well as his Western contemporaries to pin down his
artistic and conceptual message.
Malevich based his claim to the higher authority of the artist on the
artist’s supposed superior abilities, for example to travel into the future. He
dismissed any criticism that operated with “intellect, sense, logic, philosophy,
psychology,”143 all of which he assigned to the past. In doing so, Malevich barred
external criticism to a considerable degree, implying that only those who are
initiated are competent enough to interpret the new art. The relevant terms of
the new discourse, however, had yet to be invented.
In the great competition in both Russia and the international avant-garde,

Malevich secured an exceptional position for himself as the inventor of a
new visual language, the geometry of which could be interpreted as religious,
originating from a new kind of icon, while it was also scientific in the sense that
the objectivity of geometry suggests. It was as futuristic as the art of a coming age
that will explore and conquer the cosmos, and as progressive as any art that had
left behind the legacy of its representational function. All of these concepts were
brewing in the artistic world of postrevolutionary Russia, and they resonated in
the similarly diverse Western avant-garde as well.
Most importantly, however, Malevich’s painterly work exudes the thrill of the
initial invention of a new idea and new forms. The fact that he was shaken by
his own invention comes across in his work, and ultimately it is this enigmatic
experience that fascinates his viewers to this day.
2
The Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party and

El Lissitzky’s Grasp of Suprematism, 1919
El Lissitzky’s sudden discovery of suprematism appeared to be the obvious

answer to his own torturing dilemmas in 1919, and it was to determine
his perception and interpretation of Malevich’s work. His fascination with
suprematism was deeply rooted in a personal and historic predicament, and
it was his instantaneous conviction that the new course proposed by Malevich
would resolve it.
Lissitzky’s Road to Vitebsk
Eliezer Mordukhovich (or Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky1 was born on November

23, 1890, to a Jewish family in Pochinok, Smolensk Province, just east of the
Pale of Settlement. He was raised in a middle-class family with an orthodox
mother and an erudite father who spoke several languages, translated
Shakespeare and Heine in his spare time, and traveled to America with the
purpose of relocating the family there. His wife, however, consulted her rabbi
about this plan and he advised her against it, so the family stayed in Russia.
Lissitzky spent his high-school years in Smolensk, Russia, with his maternal
grandparents and was trained as an artist in the nearby Vitebsk, Belarus, by
Yurii (Yehuda) Pen. Turned down by the St. Petersburg Art Academy, either
because he did not meet the requirements or because of the restricted quota for
Jews,2 in 1909 he went to Germany and enrolled in the Technische Hochschule
(Technical College) in Darmstadt to study architectural engineering. During
his student years there he traveled to France, visited towns in Germany, and
in 1912 he went hiking in Northern Italy. He made drawings of buildings
in Venice, Ravenna, and other towns. Intermittently, between March and
October 1912 he spent time in St. Petersburg working as an architectural

draftsman,3 but then returned to Germany to continue his studies. Lissitzky
later returned to Russia because of the outbreak of the First World War in
1914. He worked in various architectural offices and completed his studies at
the Riga Technological University, which was temporarily moved to Moscow
during the war. He received his diploma of engineer-architect in 1918.
It usually goes unmentioned that because of his extended stay abroad,
Lissitzky missed out on the vibrant prewar art life in Russia: the rapid
succession of modernist styles, exhibitions, and the network of relationships
between their protagonists. Apparently, he did not know Mikhail Larionov
and Natalia Goncharova, and did not witness the increasingly visible presence
of Tatlin, nor the turbulence of the lively and much-discussed shows that
followed one another during the years Lissitzky spent in Germany. Even if he
had had a chance to glimpse some of these exhibitions during his short visits
home, he was not part of their eventful art scene, nor did he have any personal
attachments to, or even conflicts with, the artists of his generation. Lissitzky
was absent from Russia when the Jack of Diamonds group first exhibited in
1910 in opposition to the World of Art group, and he also missed the Donkey’s
Tail exhibition in 1912, a passionate riposte to the Jack of Diamonds. He
missed the vivid debates accompanying these shows and the events of the
following year, 1913, which was, according to Elena Basner, “the most exciting
year of Russian futurism,”4 including the original performance of Victory over
the Sun. By the time Lissitzky returned to Russia in 1914, many important
art exhibitions were already history; Larionov was about to depart to Paris to
join Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; and the personal rivalry among the progressive
artists such as the intense controversy between Malevich and Tatlin, and their
respective followers, had already turned into hostility. As he lived in Moscow
upon his return, Lissitzky also missed the 0.10, The Last Futurist Exhibition in
Petrograd. Accordingly, he did not know about the intense conflict between
the Punis—Ivan Puni and his wife Xenia Boguslavskaia—and Malevich when
he invited Malevich to Vitebsk in the fall of 1919 to strike up camaraderie
between them as colleagues.
During the period between 1916 and 1918, Lissitzky hardly participated in
any exhibitions. In 1916, he was included in the World of Art show—not only
a far cry from the progressive art of the time but an exhibition that had been
clearly rejected by radical innovators for many years. Tatiana Goriacheva relates
that Lissitzky participated at the 1917 reprise of the Jack of Diamonds group’s
show5 as well.
The Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party 41
In 1917 Rodchenko, Tatlin and other progressive artists organized Profsojuz,

a professional union of artists, which consisted of three federations: “Young,”
“Center,” and “Senior,” with the futurists, cubists, suprematists, and non-
objectivists in the “Young” group, while the World of Art belonged to the
“Center.” “Lissitzky was not listed among the ‘Young’, or leftist [federation that]
saw themselves as prophets of the future.”6 At that point, his only appearance
as an artist was at the Moscow exhibition of works by Jewish artists, where
he showed one painting, in July–August 1918,7 that categorized him on the
sidelines as representative of ethnic art rather than a mainstream young
innovator. He had not been invited to participate either in the Streetcar “V,” or
in the 0.10 exhibitions in 1915; nor was he on the list of Malevich’s Supremus
group. He did not belong to Tatlin’s and Rodchenko’s circle of anarchists and
future constructivists either, although he eventually got acquainted with them
and was invited to join INKhUK (Institut Khudozhestvennoi Kul’tury, Institute
of Artistic Culture).
Despite his scarce presence at exhibitions, Lissitzky was commissioned
to design the cover of the futurist poet Konstantin Bolshakov’s volume of
verses, Solntse na Izlet’e (Spent Sun). His stylized geometric, semi-abstract
futuristic cover design has the sun in its center, held by a stylized human
figure surrounded by rhythmically repeated circular lines, drawn with a
compass and details of a stylized cityscape, with a creature that is half-bird,
half-airplane on its way to plunge into the sun. This cover appears to have
been designed not unaware of Victory over the Sun, although Lissitzky did
not see its original performance. Although Bolshakov was a major futurist
poet, a member of the Mezzanine of Poetry and later the Centrifuge group,
whose earlier book Le Futur (Future Tense) was illustrated by Larionov and
Goncharova in rayonist style8 in 1913, this job of Lissitzky’s did not lead
to similar commissions from futurist poets. He did not become part of any
of the close-knit inner circles of those poets and artists who collaborated
on publishing and illustrating volumes of cubo-futurist poetry. Lissitzky
eventually caught up with and became informed about the Russian art scene,
still he did not develop an intimate knowledge of its deep-rooted personal
controversies and loyalties.
Between 1916 and 1919 Lisstzky devoted himself first and foremost to the
unfolding Jewish cultural renaissance happening in and around Kiev. In the
summer of 1916, he embarked on an expedition to explore and document, in
drawings and paintings, the old synagogues along the Dnieper River, in the
company of the young artist Issackar Ber Ryback.9 This tour, which had an
unexpected influence on him, was sponsored by the Petrograd-based Jewish

Historical and Ethnographic Society. Lissitzky was moved by the experience.
“Searching for our identity, for the character of our times, we attempted to look
into old mirrors and tried to root ourselves in so-called ‘folk art’. ( . . . ) [we
discovered] a whole great world ( . . . ) This is the very opposite of the primitive;
it is the product of great culture,” he wrote in retrospect.10
Lissitzky took up the illustration and graphic design of many Yiddish-
language books. In 1917 he designed and illustrated Moshe Broderzon’s Sihes
Khulin. Eyne fun di geshikhten (A Simple Story), also known as Prager Legende
(The Legend of Prague), some copies of which were rolled up and packed in
wooden boxes like Torah scrolls. He also illustrated children’s books published
by the Yiddisher Folks Farlag.11 Lissitzky worked in a stylized, expressive
figurative style with ornamental elements often derived from the graphic
features of the Hebrew letters. His artistic connections included fellow Jewish
artists such as Marc Chagall, Natan Altman, Boris Aronson, and Robert Falk.
In 1917 he made watercolor illustrations for the Jewish Passover tale and song
“Had Gadya,” a new 1919 edition of which was supported by the Kultur Lige
in Kiev, with several newly made pictures of Lissitzky and a new geometric
abstract cover.
Founded in the postrevolutionary year 1918 by Natan Altman and the
head of NARKOMPROS’ artistic division David Shterenberg, among others,
the Kultur Lige was generally seen by the Jews as a sign that a better life
awaited them after the October Revolution. The Kultur Lige, which was
active in several cities besides Kiev, including Warsaw, was a secular, socialist
organization associated with the Jewish Labor Bund12 and was “committed to
education, teacher training, regular university courses, and publications”13 in
Yiddish language. Its members and coworkers however, although fueled by
strong loyalty to the Jewish tradition, were eager to step out of the ghetto.
The creation of a secular Jewish culture—an oxymoron to orthodox as well as
to pious Jews—was a major goal along this line. The young artists’ new ideal
was to overcome the narrower concept of Jewish emancipation and cultural
revival. As Avram Kampf observes, this generation
had consciously divorced itself from the religious messianic ideal, which
had been a keynote of Jewish religion, and transformed it into a secularized
messianic yearning for the redemption of mankind. ( . . . ) Their leanings were
strengthened by the dominant revolutionary and nationalist mood and the rise
of the militant Jewish labor movement committed to cultural autonomy and
freedom from tsarist oppression.14
Lissitzky was strongly dedicated to the cause of Jewish emancipation and

believed that the revolution would put an ultimate end to the oppression and
persecution of Jews. He worked for the art department of the Kiev Soviet of
Workers’ Deputies, and in 1918 he became its member and presumably held a
(perhaps high) position in the national department of education of the RSFSR,
within NARKOMPROS. No exact information is available about his position at
that time, however.
Kampf notes that after the February 1917 Revolution, and for a short while
after the bolshevik Revolution in October, national cultures and the national arts
of various minorities were encouraged by the Russian communist (bolshevik)
Party, because
The message of the Revolution could be most effectively spread through the
channels of the various national languages and cultures, and thereby reach the
broad masses of the people. [ . . . ] The majority of Jews were concentrated in
the Ukraine, and the Ukrainian national movement strongly supported Jewish
national tendencies and cultural institutions in order to counter the process of
Russification among Jews [too], which the Russian schools enforced.15
This policy was temporary and contradicted what Stalin declared in his
1913 book Marxism and the National Question16 about the impossibility of the
Jewish request to be recognized as a nationality, primarily because the Jews
did not have any contiguous territory as a nation. When Kiev was occupied
by General Denikin’s counter-revolutionary armed forces of southern Russia
on August 31, 1918, and Marc Chagall invited Lissitzky to teach at the newly
founded People’s Art School in Vitebsk, Belarus, Lissitzky “surely welcomed
the opportunity to leave a dangerous city and return to a familiar place.” 17 (see
Figure 2.1). Lissitzky joined the faculty in Vitebsk “as professor of architecture
and the graphic arts.”18 Kiev was reconquered by the Red Army in December
and the Ukraine was proclaimed the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Belarus was,
from February to July 1919, part of the Lithuanian Belarusian Soviet Socialist
Republic (Litbel), thereafter part of the RSFSR.
The Bolshevik Policy of Nationalities
Already in March 1917, when the February Revolution’s Provisional Government

granted equality to all the ethnicities and religions living in Russia and rescinded
the tsar’s 1915 decree which forbade the use of Hebrew lettering in print (which
was used in Yiddish), a period of optimism and cultural and political activity
Figure 2.1 UNOVIS group photo, Vitebsk, 1920. Courtesy Lazar Khidekel Family
Archives and Art Collection. Lissitzky is second from left in row 2, wearing a cap;
Malevich is in the middle, holding a plate with suprematist decoration; student Lazar
Khidekel is in the middle of the front row; Ilya Chashnik is the second from the right
in row 2.
opened for Russia’s Jews.19 Change was on the way, bringing emancipation
and modernization. The October Revolution had a great appeal to many Jews
because it was the promise of ultimate freedom from segregation and as such,
a potential safeguard from the pogroms that were so dreaded by the Jews even
in the aftermath of the revolution.20 On the other hand, as a result of the new
freedom, “The old Jewish community began to disintegrate in 1917 [in want of
the external pressure] that had kept [it] tightly together.”21 However, the October
Revolution was mostly seen as a form of secular messianism. A number of pro-
bolshevik Jewish organizations were formed to provide financial help and legal
support to members of the communities. Lissitzky was so enthusiastic that he
claimed to have designed the first new banner which was carried across Moscow’s
Red Square on May Day 1918 (there is, however, no evidence that there was
such a design), and in his 1926 autobiography he intimated how profoundly
shaken he had been by the revolutionary upheaval: “In Moscow in 1918 there
flashed before my eyes the short circuit, which split the world in two. This single
blow pushed the time we call the present like a wedge between yesterday and
tomorrow. My efforts are now directed to driving the wedge deeper. One must
belong to this side or that—there is no mid-way.”22
While Lissitzky experienced the revolution from a progressive-humanistic, and
also specifically Jewish, point of view, many of his fellow artists saw the fault lines in
the new society elsewhere, for example between the new bureaucrats and the rest of
society, including themselves. Many “Russian futurists”—an umbrella term applied
to most modernists of the 1910s—had a different perception of the “old” and the
“new” than Lissitzky, once again highlighting Lissitzky’s relative distance from the
Russian avant-garde’s major groups and figures. They believed in the necessity of a
third revolution, “the revolution of the spirit,” that would—long last—free people
from “spiritual slavery”23 and thus mark the emergence of the truly new world.
Malevich’s suprematism fit into this radical outlook well, as it aspired to totally
discard and supersede all previous visual and thought systems in a single coup.
Malevich announced: “it is absurd to force our age into the old forms of time past
. . . we who only yesterday were futurists, ( . . . ) arrived at suprematism.”24
For Lissitzky, however, at that moment it was not so much futurism or certain
painterly styles and forms that had to be left behind that urgently, but rather the
political oppression of, and constant existential threat to, Russia’s Jews. The new
world of zero gravity that he, inspired by Malevich, anticipated was less abstract
and less transcendental than that of Malevich. Given his concern for the plight
of the Jews, Lissitzky experienced the beginnings of Bolshevism differently
than many other artists did, for example Rodchenko, who later in many ways
became most similar to Lissitzky as a graphic designer, product designer, and
photographer. The contrast in their outlooks is striking if we read Rodchenko’s
article in the April 11, 1918, issue of Anarkhiia—just a few weeks before the
May Day events that Lissitzky remembered as an illuminating and thrilling
experience:
Enough!
( . . . ) The new rulers put on us new chains: the Ministry of Art, Commissars
of Art, Art Sections [as parts of Lunacharsky’s People’s Commissariat of
Education.]
( . . . ) And again, like pariahs, we are doomed to extinction from hunger, because
we gave everything to the Ministries, Commissars, and Sections.
It should not happen!
We will organize ourselves and rise powerfully to defend our right to life and
creativity!
I address you, oppressed proletarians of the brush: come to the battle from your
undergrounds and lofts!
Let us unite into the “Free association of oppressed artist-painters”!
Forward! Let’s build a new life!25
Lissitzky could have noted the mention of “sections” among the institutions of the
new bureaucracy because the freshly minted “Evsektii,” short for the “Evreiskie Sektii,”
or Jewish sections of the communist Party, were soon to betray precisely the Jews.
Lissitzky, to some extent a member of the “new rulers” by virtue of his
capacity as a NARKOMPROS employee, saw the choice between the past and
the future mainly as a choice between the oppressed and marginalized status of
national minorities like Jews and Jewish culture, and the new collective Soviet
identity that, according to the party propaganda, was to be all-inclusive. Lissitzky
must have been well aware of the fact that “anti-Jewish violence peaked in the
year 1919,” but also that “the bulk of the atrocities were carried out by forces
hostile to the revolution,”26 even if anti-Semitism among communists was also
high and is amply documented.27 Nevertheless, the revolution’s original early
rhetoric promised equality to all minorities. For Lissitzky the term “collective,” a
later buzzword of international progressive art, had a very concrete meaning of
Jewish emancipation in the new Soviet society—even if later “collectivity” grew
into a more general concept for him, too. The fundamental change he saw and
expected the new state to legislate was transition from the old world of threatened
outsider existence for Jews to the new world of security, freedom, and cultural
liberation—a nationwide and potentially worldwide new age of Enlightenment.
In this anticipated new Soviet world, the rich cultural tradition of Judaism was
to be preserved as an integral part of the entirely new culture of all nationalities
and religions in the service of an improved human condition: no more quotas,
no more religious discrimination, and the end of exploitation, social hierarchy,
nationwide injustices. Secular Jewish culture, Lissitzky anticipated, could be as
modern as any other component of the new culture and the new collective age.
He did not perceive the new bureaucracy, already in its first phase, as posing a
threat or itself becoming the new oppressor class, as Rodchenko did. About two
weeks after that same May Day 1918 that Lissitzky experienced with a sense of
history and high hopes, Rodchenko once again wrote acerbically in Anarkhiia:
To you who have come into power, you, the victors, brothers in spirit, creators
of the brush, the pen, and the chisel, to you, who only yesterday starved in attics
and today are commissars of art, I say: Do not barricade yourselves behind
the desks of your collegiums and bureaucratic offices, remember that time is
passing, and you have not yet done anything for your brothers, and they are still
hungry, as they were yesterday. . . . Remember the creative work of the rebels!28
As Rodchenko’s rant indicates, most avant-garde artists, including Rodchenko

himself as well as Malevich, did not experience the dramatic improvement as
a result of the October Revolution that Lissitzky had believed in. Lissitzky on
the other hand experienced, at least in the wake of the revolution, tremendous
relief and hope. The meaningful changes he made in his illustrations to the
new, 1919 edition of the Jewish Passover song “Had Gadya” and its geometric
abstract dust jacket, “one of the last works that he signed under his Hebrew given
name Eliezer,”29 are generally and justly regarded as proofs of his faith in the
October Revolution. Haia Friedberg observes that in this new version Lissitzky
showed “support for the bolshevik victory, conceived of as the victory of the
weak over the strong, the good over the bad, as the victory of amended justice.”30
The 1919 version features the defeated Angel of Death with the tsar’s crown
symbolizing the old world’s demise. The Hebrew letters P.N. (pei nun), signifying
“here lies” or “here is buried,” used on Jewish gravestones, appear above the
angel’s palm in the lower right corner of the page, to mark the end of the era
symbolized by the crown.31 Friedberg also observes that Lissitzky represented
God’s redemptive hand as brandishing the sword with uncanny resemblance to
the way in which the hand of the Soviet people was depicted to be cutting the
chain of servitude on one of the first postal stamps issued in postrevolutionary
Russia in 1918 (Figures 2.2 and 2.3). “The likeness between the two hands
cannot be questioned,” Friedberg says, and this argument is supported, aside
from the convincing evidence of the stamp itself, by Lissitzky’s entirely different
1917 version of the same scene, where the Angel of Death is defeated but not
yet dead; so that by redesigning it in 1919, “Lissitzky is suggesting that the
hand of the communist Revolution is propelled by the arm of divine justice and
redemption.”32 Furthermore, Friedberg notes:
On one side of the painting we see an old bearded man turning his head and
hand to the sky, in an expression of amazement. On the opposite side, we see a
kid waving its front legs in the air. The hand with the knife crosses between these
two images, recalling traditional artistic compositions of the “Binding of Isaac.”
Here, however, there is a twist: instead of Isaac being under the knife, in Lissitzky’s
Figure 2.2 The first Soviet post stamp. Russia_1918_CPA_1_stamp_(Hand_with_

a_Sword_Splitting_a_Chain_against_a_Rising_Sun).jpg.
Figure 2.3 El Lissitzky: “Had Gadya” (“The Only Kid”), illustration to Verse 10. 1919.
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
painting it is the Angel of Death who is being killed by the hand of god. One
should not be mistaken in thinking that there is identification between Isaac and
the Angel of Death; on the contrary: Isaac, and the kid are saved from the hand
of death because death itself is killed. Recognizing young Russian Jews—raised
traditionally and living in a revolutionary age—as his target audience, Lissitzky
brilliantly chooses Had Gadya as the medium of his message. Through the story
and characters of the Had Gadya, he offers the choice that he himself made: to
leave the old ways paved with victimization in favor of the new redemptive path
of the revolution and communism, a gift offered from heaven itself.33
Thus, Lissitzky’s message to the Jewish readership of the book was that
communism brought freedom and justice to the Jews, and the revolution itself
was God’s will. His poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge,34 dating also
from 1919 or early 1920 in which he urged the Jews to support the bolsheviks in
the Civil War, was already a more pronouncedly suprematist-style composition
than the new Had Gadya dust jacket, as it was created after his encounter with
Malevich and suprematism. Lissitzky’s choice of the words “Beat the Whites!”
(Bei bielykh!)—supposedly on the advice of Ilya Ehrenburg35—recalled the
dreaded pogrom slogan “Beat the Jews!” (Bei zhidov!). The wedge, as we have
already seen, was a symbol for Lissitzky in visualizing the unbridgeable rift
between the old and the new, which in his work now appeared, consistently with
the symbolic colors of the fighting armies in the Civil War, as red versus white.
It must be noted, however, that the Beat the Whites! poster was suprematist
only in its formal language, while it fundamentally differed from Malevich’s
concept of prohibiting any articulable message in a suprematist image, because
suprematism was the art of “pure sensation” and as such was to remain untainted
by narrative.
Vassily Rakitin relates that a week after Malevich’s arrival in Vitebsk, the First
State Exhibition of Paintings by Local and Moscow Artists opened at the Vitebsk
People’s School of Art, where Malevich exhibited two 1913 cubo-futurist works
and one undated suprematist composition, while “Lissitzky [still] showed works
on Jewish themes.”36 This might have been the very last time for Lissitzky to
exhibit such stylized figurative work, which was somewhat similar to Chagall’s,
if less lyrical.
It soon became clear to Lissitzky that although the first postrevolutionary
months may have encouraged optimism, the October Revolution did not
in fact deliver the Promised Land for the Jews. In fact, quite to the contrary,
“Soviet Communism demanded an increasingly higher level of commitment to
its own values and institutions which did not permit simultaneous adherence
to alternative belief systems.”37 Both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the
latter Commissar for Nationalities after October 1917, had already expressed
that emphasis on national cultures was not compatible with the concept of a
homogenous communist society. Like Stalin, Lenin had also argued as early as
1913 that “Whoever, directly or indirectly, puts forward the slogan of Jewish
‘national culture’ (whatever his good intentions may be) is an enemy of the
proletariat, a supporter of all that is outmoded and connected with caste among
the Jewish people; he is an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie”38—
connecting these two categories of people without batting an eye—however, this
doctrine was implemented only after the victory of the revolution, when the
bolshevik Party no longer needed the minorities’ languages for the mediation of
its message. Now, the bolshevik Party saw Jewish as well as every other minority
culture as a threat to Soviet unity and therefore labeled these groups the enemy
of the working class—a view that was soon elevated to the rank of the party’s
policy.
The Eighth Party Congress, the highest forum of the RC(B)P, the Russian
communist (bolshevik) Party, held between March 18 and 23, 1919, stated: “The
aim of the Party is finally to destroy the ties between the exploiting classes and
the organization of religious propaganda.”39 In the later well-known, somewhat
coded language that, on its surface, insisted on equality, the resolution was
The proletarian dictatorship must completely destroy the connection between

the exploiting classes—the landowners and capitalists—and the organization
of religious propaganda which keeps the masses in ignorance. The proletarian
dictatorship must consistently effect the real emancipation of the working people
from religious prejudices, doing so by means of propaganda and by raising the
political consciousness of the masses but carefully avoiding anything that may
hurt the feelings of the religious section of the population and serve to increase
religious fanaticism.40
To put this party’s resolution into practice, the already mentioned Jewish
Commissariat ‘Evkom’ (Evreiskii komitet) and the Evsektsii were organized
mostly in the Ukraine after the Red Army reoccupied it. These organizations
first appeared to support the Jews’ position in the communist Party, but it soon
turned out that their function rather was to secure ideological control, and
they were in fact created to “start the systematic destruction of traditional and
national Jewish aspirations.”41 A decree dated April 1919, but published in June-
July of the same year, abolished the elected local communal units of Jewish life,
the kehillas in the Ukraine. Moreover, Stalin, supported by Evsektsya leader
Samuel Agursky (1887–1947), also demanded their money and inventories.42

The second conference of the Evkom and Evsektsya held in June 1919—only
a few months before Lissitzky’s trip to Moscow and his recruiting of Malevich
for the Vitebsk school—implemented the decisions of the Eighth Congress of
the Party by designating all Jewish organizations as enemies of the revolution
and ordering the shutdown of synagogues as well as Jewish cultural institutions,
including the Jewish Historical Museum in Petrograd. Use of Hebrew letters was
denounced as anti-communist.43 “On the night of July 5, 1919, the offices of all
zionist organizations in the Ukraine, including even a sports club, were raided
and closed. The zionist leaders and officials were arrested, questioned, and
released.”44 Such scare tactics were designed to remind the Jews that communism
was to be a melting pot, and every effort to revive national and religious cultures
was regarded as bourgeois—the worst conceivable label, reserved for the enemies
of the communist state and the proletariat. It was striking as well as deeply
demoralizing for Russian Jews that anti-Jewish statements and decrees came,
more often than not, signed by prominent Jewish communists and Evsektsya
leaders, such as Samuel Agursky.
Suprematism as Ultimate Redemption
Lissitzky must have been trapped by the dramatically divided loyalties that
presented themselves unexpectedly after his great expectations from, and
adherence to, the bolshevik Revolution. If he was to be true to the cause of Jewish
culture, he would be untrue to the revolution; and if he was to support the policy
of the communist Party, he would betray his own culture of Judaism. This was
an irresolvable conflict: he must have seen the promise of the revolution as being
betrayed by precisely the same people who had previously most championed its
promises.
His encounter with Malevich and his suprematist work in the fall of
1919 during Lissitzky’s visit to Moscow would have made all the difference to
Lissitzky and prompted him to abruptly change his worldview altogether as
well as his artistic style.45 By this time the abstract, transnational, future-bound
visual vocabulary of suprematism, self-proclaimed as communist, was already
the language of a quasi-political movement with quasi-religious overtones
bolstered by quasi-theoretical writings. Lissitzky recognized suprematism as
the apparent solution to his internal conflict, all the more since it resolved the
antagonism between the revolution and Judaism by transcending both in its own
right. But perhaps even more importantly for Lissitzky, suprematism united the
cause of the revolution and the visual expression of the new collectivist culture
of the future that would be inclusive of Jews, too, all symbolized by the universal
validity of geometric forms. The soon-to-be organized group UNOVIS, which
represented suprematism to such an extent that it was essentially considered
to be synonymous with it, was pro-communist and competed first with
“Tatlinism,” then eventually constructivism, for domination of the visual culture
of revolutionary Russia. Each of these movements developed its own distinct
geometric abstract vocabulary, and each of them stood for the new visual idiom
of transnational modernity, as consistent with the perceived new Soviet identity.
Suprematism, therefore, as Lissitzky saw it, straddled loyalty to the communist
Soviet state and the desire to not betray Jewish culture: its vision of the future
was distant and universal, projected far ahead into the cosmos while, at the same
time, it claimed pragmatic efficiency in the very real, new context of the Russian
Revolution, with the promise to surpass every imaginable vision of a new world
order. Lissitzky thus believed that suprematism was nothing short of messianic
and therefore it squared with his ultimate desire of an all-inclusive, redemptive,
radically new and utopian culture of the future.
Lissitzky certainly came to the understanding that the so-called Jewish
question could be resolved only in the frames of an overall restructuring of
Russian society and culture; and suprematism’s cosmic view not only pointed
in exactly that direction of resolving that problem but went even further. The
suprematism Lissitzky encountered in the fall of 1919 was not as free of political
contents as the suprematism of 1915–1916 that had positioned the artist in the
cosmic space of a timeless future.46 In 1919, suprematism was not only a concept
that looked far ahead, but it was also politically committed to, and unmistakably
anchored in, the cause of the revolution. It projected a futuristic vision when
the term “future” was a code word for the positive, pro-communist attitude,
pregnant with progressive, youthful, and left-wing overtones.
During the first postrevolutionary years Lunacharsky, in his capacity of
Commissar for the People’s Enlightenment, did not deny support for abstract art
and the radically innovative art movements, even if with increasing restrictions
and bans on their various forums. This early support also gave Lissitzky reason
for optimism, as he himself was part of NARKOMPROS, and identified with the
revolution, even if with slight and passing doubts, as its ideas impressed him
more than its actual practice.
Lissitzky may have encountered Malevich and his suprematist work as early
as 1917, as Shatskikh suggests;47 but even if he did, he had not been sensitized
to the conflict between Judaism and communism at the time. This must have
dramatically changed by the fall of 1919, once the message of the Eighth Congress
was made public, thereby making the burden and pressure of split loyalties
heavy on Lissitzky. Suprematism’s vision of the future, its movement-generating
potential that brought UNOVIS into existence, and its declared commitment
to the revolution were all perceived as being clearly reflected by the imagery of
supra-individual pure geometry. Lissitzky found that the unifying power of the
suprematist language squared with the rhetoric of the revolution, promising both
epochal liberation and a historical change that would be, seen from a broader
perspective, favorable to all, regardless of ethnicity. Abstract art was compelling
evidence of such a promise of the revolution, and suprematism was neither
nation- nor religion-specific. Communism may have been unfolding in the
present, but suprematism was nonetheless announced as being the imminent,
inevitable future. Lissitzky was instantly convinced and clearly indicated the
magnitude of this promise by ranking suprematism as token of a new world
order—indeed, the new gospel—above every other fundamental, epochal idea
in history—writ large, in all-capital letters, as he solemnly announced it in
UNOVIS’ own journal:
THUS THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS FOLLOWED BY THE NEW, THE NEW
WAS FOLLOWED BY THE COMMUNIST, AND THE COMMUNIST IS
FINALLY FOLLOWED BY THE TESTAMENT OF SUPREMATISM.48
As this statement emphatically indicates, in both typography and content, in

1920 Lissitzky ranked suprematism as a universal concept that was higher
than communism. He apparently did not suspect that the communist Party
would eventually condemn the positioning of any concept above communism,
including artistic ones. This statement is a ringing announcement of the
significance that Lissitzky attributed to suprematism on a scale that arguably few
other artists or critics did. The reason was that he looked at suprematism from a
particular vantage point: not primarily as a professional artistic issue, but rather
as an epochal promise.
To mark this moment of illumination and perceived historical change that
he experienced as the promise of redemption, Lissitzky changed his given
name from Eliezer (Lazar) to El (eventually El’). In this decision, which,
coincidentally, reduced his Hebrew name to its initial (“El” for “Eliezer,” or as
the spoken first letter “L”, for Lazar), the suprematist organization UNOVIS’
already cited slogan “U-el-el'ul-el-te-ka” may have also played a role,49 sealing
the replacement of Lissitzky’s cultural heritage of Judaism50 by what he now held
as the higher idea and more overarching formal vocabulary of the all-inclusive
future: suprematism.51 Recalling these days in 1920, Lissitzky wrote: “Here stood
revealed for the first time in all its purity the clear sign and plan for a definite
new world never before experienced—a world which issues forth from our inner
being and which is only in the first stage of its formation. For this reason, the
square of suprematism became a beacon.”52
This statement, along with many others, leaves no doubt about the dramatic
change Lissitzky was undergoing in thinking as well as in his artistic work
following his encounter with Malevich’s suprematism. The divide was not
between expressive figurative rendering and painterly abstraction, but rather
between the before and after of recognizing the significance of suprematism
resolving Lissitzky’s existential dilemma.
Based on a 1919 painting titled Abstract Composition in Kiev’s Museum of
Ukrainian Art, attributed to Lissitzky, recent scholarship53 claims that he had
experimented with bringing together geometric abstraction and Jewish motifs
already prior to his encounter with suprematism, probably under the influence
of Alexandra Exter. This narrative defines Lissitzky’s career as a more balanced
development toward abstraction than having a radical turning point late in
1919 under duress or Malevich’s sudden influence.54 However, there was an
unmistakable turning point, due to the shocking political change brought upon
the national minorities by the Eighth Party Congress, which resulted in Lissitzky’s
change of name—an extraordinarily clear sign of a watershed moment. Even
if Lissitzky tried his hand at coordinating cubism and Jewish art by inserting
a piece of Hebrew writing in the middle of the cubist elements in Abstract
Composition—provided that it is, in fact, Lissitzky’s painting—this does in no
way contradict suprematism having been a major catalyst and turning point in
his life and career.55 Lissitzky envisioned suprematism as the definitive art of the
future that transcends and will thus resolve all the conceptual, historical, and
political conflicts of the present, rather than as a gradual adaption of abstraction
that he had clearly been familiar with. His own new brand proun, derivative
of the suprematist UNOVIS—“proun” is most likely meant to be read as Pro-
UNOVIS—was the radically new chapter in Lissitzky’s career reflecting his
intellectual and political concepts.
This is not to suggest that Alan Birnholz’s and Christina Lodder’s arguments
regarding Lissitzky’s efforts to coordinate Judaism and the visual language of
proun56 in subsequent years are incorrect. This tendency is clearly demonstrated
by Lissitzky’s continued post-1919 geometric abstract designs for Yiddish
books, for example the 1922 cover designs for Mani Leib’s Yngl Tsingl Khvat (A
Mischievous Boy), published in Warsaw by the Kultur Lige, and Four Billygoats,
as well as his illustrations to Ehrenburg’s Six Tales with Light Endings, most
clearly among them the one for The Schifskarta (The Boat Ticket), also 1922,
published in Berlin.
The memoirs of the Polish painter Henryk Berlewi, who became Lissitzky’s
friend during the latter’s visit to Warsaw on his way to Berlin in 1921, confirm
the previous argument.
I hoped to find a brotherly soul in Lissitzky, creator of the many wonderful

illustrations in Yiddish books, but to my great disappointment and surprise I met
a “renegade” Lissitzky. ( . . . ) He talked to me for long hours about suprematism
and its founder Malevich. We had long discussions about the antagonism of
nationalism and cosmopolitanism. His “conversion” to suprematism did not
hinder him in remaining a good Jew.57
Berlewi adds that in the “mystical-chassidist” Jewish cultural world in the

Warsaw of 1921, the “suprematist message resonated as false.”58 However, he
came under its influence himself, as if it had been a drug—“hashish,” he wrote—
in response to the “magic images of crystal clear purity,” so enthusiastically
did Lissitzky speak about the “new religion.”59 Berlewi’s memoir makes it clear
that he was not aware of the new bolshevik policy declared by the Eighth Party
Congress, and Lissitzky did not disclose his disappointment and dilemma to
him, so he regarded Lissitzky’s commitment to suprematism as a purely free
spiritual-artistic choice. Berlewi is remembered to have been part of a great wave
of Jewish awakening after the First World War, which thrived on the expectation
of a Jewish cultural explosion in Europe. It was a year later in Berlin that Berlewi
realized the contradiction and conflict between the Jewish nationalists and the
cosmopolitan constructivists, many of whom also happened to be Jews. There
he understood the choice that Lissitzky had made, even if still unaware of
the political factors it was brought on by: “He who has not been through the
inner drama to which we Jewish artists were exposed, namely resignation of a
nationality in favor of a diametrically opposed universalist concept of art, will
never be in the position to assess our sacrifice.”60 Nevertheless, Berlewi continued
to misunderstand Lissitzky and believed that he was so fascinated by Malevich
that he could simply not resist the “shock” of his “magnetic power”:
I believe that Lissitzky and myself were the only Jewish artists who have
sacrificed our love of this fantastic Jewish world we felt so profoundly attached
to, on the altar of constructivism. Both of us have given up a universe full of
spiritual beauty, wisdom, and mysticism to turn ourselves to the cult of the
machine, that is, to a universalist cosmopolitan and technical concept of art.
This new path could be broken only at the price of resignation that was near to
superhuman. We have committed ourselves to European constructivism with
the same fanaticism with which we had served Jewish folk art.61
It must be emphasized that Berlewi misconstrued this, even if with good

intentions: Lissitzky did not make a deliberate decision between two equally
attractive life programs. Living in Russia, he had to clearly see the dead-end
street into which Jewish culture, along with other national cultures, was forced,
and that commitment to it had been propagated as being in direct opposition
to the cause of an all-inclusive society that the bolshevik state promised and
claimed to side with.
Interpreting suprematism as the symbolic language of a utopian, imaginary
collectivity62 was, at the same time, tantamount to limiting it to only a few of
its aspects. Lissitzky undoubtedly had an idiosyncratic take on suprematism,
bending it to his own wishes to resolve his own intellectual and existential
predicament. He glossed over the “color masses,” and the particular color-
compositions of Malevich’s suprematist paintings and the similarly conceived
“masses of sound,”63 and in his understanding of Malevich’s ideas, he disregarded
“the fifth measurement,” or unknown dimension, that Malevich summed up
as his quintessential concept in On New Systems in Art,64 the very article that
Lissitzky printed out in Vitebsk. Apparently Lissitzky had a blind spot for many
aspects of Malevich’s concepts and painterly work, even as he was fascinated
by, and focused on, the universalist and futuristic features of suprematism,
elevating it to the level of eschatology. From his point of view, the universality
and simplicity of the suprematist geometric vocabulary and Malevich’s cosmic
void visualized the positive expectations of a new world expanding into the
cosmos, breaking free from the burden of history.
A few years later, the Berlin-based Hungarian art critic Ernő (Ernst) Kállai
had a similar, although more practical, take on the visual language of geometric
abstraction that validated Lissitzky’s vision. He too regarded it as the lowest
common denominator for the visual expression of a future internationalism.
Kállai, as will be discussed, would cross paths with Lissitzky on several occasions
during the latter’s stay in Berlin and would write the first essay on his work.65 After
international constructivism66 peaked in the West in or around 1923 at the latest,
Kállai characterized the new visual language as a hope for the emancipation of
the artists active on the peripheries of European culture:
It seemed that this construct would fit immediately, without the detour of
evolution through national traditions, into the overall artistic framework of
the longed-for new, collective world. For artists coming from the uncertain
peripheries of this emerging international Europe, this was bound to seem as an
extraordinary opportunity.67
This describes the case of Lissitzky, who, having been forced to seek higher
education abroad and thus depending on all-inclusive universalism, was in a
situation similar to East Europeans with regard to Western Europe. For him,
too, an overall new beginning would have been within sight only “without the
detour of evolution,” that is, preferably through an instant, general adaption of
a common, supranational formal language. The radical elimination of cultural,
ethnic, and religious differences, the reimagining of history in a new world of
equality and fraternity, the specific rules of which had not yet been envisioned,
had to happen all at once. It was the vision of a future without a past, as evoked
in Victory over the Sun: pure utopia but the only hope. In this vision, the square,
clean and equilateral, reigned supreme.
Lissitzky’s Rationalized Suprematism
Lissitzky and Malevich cooperated on the design of a curtain for the Vitebsk
theater in 1919, the sketch for which was, as Rakitin points out, perhaps the
only common work by the two of them, and “was, if not the first, then one
of the first for Lissitzky in the suprematist style.”68 Early in 1920 Lissitzky
and Malevich designed the suprematist decoration for the building of the
Commissariat for Unemployment in Vitebsk together, the final product being
executed and mounted by students, including UNOVIS members Nina Kogan,
Nikolai Suetin, and Ivan Chervinko. Lissitzky’s posters from 1919, the now lost
The Factory Workbenches Await You and the well-known Beat the Whites with
the Red Wedge, demonstrate that, as already mentioned, he fully and abruptly
appropriated the suprematist formal language in the fall of 1919. In fact, The
Factory Workbenches poster, probably preceded by the more purely suprematist
Beat the Whites . . . and another propaganda piece, Communication Workers,
Remember the Year 1905, dating from 1919 to 1920, is already in his own proun
style (if avant la lettre), with three-dimensional geometric bodies rather than flat
shapes floating in space. Both versions of the Communication Workers poster,69
as well as Beat the Whites, include flat geometric shapes, similarly to Malevich’s
suprematist paintings. Lissitzky, although he joined UNOVIS and was strongly

devoted to it, took part in its activities, very soon—apparently still in the late
fall of 1919—nevertheless asserted himself as a representative of proun, his own
brand name, a further development of suprematism.70 A key difference between
Malevich’s suprematism and Lissitzky’s proun is that Lissitzky added illusory
three-dimensionality to the flat geometric shapes of the suprematist paintings.
He adopted Malevich’s cosmic void, although he did not paint it white, but
insisted on painting voluminous floating geometric objects, thereby rationalizing
suprematism inasmuch as he tended to reveal the entire body of the geometric
solids through foreshortening, even if he used several systems of perspective
within the frame of a single painting. This feature detracts from the volition
of the unlimited, free-floating weightlessness of Malevich’s suprematist shapes,
just as the three-dimensionality adds gravity, or at least body and volume, to
Lissitzky’s equally free-floating forms.
UNOVIS dominated the Vitebsk school and had opportunities to decorate
the town on the anniversaries of the revolution. When Sergei Eisenstein had a
stopover in Vitebsk on his way to Moscow from Minsk in 1920, he depicted
A singular provincial town. Built, like so many of the towns in the west of the
country, of red brick. Begrimed with soot and depressing. But there is something
very odd about this town. In the main streets the red bricks are painted white.
And over this white background there are green circles everywhere. Orange
squares. Blue rectangles. This is Vitebsk in the year 1920. The brush of Kasimir
Malevich has gone over the brick walls. . . . You see orange circles before your
eyes, red squares and green trapeziums. . . . Suprematist confetti strewn about
the streets of an astonished town.71
Regardless of their differences, the enormous contrast between the reality, which
was “begrimed with soot and depressing,” and the vision of an ethereal future
of colors and unlimited expansion projected by the thin layer of “suprematist
confetti,” it was this gap between the real and the imaginary that provided the
virtual space in which both Malevich and Lissitzky could operate during their
time together in Vitebsk in 1919–1921.
3
Theo van Doesburg, Artist and Strategist
There were striking similarities between the Dutch and the Russian avant-gardes
in the 1910s that would be manifest in the artists’ views and artistic production
through the following decade, despite the fact that the artists themselves were not
in contact. By the time they established personal and professional connections
in the early 1920s, they mutually saw great possibilities in cooperation based
on their shared goals and ideas. It soon turned out, however, that their visually
rhyming works were rooted in different concepts and perspectives.
Van Doesburg’s Early Career
Born in Utrecht in 1883 as Christian Emil Marie Küpper and adopting the name
of his stepfather Theodorus Doesburg (who may have been his biological father),
Theo van Doesburg was the most controversial figure of the international avant-
garde until his untimely death in 1931 (see Figure 3.1).
Theo van Doesburg shaped Lissitzky and Malevich’s reception and
interpretation west of Russia during the 1920s more than anyone else did.
Van Doesburg devised the most comprehensive network of the international
avant-garde, aspiring to, and eventually occupying, a top position in it. His
monographer Evert van Straaten confirms what many of his contemporaries
thought: “Theo van Doesburg wanted to control the international avant-garde
of his day like a spider in its web,”1 which ambition, along with his temperament,
caused dramatic changes in his loyalties and personal relationships to the other
avant-garde artists throughout the decade. As Karel Blotkamp observed, “he
moved in two different directions. He brought kindred spirits together, but he
also drove them apart again.”2
Van Doesburg’s early intellectual development shows similarities to that of
Malevich, similarities which have long remained underexamined, while, as we
Figure 3.1 Theo van Doesburg, photo, 1927. Courtesy RKD, The Hague.
shall see, later van Doesburg emphatically distinguished himself from Malevich
and singlehandedly prevented the publication of Malevich’s essays in German.
A mostly self-taught painter, van Doesburg started his career as a writer and
poet enthralled by spirituality. From 1912 on he contributed to the journal Eenheid
(Unity), “a weekly that was aimed at theosophists, freemasons, rosicrucians,
spiritualists, vegetarians, and teetotalers, ( . . . ) where he expostulated how art
should be judged ( . . . ) on its ability to express pure, deep feelings”3—predating
Malevich’s concept of “the supremacy of pure sensations.”4 Introduced to the visual
arts by architect J. J. P. Oud, van Doesburg valued Kandinsky as a painter, ranking
him highest among his fellow artists on a spiritual scale. When in 1915 he got
personally acquainted with painters Piet Mondrian and Janus de Winter in Laren,
he found, in Blotkamp’s words, “in his own country an abstract, spiritualized
art that could stand comparison to Kandinsky,”5 and befriended both artists. He
admired their work that he found to be a radically new beginning in art. Similarly
to Malevich, van Doesburg also “repeatedly and emphatically distanced himself
from his predecessors.”6 Aside from the two painters, he also met their neighbor
in Laren, theosophist and mathematician Dr. Mathieu Hubertus Josephus
Schoenmakers (1875–1944), who provided the theosophist framework of the De
Stijl movement which van Doesburg cofounded with Mondrian in 1917, in a
Theo van Doesburg, Artist and Strategist 61
role similar to the one Mikhail Matyushin played in developing and articulating
the aesthetic ideas and artistic program of Malevich. Schoenmakers connected
the painters’ ideas to the perceived mathematical structure of the universe and
to theosophy’s central idea of achieving ‘cosmic, universal harmony’ in art and
life. According to Hans L. C. Jaffe, it was Schoenmakers’s views that were “the
catalyst in the foundation of De Stijl, [making the founding members’ works] one
unified, collective oeuvre.”7 While both the Dutch and the Russians were seeking
solid scientific and conceptual grounds for the new art and the new aesthetics,
the thinkers they followed were occultists rather than scientists. These thinkers
responded to the artists’ desire to see their work in a cosmic context and on a
cosmic scale, addressing a utopia to answer mankind’s ontological questions on a
universal level. The Dutch artists, committed to theosophy, perceived their place
within a universal framework, believing that their images conveyed the “new
realism” in a cosmic sense: grasping the abstract essence of the universe rather
than getting lost in concrete details. The occultist thinkers (“occult,” from the
Latin occultus, meaning “hidden”) were seeking hidden laws and connections
in the cosmos, freely selecting concepts from a mix of scientific theories, optical
perception, poetry, and their own imagination. These ideas can best be regarded
as poetic metaphors that belong to a nascent new imagination. Their universalism
was parallel to the “cosmism”8 of the early Russian avant-garde.
At the beginning of his artistic career van Doesburg was employed by architects
to design stained glass windows for various villas. His geometric compositions,
which he regarded as elements of a new collective art, featured reversed and
repeated sets of motifs with hidden relationships between the design details he
used. The window designs were conceived as parts of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or a
total work of art: a house. Such works taught van Doesburg lessons about the
relationship of parts to the whole both conceptually and materially.
Parallel to the Russian artists, van Doesburg and Mondrian also took a fresh look
at medieval and religious art in search of transcendental experience and tradition:
“it is the task of modern art to make us experience the universe, and even god,”9
van Doesburg wrote, and he dedicated a poem to Mondrian, titled “Kathedraal
I.”10 In a July 2, 1916, letter to his friend Antony Kok, he wrote: “Through ( . . . ) the
medieval museum and the Saint Bavo church11 I have found my task: the crystal
atmosphere. I have a positive plan for creation and what I shall create now will top
everything.”12 This visionary program of “crystal atmosphere” is not fundamentally
different from Malevich’s concept of cosmic space; and van Doesburg’s ambition
“to top everything” perhaps best translates to “supreme” in Malevich’s language.
Both artists had their sight on higher concepts and ultimate, universal answers to
issues in art and questions of the world that were meant to encompass all previous
artistic endeavors. They shared interest in nascent cosmology, ideas about the
“fourth dimension,” non-Euclidean mathematics and geometry as well as natural
sciences, all filtered through a mix of spiritual, theosophist, and occultist teaching.
In 1916 van Doesburg published a poem dedicated to Dutch painter Janus de
Winter in Eenheid, titled De Priester-Kunstenaar (The Priest-Artist), in which he,
similarly to many poets and artists of his generation all over Europe and Russia,
prophesied that “man will be born again”; “Art will be religion,” declared the
artist a priest, “to whom we owe the new life.”13 Mondrian, too, saw religion as an
integral part of the new outlook: “the new spirit comes strongly forward in logic,
science, and religion,”14 he wrote in his “Neoplasticism in Painting,” published in
twelve parts in the De Stijl journal’s first volume, edited and published by van
Doesburg. This idea parallels Malevich’s announcing the Black Square to be a new
beginning, occupying the place of the icon. As mentioned in the Introduction
to this book, many modernist artists shared faith in art’s redemptive power all
over the Western hemisphere, as well. One of them was the Hungarian poet and
essayist Béla Balázs, whose vision of the coming new culture at the beginning of
the twentieth century similarly discerned features of art as a new religion;15 and
Lissitzky’s cited recognition of suprematism as a new persuasion is also a case in
point. The term and idea of “religion,” which bolsheviks including Commissar
Lunacharsky and author Bogdanov took very seriously, was understood in a broad
sense, as a potential new faith whether metaphysical or materialist, including,
besides the already existing denominations, a number of spiritualist currents that
were seen as germinating new belief systems.
Imagining art as vehicle of a new faith, especially after the breakout of the
Great War, entailed the idea of an improved future, where the new art would
have a uniting power, overwriting national, religious, and racial differences.
Over the years, however, van Doesburg grew distanced from the concept of
the artist-priest but continued to see the artist as a superior mastermind and
spiritual leader of society. In his 1919 article “Van ‘natuur’ tot ‘kompositie’” (from
“nature” to “composition”),16 he arrives at concepts similar to those we find in
many of Malevich’s writings, stating: “Supremacy of mind over nature called
for a fresh mental approach, with new scientific methods for acquiring greater
objectivity.”17 In a 1916 survey of recent art tendencies, Malevich writes: “The art
of naturalism is the idea of the savage ( . . . ) For art is the ability to construct.
( . . . ) Suprematism is the new non-objective creation,”18 where “non-objective”
actually corresponds with what van Doesburg means by “greater objectivity”: the
leaving behind of imitative representation of any concrete “object.”
The artistic development from impressionist, Cézanne-ist, and cubist to

futurist art and beyond to abstraction was a surprisingly similar trajectory in
both artists’ careers, as was the subject of their respective surveys of recent
modernist art. Both saw their respective abstract art as the ultimate stage in a
teleologically conceived art history with an inner logic that led from a formal
analysis of the cubists to abstract geometry. Van Doesburg and Malevich also had
similar ambitions toward organizing the artistic community. Van Doesburg was
intensely active on the Dutch and European scene as a poet, painter, architectural
draughtsman, typographer, graphic designer, stained glass window designer,19
and essayist, as well as publishing editor, with a great interest in theater, film,
and mysticism—most of which square with Malevich’s interests and activities.
Van Doesburg and Malevich did not know each other personally. Originally
led by admiration for Mondrian and his adherence to theosophy, van Doesburg
aimed at creating perfectly flat surfaces and harmony in painting, “equilibrium
between the pictorial elements,”20 but he was not as firmly committed to this ideal
as Mondrian was. Blotkamp observes that, also similarly to Malevich, “There is
an anarchist undercurrent in van Doesburg’s ways [which was] becoming more
conscious and stronger through the years.”21 Parallels—with a couple of years’ shift
one way or another—also appear in their work. Although van Doesburg did not
belong to a cubo-futurist circle of poets like Malevich did, between 1914 and 1916 he
nevertheless wrote his own “cubist poetry.” As Hannah L. Hedrick demonstrates,
these poems “reflect cubist painting techniques,”22 for example “simultaneous
representation of different figures from different vantage points.”23 Moreover, van
Doesburg’s 1917 Design for a Fountain, of which only a photo is known, happens to be
remarkably similar to Malevich’s 1921–1922 Architektons (see Figures 3.2 and 3.3).
Van Doesburg was impulsive, rebellious, inclined to reject set rules, often
generous, and, as van Straaten relates, “he was an intriguer, too.”24 Van Doesburg’s
initial admiration for Mondrian and his balanced, timelessly metaphysical
painting came to a breaking point in 1924 as his interests detached from
Mondrian’s static horizontal-vertical, theosophist grids. Assuming dynamism to
be the most important organizing force of life, van Doesburg applied diagonals
in his compositions and positioned himself as permanently progressive, in
opposition to Mondrian, who ignored considerations of time and space, the
issue of the fourth dimension, new technologies, and the new dynamics in
architecture. To keep his image of an artist engaged in geometric abstraction
consistent, van Doesburg tripled his personality, so to speak, by choosing the
pseudonyms of alter egos I. K. Bonset and Aldo Camini in order to cover, and to
some extent control, activities in the fields of dada and futurism as well.
Figure 3.2 Theo van Doesburg: Design of Fountain, photo, 1917. Courtesy RKD, The
Hague.
Figure 3.3 Malevich: Architekton, 1924–1926. Photo of lost work. Published in Nova
Generatsia No. 4, 1929.
Elementary Dissent
Elementarism, van Doesburg’s own “ism” that he launched in 1925,25 asserting

his own standpoints independently from Mondrian’s neoplasticism, emphasized
four-dimensionality—“plasticism in the field of time-space.” “Elementarism,”
a term which announces the claim to a fundamental reconsideration of visual
image-making from the ground up, “destroys radically the classical, optical
frontality of the painting ( . . . ) it is always in revolt, in opposition, to nature.”26
Again, it is evoking Malevich’s line on art’s “domination over the forms of
nature.”27 Furthermore, “Elementarism begins where philosophy and religion
have said their last word [and it wants to] destroy completely the illusionist view
of the world in all its forms (religion, stupor of nature and art, etc.), and construct
an elementary world of exact and splendid reality.”28 These program points
clearly indicate that elementarism has claims similar to those of suprematism
to uproot the culture starting with its basic elements and introduce a radically
new kind of culture that will transcend all existing systems of ideas and beliefs.
Announcing the uprooting of the visual arts along with the concepts they are
grounded in, as well as challenging their aesthetic dimensions, forms, and even
indirect relations to nature, shows van Doesburg’s aspirations to not fall short of
Malevich’s. This sheds some light on van Doesburg’s journal title and movement
name De Stijl, with special emphasis on the definite article “De,” or “the”: it is not
just a particular mode of style, but, as van Straaten points out, “the style, which
would solely possess universal validity.”29 While Malevich progresses upwards,
above the given world and up into the white space of the cosmos to transcend the
boundaries of the known world and the culture, van Doesburg aspires to replace
its very foundations—its root elements—in order to fundamentally renew it.
Van Doesburg paid special attention to the square as a new, key motif of an
international alliance in art. Early on he wrote an article in which he praised
this “form of the formless,”30 the importance of which increased in his eyes as he
encountered it in the works of Russian artists.
The Antiauthoritarian Authorities of the Avant-Garde
In the early 1920s, van Doesburg fiercely competed for a leading position of the
international avant-garde with other artists in an attempt to achieve control over
the progressive art scene as well as recognition for ultimate originality. He united
the spiritual engagement of Malevich and the pragmatism of the constructivists
without actually being familiar, at that point, with either of them. While the
avant-garde artists rejected the authorities of traditional art and its established
institutions and forums, many of them laid a claim to becoming the authority of a
new direction. A new and original concept with the potential to launch a tectonic
change in artistic creation was as highly valued as its subsequent materialization
in artworks, in both Russia and the West. In Rosalind Krauss’s analysis, originality
implies the powers of renewing the self “safe from contamination by tradition.”31
The meaning of “tradition” shifted to indicate the legacy of the artists’ immediate
predecessors whose work and views were to be surpassed, while medieval art
was seen as being at the root of, and the nurturing original force of, the culture,
tested and tried by time.
Aside from genuine interest in new approaches and methods of artistic
creation, what was at stake was no less than the authorship and ownership of
the nascent new imagination in both Western Europe and Russia. In these years
of faith in the future that the avant-garde artists believed to be actively shaping,
this sense of cultural authority was an artist’s ultimate asset. The tradition of
the new had to be established—a process to which the moral values of courage,
experimental spirit, and radically progressive thinking were attached. The
progressive art scene was accordingly competitive. When asked about authorship
of, for example, the photogram, a new technical-artistic method of camera-less
photographic image-making that was invented, probably independently, by
Christian Schad, Man Ray, and László Moholy-Nagy at about the same time,
Moholy-Nagy replied to the inquiry that “the time around 1922 was characterized
by embittered proofs and counter-proofs of invention and influence,” because
“in those days jealousies were in full bloom.”32 Lissitzky was also fully aware
of this fact and acted accordingly. “Don’t engage in long conversation with the
folks (Richter, Doesburg, and so on) in Berlin,” he advised his future wife, Sophie
Küppers, in a letter. “Don’t say anything about me, say only that I work (don’t
name anything), they will find out about this later. Be short and snappy.”33
The postwar years were a Gründerzeit—foundation time—during which
many artists developed a sense of historical importance, convinced that they
were laying the foundations of the next great cultural era. Van Doesburg was very
much aware of this. Due to the inner dynamics of the art world, a new position
emerged within the avant-garde of the early 1920s, that of the multifaceted and
multifunctional avant-garde artist-leader with inexhaustible energy and genuine
ideas, works, and multiple competences, functioning as an artist, author, editor,
publisher, and organizer—and all as claiming authority in the antiauthoritarian
sphere of the culture. In the supposedly free culture of the avant-garde that stood
in opposition to the established authorities and traditionalism, this function

entailed control over one or several forums of the emerging alternative cultural
narrative. Almost each of these artists was eager to launch an independent
forum that secured a certain amount of control over a segment of the emerging
art scene. A little journal functioned as a public venue and its editor as a public
intellectual who had a platform for his views on art and culture, even if he could
enlist only a few of his fellow artists to join him. The profile of each of the “little
journals” was independent and avant-garde,34 but they were no less legitimate
than any other more established and respected publication. The international
avant-garde was, nonetheless, spread thin: some of the groups had single-
digit headcount of artists and critics among their members. As long as a “little
journal” was in print, however, and its stationary with its letterhead was used in
correspondence, it functioned as a validated forum. It helped these often short-
lived publications that several established periodicals, which were respected by
the avant-garde circles like Der Sturm, Die Weltbühne, Das Kunstblatt, Jahrbuch
der jungen Kunst, Der Cicerone, the German Werkbund’s journal Die Form,
among others, were sympathetic to and supportive of the new art, to the point
of covering some of the avant-garde artists’ exhibitions as opening discussions
about the new directions. Despite these efforts, however, most of these journals
were factors in the art market as well and were not programmatically committed
to developments in the latest art, while a journal of one’s own put its editor
on the cultural map next to these and secured an actual, potentially efficient
presence, often drawing attention with provocative articles. A network of the
“little journals” thus emerged and can be seen as a “shadow establishment” of
the art world. The “little journals” were short of funds and needed each other to
exchange clichés (electrotypes) for the photos that were expensive, off of which
they could print reproductions. Correspondence on official stationery went
further, at least potentially, than those using private letterheads, vouching for
the authority of the voice behind them.
In the early 1920s, emblematic antiauthoritarian authorities included, aside
from Theo van Doesburg, luminaries like László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky,
Karel Teige, Lajos Kassák, Lubomir Micić, Henrik Stażewski, Hans Richter, Kurt
Schwitters, as well as editors and publishers of other futurist, constructivist, and
dada forums on the Western art scene.
Indisputably, the largest playing field belonged to van Doesburg’s De Stijl,
which, at least in the beginning, was printed in 1,000 copies and also served as
home to van Doesburg’s aforementioned alter egos: dada poet I. K. Bonset and
futurist Aldo Camini, “editor and publisher” of the short-lived dada-futurist-
spirited Mécano (1922–1923) that was, in fact, also published by van Doesburg.
Moholy-Nagy also commanded an international field as Bauhaus master/
professor, painter, photographer, author, and typographer, coeditor of the
1922 Buch neuer Künstler (Book of New Artists), editor of the bauhaus zeitung
and the Bauhaus Bücher series between 1926 and 1928, as well as photo editor
of the international revue i 10. El Lissitzky’s editorial and publishing activities,
as well as his artworks and essays, also warranted for his significance in both
Western Europe and Russia. Lissitzky edited and contributed to the trilingual
Veshch, Gegenstand, Objet (Object), launched in order to generate a dialog
between Russians and Westerners and familiarizing both parties with the art
and art discourse of the other; as well as G: Material zur elementaren Gestaltung
(G: Material for Elementary Design) published between 1923 and 1926, of
which Lissitzky was cofounder and coeditor; and later ABC Beiträge zum Bauen
(ABC Contributions to Building) 1924–1928, which also provided forums for
his views and activities; as well as the book he coedited with Hans Arp in 1925,
Kunstismen (Art isms). Czech architecture critic, graphic artist, photographer,
and typographer Karel Teige, editor and coeditor of the avant-garde anthologies
and journals Devětsil (Butterbur, or Petasites), Život (Life), International Revue
Disk, and Stavba (Building), managed to turn the magazine ReD (short for Revue
Devětsil), which he edited in Prague, into an international forum well connected
in the international art world and efficiently disseminating information.
Hungarian poet, writer, and artist Lajos Kassák, editor and publisher of Ma
(Today), Dokumentum (Document), 2x2, and Munka (Work), and coeditor of
the Buch neuer Künstler, remarkably enlarged his field of activity and network
during his 1920–1926 Vienna exile, often operating as a link between East- and
West European groups in the fields of dada, constructivism, and surrealism.
Yugoslav enfant terrible Ljubomir Micić, editor of Zenit, had a strong voice in
the art world and monitored the developments of international progressive art by
garnering interest with his alarming comments. Hans Richter, who was the editor
of G and a contributor of many other journals, was a dadaist, and a participant
of international conferences and group activities, as well as another energetic
presence and organizing force throughout the period, including the medium of
film in his various fields of avant-garde work. These multifunctional agents were
all connected to van Doesburg. They asked for electrotypes of his works, which
could not otherwise be obtained except from him directly. Illustrating an article
with reproductions of van Doesburg’s works was proof of close personal and
strategic contacts with him, just as having one’s own article or image appear in
his De Stijl journal. As their correspondence indicates, artists’ mutual support of
each other in the international avant-garde scene was realized, perhaps more so
than in any other way, in the exchange of electrotypes and photos, so that every
publication could visually affirm its own avant-garde identity. Collegial letters
hardly mention conceptual issues: it was not necessary; publishable visuals and
issues of journals were requested, offered, or exchanged.35
It is safe to say that between 1920 and 1924 van Doesburg assumed a position
at the top of the hierarchy of artists-editors-publishers and organizers of this
scene. His De Stijl journal was the steadiest and had the longest, fourteen-year
run among similar publications; and van Doesburg commanded a shrewd,
articulate voice in it. Journals that were similar but started later and were less
widely circulated included Kurt Schwitters’s Hanover-based Merz (1923–1932)
and Michel Seuphor’s Antwerp-based Het Overzicht (The Overview, 1921–1925).36
The antiauthoritarian authorities actively shaped the alternative art world
of the era. Their position provided them with a broad perspective over the
vanguard art scene; and even if they personally happened to be committed
to one particular trend, they and their respective forums still functioned as a
common ground for a variety of like-minded groups and artists. A case in point
is the First Dadaist-Constructivist Congress that van Doesburg convoked in
Weimar in September 1922 in an effort to bring the two, originally antithetical
directions under the same umbrella, relying on their shared political leftism to
create a dada-constructivism axis. The multitude of small avant-garde groups
following a variety of guidelines and programs were interested in belonging to
more inclusive formations, if compatible with their specific stances, and were
eager to find ideas and forms that united them along with those that may have
marked their differences. Thus, for example, cooperation developed among van
Doesburg, Hans Richter, Lissitzky, and Kurt Schwitters, and, separately, between
Kurt Schwitters and Lissitzky. Van Doesburg’s Weimar Congress—mustering
unity at the same time as challenging the Weimar Bauhaus—was well attended
by leading members of the international avant-gardes from a variety of different
groups: dadaists, Hungarian left-wingers, surrealists, Dutch and Russian artists,
and architects.
Furthermore, being multimedia artists and editors, the authorities of the
avant-garde constructed the nascent narrative of the current art scene according
to their respective viewpoint or agenda in summary publications, such as Kassák
and Moholy-Nagy’s 1922 Buch neuer Künstler and Hans Arp and El Lissitzky’s
1925 Die Kunstismen 1914-1924, both presenting the instant canon of the art of
the present in a way that reflected their convictions and strategic positions by
way of selecting artworks and trends in a survey format.37
Generational Issue in the Avant-Garde
Awareness of generational differences was part of the new leading avant-gardists’

relationship to their masters. Not unlike Lissitzky’s positioning Malevich as a
forefather and important precursor, respectfully seen as a man of the past,38
Theo van Doesburg considered his master, friend, and rival Piet Mondrian also
as the hero of earlier times:
Mondrian as a man is not modern, because ( . . . ) although he has developed

psychically towards the new, spiritually he belongs to the old. ( . . . ) He still sees
the spiritual as a conceptual abstraction, thus something like the theosophists.
Of life itself as reality he is in fact afraid. He thinks life but does not live it. He
makes his conception, which is, of course, very good, but too much about an
ideal image outside normal life.39
The generational differences and competition within the avant-garde, which

included similar conflicts inside the Bauhaus,40 emerged, as van Doesburg’s
earlier lines attest, along the fault line of a spiritually oriented older generation
versus a more technology-friendly and science-oriented younger generation.
The meaning of the term “progressive” shifted from bold new ideas to matter-
of-fact pragmatism: the recognition that concrete work will guarantee progress.
Sciences and new technologies were considered the staple of improving the world:
a move away from the purely, or predominantly, aesthetic concept of modernism
and the avant-gardes, as Malevich’s disconnect with German architects during
his 1927 visit also demonstrated.41
The Russian-Dutch Connection
Like his German colleagues and many artists on the international scene, van
Doesburg was curious and eager to establish contacts with the artists of the
new Russia. He was dismayed to learn with years of delay that he had been left
out of the group of Dutch artists that had initiated contacts with the Russians
as early as 1919. Photos of works and articles had been sent from Holland to
Soviet Russia42 to which, after some time, none other than Malevich sent
a response in the form of an open letter to the Dutch artists, early in 1922.43
The main points of this letter were the rejection of “objective” (predmetnii)
or figurative/representational art as “the ideology of an animal idea” and the
declaration of suprematism as “the highest point in human thought revealing
the human plan.”44 In language as shrewd as van Doesburg’s, Malevich depicted

the “group of artists who call themselves ‘constructivists’, as slaves of the newly
found object”—a derogatory reference to the technical-industrial motifs and
materials in their work. Underlining their hostility to suprematism, he stated:
“We, of course, are also against all that is constructive and objective, for the
[real] constructiveness of art is non-objective.”45 It is not clear how many people,
if any besides the recipients, knew—and if they did, could sort out—the contents
of this letter that was sent in February 1922, a few months before the launching
of Lissitzky’s Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand, and the First Russian Exhibition would
open in Berlin in October and also travel to Amsterdam. Since Malevich’s letter
was not made public, and was succinct and declarative rather than explanatory,
it was not helpful in clarifying the differences between constructivism and
suprematism west of Russia. Malevich defined the difference between the two
directions as “constructive and objective” on the one hand and “constructiveness
[that is] non-objective” on the other. Importantly, “objective” was understood
as the opposite of “subjective” in the West, while Malevich used the word as the
opposite of “figurative,” “representational” art that worked with visually concrete
objects. With regard to the later confusion in the West about suprematism and
constructivism, in this letter Malevich specifies himself as a “constructive”
artist—if adding the term “non-objective,” translation of bezpredmetnii, or
not object-representing artist. This happened almost a year after Malevich’s
talk at INKhUK and Lissitzky’s attempt to encourage reconciliation between
suprematists and constructivists in the same institution, to no avail.46 So
Malevich must have been aware of the deep rift between his suprematist views
and work, and the constructivists’ materiality, aesthetics, and utilitarian agenda.
Malevich’s letter is vague about what exactly he means by “animal” and the
“cosmos,” nonetheless strategically his message is clear and simple: figurative
art is inferior to non-objective or nonfigurative art, and the future belongs to
nonfigurative suprematism. He declares the non-suprematist artists his enemies
and declares that “In order to carry on our teaching we organized UNOVIS,
which leads through the system of suprematism to a new form of architectural
world-building. UNOVIS accepts into its membership all those who vote for
the new art.”47 Expanding internationally as well as expanding art into the field
of architecture were program points that van Doesburg shared with Malevich.
Malevich opened his letter with “Dear comrade innovators in Holland” and
closed it with “Greeting to non-objective Holland and all the innovators living
there.” This was the language of a fighter and an activist for a unified international
front of progressive artists that would reject the visual language of the past just
like van Doesburg had. Even if van Doesburg only had second-hand knowledge
of this letter, at this point he likely considered Malevich as a potential ally, one
who expressed his readiness to belong to an international front of nonfigurative
artists. The creation of this front was precisely the project van Doesburg
undertook. One aspect of Malevich’s gambit that van Doesburg did not suspect,
however, was that the internationalism which the Russian artist proposed was,
more than anything, the expansion of the suprematist organization.
The International of the Square
Van Doesburg had a very favorable impression of Lissitzky when the two
first met in April 1922.48 By this time, Lissitzky had already published van
Doesburg’s article (Monumental Art) in the first double issue of Veshch, Objet,
Gegendstand with the publication date March-April 1922, putting him in the
common Russian-European context. They had an opportunity to become
better acquainted at the First International Congress of Progressive Artists in
Düsseldorf, May 29–31, 1922. “Lissitzky, who has recently come from Moscow,
is an excellent guy of great integrity,” van Doesburg wrote to his friend Antony
Kok.49 He could hear Lissitzky declare at the conference: “during a seven-year
period of complete isolation from the outside world, we were attacking the
same problems in Russia as our friends here in the west.”50 That was a public
announcement of comradeship and a shared program between Russians and
West Europeans, consistent with both van Doesburg’s and Lissitzky’s plans and
hopes.
The Düsseldorf conference organized by Das junge Rheinland 51 group was
exploited by the more progressive artists for declaring their programs. The well-
attended meeting was—even if it ended in disunity—a moment of hope for wider
international cooperation of the progressive groups. The new Russian art was
exposed at the conference as highly important for future progressive initiatives.
Van Doesburg’s friendship with Lissitzky was at its best stage at the conference
and during the following months. This, in turn, promised the construction of
a common international platform of progressive artists—independently from
the Bauhaus where neither van Doesburg nor Lissitzky was invited to work52—
that would integrate all other previously scattered like-minded forces. Van
Doesburg, Lissitzky, and Hans Richter joined forces to issue a “Statement of the
Faction of Constructivists”53 that they established at the conference, although
a footnote in the Statement explained that the term “constructivism” was used
only to characterize their contrast with all “impulsivists”—most likely for the
purpose of clarifying that fact that while they did not intend to appropriate
the term “constructivism” form the Russian group of the same name, they
did emphatically detach themselves from each version of expressionism. The
Statement sharply criticized the conference’s organizers—various groups and
individuals aside from Das junge Rheinland, such as the Dresdner Sezession, and
the Novembergruppe—for lacking efficient ideas and clear goals, failing to offer
a definition of “progressive,” and engaging in commercial activities, all of which
was incompatible with the concept of the purity and anticapitalist idealism of the
International Faction of Constructivists. The authors of the Statement claimed to
stand on the solid ground of science and technology and ceased to see art “as an
instrument to explore cosmic mysteries,”54 thereby clearly distancing themselves
from all symbolists and expressionists, whom they held to be harmfully obsolete,
along with the kind of art and thought system that, among others, Malevich
and Mondrian represented and van Doesburg used to adhere to. Signing the
Düsseldorf Statement, Lissitzky distanced himself from Malevich’s core ideas
and adopted, even if with a caveat, the term “constructivist” that, as Lissitzky
knew it in Moscow, was antithetical and hostile to Malevich. This conflict
remained unresolved in spite of Lissitzky’s renewed efforts to bring himself and
Malevich onto the same page in his journal Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand. Lissitzky
still considered Malevich his master, whose visual language he both followed
and appropriated in his soon to be published55 (but “constructed,” earlier, in
1920) A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares, which will be discussed in Chapter 8.
The Statement of the International Faction of Constructivists firmly
declared that the Düsseldorf conference had proved the impossibility of
“building international progressive solidarity”56 based on the predominance
of the individual. “Collective” was the broad new concept that every artist
and thinker understood somewhat differently. Van Doesburg was leaning
toward a new, universal, monumental architecture of geometric purity that he
held for “collective”;57 Lissitzky imagined a new, widely shared, supranational
cooperation using abstract-geometric language in all the visual arts; the Russian
constructivists believed in a new communist society where creating utilitarian
objects of utmost economy will be the sole task of the visual experts who will
replace artists. Organizing the International Faction of Constructivists was a
new starting point for a future group or movement, and perhaps meant to be
the beginning of an institution that, the signatories hoped, could step up as an
internationally recognized leading force of modern art that van Doesburg would
raise to dominance over, among other things, the Bauhaus.
Van Doesburg had also adapted, if with limitations, Mondrian’s overarching

concept of theosophy-based neoplasticism, which professed the seeking of
universal harmony in the world and positioned the artist as the vehicle of attaining
this superior state. Van Doesburg was convinced that the “predominance of the
individual (a Renaissance life concept) was broken,” and that the new era would
be collective58 in that universal sense. Van Doesburg, like Malevich, singled out
the square, a motif that the De Stijl also prioritized, as the most important new
emblem of a coming new international art.
News from Russia were still scarce, blurred, and left some room for the
imagination. In a 1922 letter to his friend, the poet Evert Rinsema, van Doesburg
relates the following apocryphal story:
One of the most modern Russians, Malewicz [sic!] lectured in Moscow on

cubism (in 1918). At the end he produced a red square, which he brandished
above his head, shouting: “And that is the task of the future.” He was promptly
arrested and on asking why, he was told: because you proclaimed the revolution.
And indeed, the revolution did break out in Russia the very next day. Odd, isn’t
it, that what we regard here as a sign of a totally new image of the world was the
same for the most modern Russians. As I said to Mondrian at the time, what the
cross was to the early Christians, the square is to us.59
The fact that van Doesburg passed on this hearsay, which was full of
unsubstantiated information, including wrong dates and was framed by an
imaginary context, indicates how hazy and distorted the news coming from
Russia had been and the extent to which news were mystified. Such were the
legends that enveloped the figure of Malevich and the square, the already
mythic dimensions of which fit into van Doesburg’s concept of a heightened
new, internationally shared art and kept Malevich in his distinguished interest
and high esteem. Whether or not van Doesburg knew that the Black Square
had been exhibited at the 0.10 The Last Futurist Exhibition as a new icon, his
comparison of the cross and the square is an insight, nonetheless. It reveals his
intense search for a new symbol of spiritual renewal as well as his ambition to
own this new movement, anticipated as a secular quasi-religion. In a subsequent
letter to architect Cornelis van Eesteren, van Doesburg wrote in reference to the
International Faction of Constructivists:
It suddenly dawned on me in Düsseldorf when I said to the Russian Lissitzky:

“This ‘international’ is really a compromise. To give it its proper name, we ought
to proclaim the international of the square.” Whereupon Lissitzky said: “that is
exactly what the new faith is.”60
Figure 3.4 Theo van Doesburg: Study for Arithmetic Position, 1929, pencil on graph
paper. Courtesy Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands, Van
Moorsel donation to the Dutch State 1981.
The square proved to be a strong visual emblem that held together artists of
otherwise different persuasions, representing various aspects of the convictions
they shared (See Figure 3.4). While the Polish catholic Malevich placed it in the
Russian orthodox shrine to announce a new icon of a new faith, whether as an
iconoclast or otherwise, it had undergone changes of symbolism in the West
and had different connotations altogether. For Mondrian, squares and rectangles
were part of the imagery of theosophy’s cosmic harmony in the sign of the
right angle, while van Doesburg increasingly saw a streamlined technological
future in the square rather than theosophy’s staple; and Lissitzky interpreted
the square primarily as an element of all-inclusive geometric language, new and
transnational, belonging to the society of the future in Russia as well as in the
West.
Based on Malevich’s near-legendary reputation and hearsay, van Doesburg
thought highly of him as a kindred spirit and fellow fighter in developing and
disseminating a universally valid geometric visual language that could potentially
be shared by a large collective under the supervision of artists like himself.
Publishing Lissitzky’s Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in De Stijl’s double issue
10/11 in 1922, van Doesburg recognized the significance of the contributions of
both Lissitzky and Malevich. Van Doesburg demonstrated his commitment to

them and to the art originating from the new Russia. He too advocated the new
visual language they pioneered, including the square as an emblematic, central
motif of an anticipated culture.
Van Doesburg also played a crucial role in spreading news about the new
Russian art and shaping its image in the West. Besides publishing reproductions
of their artists’ works, van Doesburg dedicated exposure to the new Russian art
in three issues of De Stijl between 1922 and 1924, in a series of articles titled
“Assessment of the New. Plastic Russia.”61 In these articles he popularized, as
well as commented on, both constructivism and suprematism. Much of what he
knew about the new art in Russia in general, and Malevich in particular, came
from El Lissitzky, with whom, as will be discussed in Chapter 9, van Doesburg
would have a turbulent relationship in the years to come, which in turn greatly
affected his views on Malevich. “It is clear,” Linda Boersma confirms, “that the
way in which Malevich’s work was received in De Stijl depended directly on the
relationship between van Doesburg and El Lissitzky.”62
4
The Irreconcilable Conflict between

Constructivism and Suprematism in Moscow
While Western circles of progressive artists had received some information

about both Moscow constructivism and suprematism by the early 1920s, they
still failed to get clear enough ideas regarding the differences between the
two movements and the deep conflict between the two directions and their
representatives. The Moscow constructivists, conceptually as well as personally,
were fierce opponents of suprematism and the suprematists. They were seeking
art and the artist’s new function in the new society. They could not validate visual
creation in the traditional sense, perceived as to be decorative or collectors’
luxury items. For the constructivists the very existence and legitimacy of the
private space as such, where art could be created and appreciated in solitude,
became questionable, while suprematism in turn claimed to be art of the highest
degree; and UNOVIS a model of a community committed to that art.
Postrevolutionary Moscow: The New State, the

New Art, and the New Concept of the Artist
The constructivists achieved a consolidated program by the spring of 1921 in

Moscow, buttressed by gradually developed, articulate concepts and artistic
practice. Their first initiative was the forming of the group “Suprbezy,” suprematists
and non-objectivists1 that still included Malevich. The “Manifesto,” penned by
Alexander Rodchenko in preparation for the Tenth State Exhibition in Moscow,
announced: “Objects died yesterday. We live in abstract spiritual creativity. We
are founders of non-objectivity. Of color as such. Of tone as such.”2 The wording
of the last two sentences echoes the cubo-futurists’ “The Word as Such” and “The
Letter as Such.” The “Manifesto” ends in a revolutionary confession: “Young,
strong, we march with the flaming torches of the revolution.”3 The inevitable
efforts to assert a movement that jettisons rivals were soon underway. Varvara
Stepanova noted in her diary on April 10, 1919, that her husband Rodchenko
painted black pictures “as a way out of color suprematism,”4 and she started to
see Malevich and Rodchenko in a competition with one another. She compiled
an inventory of the current trends in Russian art,5 herself not mentioned and
Lissitzky conspicuously absent from it, while noting Kandinsky as being a
problematic artist who is too emotional and little else.6 As soon as Kandinsky
founded INKhUK in Moscow in 1920, a conflict began to develop between
his views and those of his friend and former student Rodchenko. Kandinsky
favored working on a synthetic artwork that would unite painting, music,
and dance, and which would, without ever specifying it in so many words,
continue the prewar Der blaue Reiter’s expressive-psychological and spiritual
Gesamtkunstwerk approach. Rodchenko, according to INKhUK documents,
believed that subjective artistic expression, a vestige of individualism, was not
adequate in the new state championing collectivism and so was in opposition to
it. The new state required solutions to new challenges and it was not the “artist”
as they had known it that was up to the task. The individual self-expression
attempting to fathom the depths of the human soul appeared to be meaningless
in the new world. There were urgent tasks and immediate needs in the new
society that required addressing. Rodchenko wanted to explore the idea of “the
interaction of painting with architecture and sculpture,”7 that is, working with
material, volume, and space rather than psychological and spiritual creativity.
This program entailed work that would be embodied in three dimensions: a
shift from the flat picture plane and virtual space to three-dimensional object-
making.
A core group including Rodchenko, Stepanova, art writer Alexei Gan, architect
Nikolai Ladovsky, and eventually joined by Konstantin Medunetzky and Karl
Joganson from the OBMOKhU (Ob’edinenie molodykh khudozhnikov, Union of
young artists) group emerged as an opposition to Kandinsky. They formed a
platform of rigorous analytical approach against the concept of the artwork as
an individual form of expression and organized debates8 that were attended by
a wider circle of INKhUK members. They first called themselves the Working
Group of Objective Analysis, positioning themselves in sharp opposition
to subjective expression, and had their first meeting on November 23, 1920.9
Underlining the word “objective” in this first name of the group indicates where
the fault line between them and Kandinsky ran. Like the objective tendencies
that Kállai discerned in Berlin around the same time,10 announcing that the
time of expressionism was over, they sought the opposite of aestheticism and
The Irreconcilable Conflict 79
subjectivity in visual works. The term “objective” was derived from “object”—a
physically substantial, functional, useful product that should be created instead
of paintings, which were perceived as being useless for the society.
Sorting out the not-quite organized and previously unpublished documents
of the INKhUK Archives, Selim Khan-Magomedov collected transcripts of
many of the 1920–1921 debates during which the ideas of the direction that
became constructivism were hammered out. The participants were working
on specifying the criteria that would define the presence or absence of
objectivity in artworks. Khan-Magomedov points out that during the period
between January and April 1921, it was architect Nikolai Ladovsky11 who, by
putting forward his own definition, propelled the debate onto new ground.
According to Ladovsky’s definition, “technical construction is the whole set
of material elements in accordance with a precise plan, i.e. a scheme that is
required to attain a forceful effect.”12 In his opinion, construction was marked
by the total absence of superfluous materials and elements. “The fundamental
difference, with respect to composition, is hierarchy [of the parts] and [their]
subordination.”13
“Construction” was the keyword and key concept of the argument and,
starting March 18, 1921, the group was renamed the First Working Group of
Constructivists. According to Ladovsky’s proposal, the “objective” criteria of
an artwork to qualify for “construction” were, to a great extent, ideological.
The transcripts of the debates indicate that when it came to deciding whether
certain elements were superfluous or necessary in an artwork, it was often a
personal judgment that led to a verdict, although each participant tried to
offer specific, “objective” arguments. In one of the debates, Rodchenko said:
“Composition ( . . . ) is an aesthetic choice and not an aim. If you compare
construction and composition, they turn out to be two completely different
things. ( . . . ) Now that the question of an objective has emerged, construction
has eliminated composition.”14 With these words Rodchenko declared with
certitude what he had not hitherto been able to prove with arguments: that there
has to be a fundamental differentiation between composition and construction;
furthermore, that the right direction, in fact the only possible one to go, is
that of making constructions. The idea of “composition” served as contrast in
relation to which the definition of “construction” could be hammered out with
more precision. Kandinsky found himself and his program losing traction, and
in January 1921 he quit INKhUK, ceding it to the constructivists. As one of
the theoreticians of the constructivist group, Nikolai Tarbukin summed up the
group’s new stance:
Neither the creative process, nor the process of perception, the defined aesthetic
emotion, is the object of analysis, but those real forms which, created by the
artist, are found in the already finished work. Consequently, the form of the
work and its elements are the material for analysis and not the psychology of the
creation, not the psychology of aesthetic perception, nor the historical, cultural,
sociological, or other problems of art.15
Thus, the constructivists defined concrete form and tangible material as being
the only acceptable constituents of the new product.
The “Construction-versus-Composition Debate” at INKhUK
There are several excellent accounts of these debates.16 What makes it necessary
to offer an overview of them here is the role that the outcome of the construction-
versus-composition debate played in shaping Lissitzky’s views and actions
concerning both suprematism and constructivism. These views affected the way
he presented both directions abroad, and through this, their reception outside
Russia for decades.
With Kandinsky and his painting program having vanished from INKhUK,
Rodchenko and the First Working Group of Constructivists, committed to
objectivity, had to build a conceptual framework for distinguishing and defining
“objective” and “subjective” creation—that is, to determine what constitutes
“construction” as opposed to “composition.” Construction, it was decided, was
organized rather than painted. Lodder remarks: “To Rodchenko it was the
same process that had previously produced communist Russia. It was its artistic
equivalent. ‘As we see in the life of the RSFSR, everything leads to organization.
And so in art everything has led to organization’.”17 In fact, as the title of the
constructivists’ essay collection From Figurative Art to Construction, dating
from the fall of 192118 indicated, they constructed a teleology similar to that
of Malevich, but while the latter put suprematism as the highest stage of the
evolution following cubism and futurism, Rodchenko’s group did the same
with constructivism, which they presented as the direction that transcends all
previous two-dimensional, representational, or abstract art forms.
The group examined various paintings in order to develop definitions of the
newly adapted categories. When it came to a work of Malevich for the first time,
it was consensually categorized as being a composition. Ladovsky stated: “In
suprematist works there is no construction, in cubist ones there is a moment of
construction,” in response to which Rodchenko declared: “There is composition
in both cases.” Other participants of that same debate—Stenberg, Popova,

Medunetsky, and sculptor Alexei Babichev—concurred with Rodchenko, albeit
without going into specifics, condemning both suprematism and cubism.19 At
the following debate the arguments were more systematic, with more effort
at fathoming the actual difference between construction and composition.
Ljubov Popova remarked that in Malevich’s works, the color, flat shapes, and
movement are prepared with a purpose. Rodchenko disagreed, arguing that
color was merely enhancing the surface of Malevich’s paintings while forms
were stronger, so that nothing would change if one color would be replaced
by another one.20 Popova replied that there are constructive lines in Malevich’s
pictures, whereupon Rodchenko proposed to make “a precise and detailed
selection of works from the point of view of construction; not a general analysis
but probing deeply.”21 Ladovsky then spoke of the pure construction of the
engineer, relating that in contemporary paintings there is no pure construction
yet insofar no definition of pictorial construction exists. He suggested to define
construction in the technical and engineering sense. A lively debate unfolded, in
the course of which Nadezhda Udaltsova proposed to understand construction
as a force running inside the object or painting, whereupon Alexander Drevin
attempted to specify that the term “construction” cannot be applied to colors,
only to forms. The suprematist painter Ivan Kliun countered that “Even
in color there can be construction. . . . The strength of color contributes to
construction, along with form, giving it a precise force. . . . The purpose of an
object defines its type, construction gives the impression of forces, as a result
of the combined action of different forces.”22 Rodchenko, in attempt to offer an
ultimate definition, proposed that a constructed object “may not even [have]
a purpose. Construction is not a fixed thing. Construction is the appropriate
utilization of the properties of materials, that is to say, end and not just means
( . . . ) In construction neither color, nor form, nor technique can be separate.”23
Self-contradictions may follow from the fact that the transcripts recorded the
spontaneous, improvised thoughts of the participants, not their controlled and
edited ideas formatted for publication. The transcripts reveal the process in the
course of which an idea invites its own opposite—for example, in the same debate
Rodchenko clearly accepted that the same feature that is called construction in
engineering “is defined as composition in art,”24 that is: composition in painting
is the equivalent of construction in actual building work, only to continue with
the inverse of the argument: “As a matter of fact, construction does not exist in
painting. In reality a construction is a precise object and in painting we cannot
depict a construction.”25
Already in the summer of 1921 Malevich wrote to painter Ivan Kudriashev

that “Suprematism should adopt a more constructive approach,”26 and in
December of that same year he was invited to give a talk at INKhUK, in which
he was offered an opportunity to explain the ties of suprematism to “reality.” The
constructivists—Rodchenko, Stepanova, Gan, Ioganson, Medunetzkii, and the
Stenberg brothers Vladimir and Georgii, along with constructivist theorists Osip
Brik, Boris Kushner, Boris Arvatov, and Tarabukin—were, however, determined
not to allow constructivism to be “colonized” by suprematism. As it may have been
foreseeable, Malevich did not manage to convince them that paintings could be
relevant creative works which were adequate to the new society in any justifiable
way; and the constructivists, thumbs down on suprematism, continued to see his
works as artistic compositions, now a derogatory term, diametrically opposed
to their own constructions. At a meeting following Malevich’s talk, Varvara
Stepanova, in evaluating it, declared that the word “construction” signified an
object “purged of esthetic, philosophical, and religious excrescences”27—that is,
the constructivist object had to be free of everything that Malevich charged his
works with. A few days later Georgii Stenberg, member of the OBMOKhU group,
confirmed the rejection of Malevich’s transcendentalism when he emphatically
declared: “We do not erect ideas around form.”28
The nascent concept of constructivism, as demonstrated, was probed
specifically against Malevich’s works on several occasions. Constructivists
were viscerally opposed to Malevich’s work and persona and sought rigorous
arguments to exclude him from the group that claimed to create new art in
and for the new state. Malevich and his followers laid a claim to designing
“the future” as the focus of their work, while Rodchenko, Stepanova, and their
fellow constructivists claimed to shape “the present,” with all the pragmatism
that was required, according to their assessment, to resolve the material and
political problems they experienced. Suprematist universalism was confronted
with down-to-earth constructivist materialism and utilitarianism, while both
confirmed their respective methods and works as being the most suitable to
serve as the visual face of communism. Moreover, while Malevich launched a
tendency with the artist at the top of the spiritual hierarchy in the position of a
kind of priestly highness, the constructivists rejected even the very idea of such
a hierarchy and regarded the artist as a worker among other working people:
one who just happens to have a different specialization, while they nonetheless
believed in hierarchy with respect to the parts of a constructed structure.
Malevich set out to offer the blueprint of a spiritual future society with the artist
at its top as a “clairvoyant,” knowing even the future, while the constructivists
were ready to design the material objects for use to be implemented in the
present as masters of the tangibly existing physical world. Thus, they rejected
the very idea of intellectual excellence as an inherently elitist concept.
In Malevich’s suprematism, by contrast, the artist was a visionary and a
prophet. The suprematist artist had particular sensitivity, capable of experiencing
what ordinary people could not. The power of his spirit enabled him to leave
behind physical and social reality and send “back” visual reports from the realm
of the zero-gravity freedom of the future to dare others to imagine that future of
unlimited spirituality and possibilities. The constructivists, on the other hand, in
opposition to being visionaries, regarded themselves as humble but important
parts in the machinery of society and its statewide production and construction
system, and assumed it their duty to design usable objects for a better life for all in
the actually existing world. Malevich’s strategic idea was to win over small, devoted
groups to his concept and then see the exponential growth of suprematism as
these hard-core groups would disseminate the idea and gain over further groups
in circles of increasing radius; while the constructivists intended to immediately
turn to the widest possible public forum, the platform of nationwide industry, in
an effort to satisfy everyone’s material needs along with providing as many people
as possible with up-to-date, functionally designed, much-needed objects.
Suprematism and constructivism respectively aspired to elaborate and
develop two vastly different concepts, both of which were inherent in the
idealized program of communism: that of the collectively shared, ideal future
of unlimited freedom and that of the materially satisfying, livable present. The
impossibility of attaining both at the same historic time was already clear to
the utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century; and the communist state
was also struggling to keep both ideas alive in the hopes and imagination of the
population, blaming any failure of their realization on the Civil War and the
ever-stubbornly existing vestiges of capitalism. After an initial overlap of some of
their ideas and adherents, the conflict between suprematism and constructivism
achieved a breaking point late in 1921. The two movements crashed at the
Moscow INKhUK.
In their carefully crafted group name, the constructivists took very seriously
the words “working,” “objective,” and “analysis.” These words were directed
not only against subjective elements in art and thinking but also against any
deliberate interpretation of these terms. The focus of their program was the
creation of economically designed objects—that is, with the economic use of
material and work, the focus on function as opposed to paintings that they
altogether dismissed as unnecessary.
The core of the construction-versus-composition debate was this antagonism

between the concepts of an artwork as “fiction” and an object as “reality.” The
constructivists stated that Malevich’s paintings included free-floating elements
which could be taken away or rearranged without substantial consequences to
the whole picture,29 whereas a construction, as Stepanova ultimately defined
it, “demands the absence of both excess materials and excess elements.”30
Composition, she said, “is a contemplative attitude, passive and introspective,”
diametrically opposed to “construction, an active principle.”31 Ioganson insisted
that “there is only construction in real space ( . . . ) with the use of specific
materials,”32 opposing those, with Lissitzky among them, who found the idea of a
“painted construction” acceptable. The meaning of “reality” for the constructivists
was the “communistic expression of material structures,” that is, “the conversion
of ( . . . ) tectonics, construction, and faktura into volume, plane, color, space,
and light.”33 Even during the “laboratory phase” of the constructivists’ activity,
while their objects lacked any real, concrete function, the constructivists insisted
on having a close grip of “reality,” and they radically opposed “art.”
Concerning the constructivists’ antagonism to Malevich, the definitive
statement came from Rodchenko: “All new approaches to art arise from
technology and engineering and move towards organization and construction.”34
That is, the highest development of the arts is beyond “art” and is therefore not
suprematism but material construction.
Central to the composition-construction debates was the strategic use
of terms, that is, the issue of power in the new socialist political system and
political self-positioning. Not that the sincerity of the aspiration to find the valid
new rules for a valid new art would be questionable. While the constructivists
were devoted to finding the new truth about the socially relevant new art, they
appealed to precision, as, for instance, with the exact rules of engineering, the
application of which would elevate their work beyond every similar effort.
Committed to the communist state, the constructivists clearly aspired to
become the visual representatives of that state. In a 1922 Manifesto titled Who
Are We, signed by “The Group of Constructivists,” they put this boldly (lettering
unchanged):
The first working-group of CONSTRUCTIVISTS (ALEKSEI GAN, RODCH

ENKO, STEPANOVA) proclaimed: THE COMMUNIST EXPRESSION OF
MATERIAL STRUCTURES and UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART.35
Moreover, and not insignificantly to the elaboration of the conditions and the
outcome of the debate, Rodchenko had longtime personal antipathy toward
Malevich. “I did not like Malevich,” he wrote remembering the opening of the
Store exhibition in March 1916 in Moscow.
He was square built, had unpleasant eyes, was disingenuous, too self-assured,
one-sided and narrow-minded. ( . . . ) He came up to me and said ( . . . ) You
know, everything that you all do, is old and epigone. All this has been done
already. Now the new is coming, our Russian thing. And I am doing it, come to
see me once, it is there in your work already, intuitively. ( . . . ) He gave me his
address.36
Attempting to appropriate the niche of “our Russian thing” as well as attempting

to monopolize supreme art, Malevich invited personal controversy at INKhUK,
on top of visceral antipathy to himself and ideas of his, which the constructivists
rejected. The constructivists suspected a deliberately self-styled subjectivity
in Malevich’s “objectlessness” that lacked utilitarian goodwill to the wider
community and allegedly any kind of discipline altogether. Suprematism, to
them, was an uncontrollable territory. At many points of the construction–
composition debate, it appears that the constructivists were seeking theoretical
justification to reject Malevich and his ideas with an authority equal to his.
They felt a need to free the theater of the unfolding new art in Russia of his
presence. So, the constructivists disqualified Malevich with the full armor of
their conceptual force and rhetoric. Boris Arvatov summed up their aesthetic,
strategic, and visceral opposition to suprematism after the debate was already
over:
I have continuously pointed out that suprematism is the most detrimental

reaction under the banner of the revolution, i.e., a doubly harmful reaction. Left-
wing art in the form of its truly revolutionary group (constructivism) should not
hesitate in snipping the cord still linking it to suprematism. After Malevich’s
candid thrusts, even the doubters, even the short-sighted, will discern the black
face of the old art behind the mask of the red square.37
Lissitzky’s Attempt to Reconcile

Suprematism and Constructivism
As suprematism and constructivism deployed competing strategies for

achieving the same strategic goal—becoming the leading art group and uniquely
valid visual language of the new Soviet state—both used the rhetoric of power,
a declarative language from the position of possessing superior vision and
force in order to own the new discourse. Malevich and Rodchenko’s respective
roads from the once-shared anarchism had forked, but both experienced that
it was in the power of the bolshevik Party to make and break art movements,
the public presence of artistic concepts, and creative work altogether. Publicly
expressed loyalty to communism and the communist state was high on both
groups’ agenda. While Malevich organized the “art party” UNOVIS with local
committees that were meant to further the cause of suprematism and convert
more and more adherents to the “supreme” art, Rodchenko organized INKhUK
as the conceptual and pragmatic headquarters for his art group that prioritized
social usefulness. Malevich’s “artist as high priest” concept was confronted by
Rodchenko’s “artist-engineer” or “artist worker” concept. Highly principled and
convinced of their competence, each offered his work to the political power, and
they competed for its exclusive approval and support.
In this duel, Lissitzky found himself, once again, in a double bind. As
architectural engineer he was in agreement with many of the constructivists’
theses and pragmatic purposes, but he had already sworn loyalty to suprematism,
which he firmly believed would in fact be the ultimate solution to all problems
of society and culture, including his own dilemma. Thus, appealing to
mathematics, a field highly respected by the exactitude-driven constructivists
and the visionary suprematists alike, Lissitzky made an effort to reconcile the
two sides. He trusted mathematics as it unites science, rationalism, imagination,
irrationalism, pragmatism, and vision.38 As member of UNOVIS and sincerely
indebted to Malevich, in his September 23, 1921,39 talk at INKhUK, Lissitzky
appealed to the constructivists’ partiality to scientific thinking as well as to
the suprematists’ vision of infinity. He made efforts to demonstrate that his
own proun was actually both suprematist and—as a form of “architectural
suprematism”—constructivist, and thereby prove that these two tendencies were
by no means as mutually exclusive as the constructivists positioned them to be.
To this end, Lissitzky had to bring painting and material construction, imaginary
and real space, to a common denominator. Following Malevich’s predating of his
Quadrilateral, Lissitzky claimed that the actual origin of the new era was 1913,40
the moment when Malevich claimed he had created the first version of the Black
Square, the “zero point of painting, the absolute contrast to the old concept
of art and painting.”41 Putting it into the historic context of the development
from plane to space, Lissitzky pointed out that the Black Square floating in
white void opened up new spatial dimensions for perception as intermediary
between painterly culture and material culture, inasmuch as it transcended
traditional painterly standards and traditional painterly space. Suprematism, he
said, opened up the possibility of “growth in real space,”42 referring to Malevich’s

statement that suprematism “tore through”43 the illusory blue skies of traditional
perspectival representation and created, instead, its own infinite white space.
Lissitzky tended to propel his proun work closer to the constructivists’ ideas
by pointing out the presence of space and dynamics in his own, ultimately
suprematism-inspired paintings:
We have made the canvas rotate. And as we rotated it, we saw that we were
putting ourselves in space. Space, until now, has been projected onto a surface
by a conditional system of planes. We began to move on the surface of the plane
towards an unconditional distance. ( . . . ) If futurism put the spectator inside the
canvas, we take him via the canvas into real space; we put him in the center of a
new construction of distance.44
He spoke about virtual space, of course, but did not manage to prove that either
suprematist or proun imagery would be capable of conquering real-life, three-
dimensional space. Deliberately skipping the years during which suprematism
had entailed colorful paintings—and, on that account, had been much debated
by the constructivists—Lissitzky interpreted the suprematist limitation of the
picture to black-and-white, and then to white-on-white, as a purely collective,
anti-individualist stance that was not at odds with the constructivist concepts
because “in fact, it takes the most stubborn individualism to wish for colors in
these days of steel and coal.”45
He discussed suprematism, however, only as a prelude to proun. Suprematism,
he said, was still bound to traditional painting, since its virtual space, even if
innovative, was still perpendicular to the horizon. The real breakthrough, he
claimed, was made by his own work. Proun pictures do not feature space as
perpendicular to the horizon. Instead, they dive into a warped, elliptical,
non-Euclidean space46 and “lead the viewer beyond the image, out into real
space.”47 Proun paintings were created “through the economic construction
of material,” a phrase Lissitzky borrowed from the constructivists, and these
paintings indicated “the pure way of action,” that is, “reality.” “Proun forms had
to be conceived of not as aesthetic, but as material, since color is materialized
energy”48—a statement inconsistent with his previously quoted view of color as
“stubborn individualism.” Responding to the crucial role that materiality played
for the constructivists at INKhUK, Lissitzky added that in proun, the colored
surfaces of works were increasingly replaced by three-dimensional materials—a
point he later demonstrated not in his paintings but in some details of his
1923 real-space work Proun Room. Lissitzky suggested that proun paintings were
models, which relate to material reality the same way as architectural models
made of paper, wood, and canvas relate to real structures. But real structures,
as the constructivists understood it, “contained a utilitarian imperative”49 and
were economical, even if constructivism was undergoing its “laboratory” period,
when actual utility was still only a distant goal. Lissitzky contended that proun,
which infused space with dynamism and created new types of images with the
use of geometric solids in multiperspectival picture-spaces, was both material
and structural. Thus, it was solely the proun images, he claimed, that responded
to the “utilitarian imperative.” Lissitzky stated that proun leads the creator out
of contemplation and into reality, since proun is architectural, and as such, is
the synthesis of artistic and engineering creativity. Finally, to address the issue
of commitment to the cause of communism, he declared that proun was the
“communist foundation of steel and concrete for all the people of the earth.”50
Lissitzky went a long way to attempt to reconcile not only suprematism and
constructivism but also constructivism and proun, derivative of suprematism:
Construction implies an aspiration to create an independent and concrete

object. In contradistinction to composition (which merely discusses a theme in
its various formal possibilities), construction confirms. The compasses function
as the chisel of construction, the brush as the tool of composition. ( . . . )
Construction germinates in suprematism and moves along the straight lines and
curves of aerospace. It advances through the new space. Proun constructs within
it.51
Not only did Lissitzky use key constructivist terms such as “space” and
“construction” in his talk, he went further and characterized his proun paintings,
in accordance with the constructivists’ anti-painting—in their expression, “anti-
easelist”—stance, as being “no longer pictorial” but “like a geographical map,
like a design” (emphasis added).52 He also attempted to eliminate the difference
between form and material by the concept that “In creating a new form, proun
creates new material.”53
The question presents itself: Why did Lissitzky try to reconcile suprematism,
proun, and constructivism in Moscow once he had already stated in 1919 that
“the Testament of suprematism” reigned supreme “and was insurmountable”?
Why was he not satisfied with remaining truthful to suprematism?
A tentative answer may be that, as already mentioned, he misjudged the
actual abyss between the suprematists and the constructivists, in particular the
personal antagonism between the constructivists and Malevich, particularly
on behalf of the former, and looked at both from an unbiased point of view,
perceiving the differences as being less dramatic than the two parties saw them.
He was, as mentioned, a relative newcomer to the Russian art scene, which is
why he may have had a better grasp of its ideas than its personal histories.
Also, convinced of the relevance of his argument, Lissitzky assumed that no
one with common sense would reject them. Originally an architect-engineer,
Lissitzky shared many of the constructivists’ concepts and thought it a matter
of course that the other artists, on both sides of the divide, would also be
convinced that they were closer to each other than they had thought themselves
to be. Also, as we could see, when confronting conflicting loyalties, Lissitzky
tended to attempt to overcome the conflict. Thus positioning proun as a bridge
over the adversaries was also an act of hope that the transitional period of
antagonism would soon be over, and everyone would find themselves on one
and the same side, since they basically shared, at least in broad outlines, an
image of the future that they wanted to realize. Lissitzky desired and proposed
a unified new, collectivist, left-wing abstraction to be accepted by all as the new,
all-inclusive visual language in progressive Russian art. Lissitzky wanted to be
included in that agency of the new era, as opposed to being previously excluded
from mainstream culture, while both Malevich and the constructivists pursued
exclusive leading roles. The depth and force of the rivalry between Malevich and
the constructivists contradicted Lissitzky’s hopes of eliminating the deep fault
lines between them.
Both sides, having arrived from an anarchist outlook to laying claim to
exclusively valid mainstream visual language, took ample use of language to
manifest their power. The constructivist emphasis on “objectivity,” “forcefulness,”
“hierarchy,” as well as Malevich’s emphasis on “superiority,” spelled an aspiration
to gain ultimate control. Control over material, form, and the spectator entailed
power in the art scene as well as in the politics of culture. It was clear to all that
ultimately only one direction would prevail.
The polarization between the constructivists and those who considered
the aesthetics of painting—that is: composition—acceptable was complete
by November 1921, when “Brik proposed that artists who had rejected easel
painting should commence ‘real practical work in production’.”54 Thus, before his
departure to Germany at the end of 1921, Lissitzky had to know how adamant
the constructivists at INKhUK were and how unbridgeable the gap between
them and their one-time guest speaker Malevich was, regardless of Lissitzky’s
attempt to build a bridge between them.
5
The Mirage of World Revolution

Postrevolution, Postwar Berlin, and Moscow, 1918–1922
Defying the theoretic formulae of centers and peripheries,1 post–First World

War Berlin became the cultural epicenter of the continent, the meeting point of
Easterners and Westerners and the theater of intense debates between adherents
of very different cultural persuasions. Although in theory, strong political and
economic power is the precondition of a leading role in culture, Berlin was
nonetheless the opposite of this: the capital of a defeated empire just turned
into a fledgling and chaotic republic with neither political nor military power
and a wretched economy. Against these odds, however, Berlin emerged as the
new cultural capital of Europe and the center of the new, post–First World War
political and cultural discourse.
The World Revolution Will Happen in Berlin
The international avant-garde that settled in Berlin in the wake of the Great War
had illusions about the new historical perspectives, while political reality, both
internationally and in Germany, was strikingly different from their expectations.
It is not clear whether the progressive artists of the early 1920s were unaware of
this or wishfully disregarded reality. Articles and accounts of both the “silent
majority” in Germany and the actual Soviet developments were as accessible
in books as in the press. The writing was, in this sense, on the wall. The faith
in a desired future, however, was apparently overwriting it as long as that was
possible.
Indeed, Germany had imploded in 1918, with no economic or political
expansion in sight, with a leadership that was both struggling with and exploiting
extremist political forces on the left and right. Berlin’s cultural rise was not
relative to other European capitals’ decline, however. The prewar cultural center,
Paris, even if experiencing relative downturn, abounded in art exhibitions and
was about to launch surrealism, and swinging twenties London was vibrant
with a wave of new, especially literary activities. Still, it was palpable that the
new, postwar Europe’s latest ideas and future were being discussed, projected,
visualized, performed, and written about in Berlin. Berlin, as a number of
memoirs and scholarly studies attest, was the hot spot of the early1920s. Former
Bauhaus student Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack mentioned a conversation he had
with Fernand Léger in Paris in 1923 about the Bauhaus, asking the French artist,
“Why don’t you develop a modern art school such as the Bauhaus? You have the
best artists in the world, you have won the war, you have the means to develop
such an institution.” Whereupon Leger, in spite of just having opened an art
school of his own, “answered bitterly and sadly that the atmosphere in victorious
France was chauvinistic, reactionary, and conservative, that no new way of life
could be the outcome of this situation.”2
What can explain the enormous international appeal of the capital of the new
German Republic hurriedly declared on November 9, 1918? How could Berlin
attract the tremendous creative energies that were released after the Great War,
and drive artists, writers, and intellectuals from Eastern Europe, Russia, Austria,
the Balkans, Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, and eventually even from the
United States and Japan to settle there or at least visit? The Russians who escaped
from the bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War, and the Hungarians who fled
their country after the August 1919 defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
were only part of the colorful international community in Berlin. How could the
capital of such a politically powerless country, even the economic recovery of
which was plagued with inflation, unemployment, and other occasional setbacks,
shape the cultural face of the West during the best of the interwar years?
In spite of the chaos and riots at various parts of the country and the right-
wing paratroopers murdering the leaders of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands, the communist Party of Germany), Germany gradually became
consolidated as a Social Democrats-governed republic referred to as the Weimar
Republic, after the town where its constitution was constructed. From the
earliest days of the existence of the new state, progressive artists—by no means
representing the entire artistic population—stepped up and established the
November Gruppe and the Arbeistrat für Kunst (the “work council” of art) in
Berlin, both with a name allusive to the expectations inspired by the “November
Revolution” in Germany and the Russian system of councils (or Soviets),
respectively. Contacts between German and Russian artists—citizens of former
The Mirage of World Revolution 93
war enemies—were initiated early on. The Moscow Collegium of Art that
operated within IZO sent an appeal to German artists, delivered by Ludwig Bähr,
a former German officer-turned-artist who left Moscow to relocate to Germany
in December 1918. According to Kandinsky, who returned to Russia from
Munich in 1914 and worked at IZO, Bähr was “charged, along with other artistic
missions of international scope, to convey [this appeal] of comradely greeting
and a call to international unity in the creation of a new artistic culture.”3 The
Arbeitsrat in Berlin responded “with warmest sympathy” to the appeal in a letter
“signed by Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius, Cäsar Klein, and Max Pechstein.”4 Aside
from these organizations, a Baden Organization of Fine Arts was set up, as well
as the equally Baden-based West-Ost Group, which enthusiastically responded
with greetings to the appeal by Russian artists to their German comrades.

( . . . ) Within us burns anger and hatred. ( . . . ) The faint-heartedness of the
government, the present siege conditions, general strikes, unemployment, the
sound of machine-gun fire—we see all this as heralds of a new age, burning and
seething, when in our country too, the mighty red image will be carried through
the streets.5
This brings to mind Lissitzky’s vision of Moscow’s Red Square on May Day 1918.
Kandinsky, who acknowledged these groups’ responses to the Moscow
appeal, mentioned further German artists’ organizations that, according to
Bähr, did not manage to have their welcoming responses delivered to Russia
due to the deficiencies in the postal service, as Russia was still under blockade.
These included the Dresden Artists’ Association, the Baden Workers’ Council, the
Weimar Bauhaus, the Marées Gesellschaft in Dresden (headed by art historian
Julius Meier-Gräfe), as well as the Worpswede Artists’ Union.6 Such signs of
instant interest in taking up relations with Russia indicate extraordinary curiosity
and enthusiasm among Germany’s left-wing artists, workers, and intellectuals
who put their hopes in the new communist country. The interest of the German
working class in Russia indicates their belief that workers in Soviet Russia were
significantly empowered.
Berlin was vibrant with the increasingly vigorous and popular culture of
cinema, photography, modern theater, product and graphic design, book
publishing, new literature, and the continuing allure of the universities, research
institutes, philosophy and essay writing, periodicals, busy art life, concerts,
museums, the emerging international style—at least in designs—in modern
architecture, with cutting-edge technologies in mind, and the resonating
influence of the Bauhaus—and the list goes on. Against the dark background of a
frustrated population and proletariat, as described in Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel

Berlin Alexanderplatz, the city’s life offered, as depicted in many artworks, fun
and entertainment in cafés, cabarets, nightclubs, galleries, and street life.
A cultural boom followed the trauma of the First World War. Intellectual
energy was tremendous and spectacular. In the immediate aftermath of the
war, there was little construction happening for want of money and material,
but architects, for example those who formed the Gläserne Kette (Glass chain)
including, among others, Bruno and Max Taut, Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun,
and Hermann Finsterlin, were feverishly planning, sharing, and discussing
their designs. There was no money for art, but dada collages were made out
of newspaper, manifesting disdain for commercial art and art trade, satirically
commenting on politics; and during this time of material and technological
setback, the new medium of radio launched its regular broadcasting. For those
who chose to settle there, Berlin offered many advantages on a pragmatic level,
too. In the midst of postwar poverty due to the favorable exchange rates, the city
was affordable for foreigners.7 Moreover, German was widely spoken as a first
or second language in parts of Western and Northern Europe; in the successor
states of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire in Central and Eastern Europe;
in the Saxon parts of Romania; and also in some circles of the Russian upper
and upper-middle classes as well as by the Baltic Germans—all of which made
adjustment to a German-speaking city easily possible for many artists and
professionals. Centered in Berlin with satellites in Weimar, Dessau, Leiden,
Rotterdam, Prague, Vienna, Zagreb, and other further outposts, most of the
Berlin-based avant-garde artists were exiles, expatriates, or visitors—in Peter
Gay’s term “Wahlberliner”8—those who chose to live in the city. Feverish as the
Berlin atmosphere was, however, not even cosmopolitan Berlin was entirely
conquered by these émigrés. Amazed by Berlin’s capacity to absorb most of
everything going on in the city, count Harry Kessler noted in his diary:
Not until the Revolution did I begin to comprehend the Babylonian,

immeasurably deep, chaotic, and powerful aspect of Berlin. This aspect became
evident in the fact that this immense movement within the even more intense
ebb and flow of Berlin caused only small, local disturbances, as if an elephant
had been stabbed with a penknife. It shook itself but then went on as if nothing
had happened.9
Kessler found the contrast between the dramatic historic events that could
have led to fundamental changes in the lives of the city’s residents and the city’s
undisturbed daily routine so compelling that he also mentioned,
Noteworthy is that during the days of revolution the trams, irrespective of street
fighting, ran regularly. Nor did electricity, water, or telephone services break
down for a moment. The revolution never created more than an eddy in the
ordinary life of the city. ( . . . ) The colossal, world-shaking upheaval has scurried
across Berlin’s day-to-day life much like an incident in a crime film.10
All the above notwithstanding, the capital that accumulated and concentrated
in Berlin in the immediate wake of the First World War was not pragmatic or
monetary, but rather a vision of the future of the “left-wing intellectuals” who,
in István Deák’s words, “appointed themselves the conscience of Germany
[as] the most vociferous and consistent opposition to the nationalists.”11 In an
unprecedented and unparalleled way, their vision, at that particular moment,
even if briefly, proved to be an internationally attractive asset appealing to the
progressive artists and intelligentsia Europe-wide and beyond. What Berlin
offered in 1919–1924 was the anticipation of a new, collective era of justice and
equality—the sense of the dawn of a new era. Berlin, as far as this vision was
concerned, was not representative of Germany, where the “silent majority” did
not share such ideas and expectations. But with the left-wing groups, the Russian
Revolution resonated as the possible and desirable future path of mankind. With
the bloody and brutal war just behind them, the leftist workers, artists, and
intellectuals were convinced that division along national borders had proved
lethal and therefore it had to be overcome by a new world of internationalism.
Vladimir Lenin expected the worldwide victory of the bolshevik Revolution
and had famously predicted that Germany would be the second country in the
world to succumb to communism as the weakest link in the chain of capitalist
countries.12 The international left-wing crowd in Berlin took this for a prophecy;
and Lenin and his party actively worked on redeeming this prediction.
The international organization of the communist Parties, the Comintern,
was organized in Moscow in 1919, designed for the worldwide export of
communism. Military wings of communist Parties were secretly organized, for
example the “M-Apparat” of the communist Party of Germany, whose purpose
was to prepare for the Civil War that the communists believed was impending in
Germany and to liquidate opponents and informers who might have infiltrated
the party. A paramilitary organization, the Rotfrontkämpferbund (Red front
fighters’ association) was also organized,13 and the Comintern was allegedly
behind attempted terror acts in Germany in 1918–1919.14 Left-wing intellectuals,
however, were mostly idealists and were thinking in more broad philosophical
terms such as the “forces of history” rather than the secret deployment of military
and paramilitary fighting units.15 Hungarian philosopher György Lukács, who
was involved in editing the new journal Communism during his Vienna exile
after the defeat of the Hungarian Commune, in which he had been a commissar
with heavy responsibilities, recalled in an interview that in the early 1920s, “there
was a widespread belief that we were at the beginning of a vast revolutionary
wave which would flood all of Europe within a few years. We labored under the
illusion that within a short time we would be able to mop up the last remnants
of capitalism.”16
Reports about the actual reality in communist Russia were available in the
print press, but did not abound. The “Art Program of the Commissariat for
Enlightenment in Russia” was obtained by the German monthly Das Kunstblatt
and printed in its March 1919 issue.17 The “Program” included the founding
of new museums and art schools; and with respect to the latter, as if taking a
page from the book of the Bauhaus, it encouraged “bringing the handicrafts to
fruition in the hands of artist innovators.”18 Among the artists appointed as the
leaders of the new Russian art, Tatlin is mentioned as president of the Moscow
College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and Malevich as one of the
leaders of the Art-Construction section.
Die Aktion published a devastating account by Otto Ruhle, a delegate of the
KAPD (Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, communist Workers’
Party of Germany), about his visit to the preparatory session of the second
congress of the Third International in Moscow in the summer of 1920.19 Ruhle
describes the bolshevik Party as an “authoritarian organization,” “dictatorial and
terroristic” that wanted to force the KAPD delegates to obediently comply, as a
result of which they demonstrated their independence from Moscow and left
before the conference took place. Disillusion with Moscow, however, did not
mean for Ruhle that communism was altogether a bad idea, and he trusted that
“the German workers would be in the most decisive opposition” to Russian-
style politics, because “Russia isn’t Germany, Russian politics aren’t German
politics.”20 That is, trust in Russia may have devolved, as far as its ruling party
was concerned, but not trust in communism. As the theater of the ongoing battle
between conservative Germans and the internationalist avant-gardes, Berlin
was, most importantly, the site of the expected showdown between the East and
the West, communism and capitalism.
The core question to which all others boiled down was whether Germany,
and subsequently Europe, would succumb to communism. As, for example,
the West-Ost Group’s passionate message indicated, the Russian Revolution was
apparently such an epiphany for the adherents of the anticapitalist political and
cultural currents from anarchism through Social Democrats to communists in
Germany that the radical change in the social system to communism was, until
about 1923, generally shared and hoped for as the most likely and most desired
future. These groups did not witness the Russian reality firsthand, but they were
energized and inspired by the news coming from the revolutionary country. It
was in Berlin that the world revolution was expected to happen and soon; and
many progressives wanted to be where the action would be.
The Mirage of Internationalism and the Political Reality
Beneath the optimistic internationalist outlook of the international avant-

garde stationing in Berlin and other European centers lay the troubled reality
of the actual international relationships of the postwar years. As emissary of
Germany, Kessler participated in the 1922 Genoa Conference, which had been
convened to sort out the monetary economics of post–First World War Europe,
now including the newly minted countries of Central- and Eastern Europe (the
successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), as well as Russia. Germany
and Russia’s two-party contract, which was signed in Rapallo and mutually
secured the two countries from laying claims to each other’s territory or finances
all while the Genoa Conference was in session, infuriated the other European
participants who saw it as betrayal of the allegedly common cause that needed
to be achieved in multilateral agreements. In the wake of the Congress, Kessler
noted in his Diary: “Amateurism and petty, particularistic political egotism are
the two reefs on which the Conference has foundered. ( . . . ) Nothing whatever is
gained for the rehabilitation or reconstruction of Europe. Inhibited nationalism,
hardly less fatal than the open sort.”21
Kessler and many politicians saw the actual reality for what it was and
called the Versailles Peace Treaty a mere armistice. The international avant-
garde, however, insisted on visions that were increasingly unrealistic. Driven
by faith and optimism as well as ambition to change the world for the better,
they continued with their plan to create and control the culture of an emerging
new collective age, even as that vision kept drifting away. Their ideas of an
international, collective future failed to attract the majority of the population
in Europe. Most of the small groups of the avant-garde artists, often in exile,
had been in opposition to their respective home countries’ mainstream culture,
already before and during the war. Now they established a network and relied
on each other to sustain their dreams and struggle. Even their like-minded
supporters back home were limited in number. Under the duress of exile, they
often split into factions that weakened their position even further—but not
their faith. Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg, and the German artist Hans Richter
assessed their position with great accuracy in the 1922 “Statement” after the
First Congress of International Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf: “Today we stand
between a society that does not need us and one that does not yet exist.”22
Still, they upheld the hope that the line of the communist anthem, “The
International unites the human race!,” was to be taken at face value as historical
prophecy and historic necessity. This faith blurred the perception of the actual
reality of, among other things, the German majority’s heightened nationalism,
sense of humiliation after the defeat in the war, and desire to retaliate. Dominant
was a clearly antirepublican attitude, and the citizens of the successor states of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire shared most of these sentiments. The representatives
of Russian, Dutch, Hungarian, and other art groups living or staying in Berlin
in the early 1920s created an international network that overlooked or failed to
notice not only the international political scene but also the reality of a deeply
divided Germany under their very eyes. They operated on the basis of the
perceived concept that the intellectual scene in Berlin was the true face of the
country as well as the harbinger of a new Europe or even a new world. They
failed to take the anti-Bauhaus sentiments seriously, even as those were highly
articulate in the old iconic cultural town Weimar itself, reflecting the residents’
anti-modernity and xenophobia. Hostility against the school was palpable in
the town since the moment director Gropius revealed himself as a republican
and an internationalist by his first appointments of expressionist artists to
positions in the Bauhaus and recruited an international faculty and student
body. As early as December 12, 1919, a public meeting was convoked by the local
Freie Vereinigung für die Verteidigung städtische Interessen (Free Union for the
Protection of the Town’s Interests) called specifically for expelling the Bauhaus
from the town, where the presiding Dr. Kreubel called the Bauhaus not only
“insane,” but also “a Spartakist-bolshevik institution of alien and Jewish art”;
and a Bauhaus student, Hans Gross, read, to resounding applause, a prewritten
talk demanding that true German art be taught at the Bauhaus, attacking the
“internationalist reign [as a] wolf thirsting for the blood of the German people.”23
Following this event when Gropius, apparently caught unawares by these ideas,
rebuffed him, Gross and, in solidarity with him, a group of Bauhaus students
coming from old and prestigious Weimar families manifestly quit the school in
protest against its alleged “anti-German-ness.”24
The euphoric postwar moment in Berlin notwithstanding, even with all the
lively curiosity in and receptivity to foreigners, Russians in particular, Berlin still
had a social fabric that was hard to penetrate for visitors and newcomers. Layers
and layers of German history and culture, Wilhelmine and earlier, had shaped
the city and its residents’ social hierarchy, views, tastes, emotions, and thinking.
Powerful personalities like writer Bertolt Brecht, art dealer and publisher
Herwarth Walden, gallerists Albert Flechtheim or Ferdinand Möller, theater
directors Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, controversial journalist and editor
Maximilian Harden, prestigious economist and sociologist Werner Sombart,
to only mention a few from different walks of life, were emblematic figures of
the vibrant intellectual and social life of the city, only a segment of which was
accessible to immigrants and visitors. The outsider–insider dynamics enhances a
nation or even a city being a community that is the arbiter of its own definition,
thus creating a constantly shifting consensus as to who is “in” and who is “out.”
The artists who came to Berlin in the wake of the First World War arrived
from different realities, different pasts; and even if they did get acquainted with
many Berliners, they still inhabited parallel realities, that of the Russian circles
or other international networks. As historian Robert C. Williams remarks,
“The [Russian] philosopher S.L. Frank knew only Max Scheler with any degree
of intimacy, and later recalled from Paris that Germany remained a kind of
wilderness for him. The same was true of the young writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Few émigrés were able to assimilate easily into German intellectual life, and
most remained quite alone.”25
Post–First World War internationalism, even if it was a thin veneer over more
massive currents in German society, was different from the idealistic spiritual
internationalism such as Kandinsky’s prewar Neue Künstlervereinigung (New
Association of Artists) or its splinter group Der blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
and also differed from the desperately sarcastic supra-nationalist anticultural
stance of Zurich dada during the war or the cosmopolitanism of postwar Berlin
dada. Avant-garde artists in the wake of the First World War gave voice to their
outrage for having seen nation pitted against nation while the big industrialists
had financially profited from the death of great masses of soldiers and the misery
of the survivors. Nonetheless, the inconvenient truth that the new spirit of
internationalism was an illusion was to be experienced at every step of the way.
The outpour of hostility against the Bauhaus in Weimar, for example, continued,
and one of its triumphal results was the restoration of the conservative Grand
Ducal Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar in 1921—that is, the reconquering of
traditional landscape painting as opposed to Bauhaus modernism. The relentless,
orchestrated activities of the Weimar population to oust the school from the town
achieved their goal after the first postwar parliamentary elections in Thüringen
in 1924. Opponents of the Bauhaus kept on accusing the school not only of
cosmopolitanism but also of being communist, the greatest unpatriotic sin in
the eyes of the conservative majority. Dada, according to direct witnesses, hardly
fared better—even in the eyes of many left-wing intellectuals, who were divided
by their preference of “proletkult,” a realist propaganda-art for proletarians, and
modernist art such as abstraction or expressionism. As communist “poet and
powerhouse”26 Franz Jung characterized the far-left outlook in his autobiography,
“If the Zurich dadaism of Arp and Tristan Tzara had represented any aesthetic
reform in the arts, none of it landed in Berlin. ( . . . ) Richard Huelsenbeck ( . . . )
had not the slightest impact on us. He remained a foreign element.”27 That is,
even a German artist could be perceived as foreign, or outsider.
Although Jung does not mention such leading Berlin dada artists as Raoul
Hausmann, Hannah Höch, or John Heartfield, this statement suggests that the
category of the “outsiders” was further layered and subdivided along the fault lines
of party affiliations, group agendas, and personal sympathies. Jung’s personal
interpretation of the Berlin presence of dada may be based on biases from the
general consensus about the significance of dada in Berlin, but it is nonetheless
indication that there were more diverse authentic stances and perceptions than
consensually acknowledged in the scholarship of the cultural history of this era.
Moreover, Jung, from his populist-communist point of view, considered dada—
generally seen as far-left-wing in scholarship—as bourgeois and described it as a
tendency that had captivated a thin upper crust of the intellectual elite only, and
even that for a short while, without leaving any lasting trace even on that thin
geistige Oberfläche (spiritual veneer) of society.28 Although dada was, besides
expressionism, the most important vehicle of protest, and glued together many
radical artists, from 1922 on it gradually embraced, or gave way to, the more
inclusive and optimistic trend of the “international constructivists”29 in Berlin.
The “Silent Majority” and the War Experience
Progressive left-wing intellectuals attempted to sever ties with the past and what
they considered to be its residue, the existing culture, as they believed that they
were at the beginning of the construction of a new international world that
would be built from tabula rasa, leaving behind the burden of history as Victory
over the Sun had anticipated it (even if it is unlikely that they knew the opera).
But most Germans who had lived through the years of the war and the
subsequent turbulent events in Germany had experienced changes in the
progression of everyday life that Kessler described, which through the years
became increasingly fraught with confusion, frustration, and anger. They had
more insight into many specific factors rooted in German history that shaped
the postwar conditions than the newcomers did. The differences between the
dominant Left parties—the Socialist Party (SPD), the Independent Socialist
Party (USPD), the communist Party (KPD), its offspring the communist
Workers’ Party (KAPD)—and the deep divide between Weimar republicans
and conservatives had provided an explosive rather than solid ground for the
new democracy, let alone for any dreams of a new internationalism. Locals
were more aware of the fragility of the Weimar Republic than most foreigners
who were out of touch with its actual realities and tended to ignore its past for
the sake of the mirage of a shining future. On the other hand, a progressive
Berlin intellectual like Wieland Herzfelde,30 strongly committed to the idea of
communism, director of the communist Malik Verlag, and brother of the dada
artist John Heartfield (Helmuth Herzfeld), confided to his friend count Kessler
on several occasions that he was thoroughly pessimistic about the future of the
German democracy. Released after a week in prison, he told Kessler on March
21, 1919, concerning the utterly inhuman prison conditions that “the prisoners’
bitterness is so great ( . . . ) that should their side come to power they want
to exterminate the middle class, one and all.”31 On August 7 of the same year,
Kessler noted that Herzfelde was “depressed and thinks that the revolution is
probably over. The downfall of the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council Government
in Hungary ( . . . ) and the bad news from Moscow make him very pessimistic.
( . . . ) In his view the revolution has been postponed for fifty years.”32
Left-wing progressives were, in point of fact, an extremely thin crust of the
society. George Grosz, for example, recalls in his Autobiography that “foreigners
who visited us at that time were easily fooled by the apparent light-hearted,
whirring fun on the surface ( . . . ), the so-called freedom and the flowering of
the arts. ( . . . ) But that was really nothing more than froth. Right under that
short-lived, lively surface of the shimmering swamp was fratricide and general
discord, and regiments were formed for the final reckoning”.33
In stark contrast to the small groups of left-wing artists that kept up an
international network of journals and organizations, most Germans remained
conservative, leaning völkisch (or populist), religious, and in denial of having lost
the war.34 According to historian Sebastian Haffner,35 it was due to the successful
manipulations of General Erich Ludendorff, General of the Infantry and second
in the German High Command, that the majority of the population blamed
the catastrophic losses of the country on the Social Democrats, who were put
in power by the schemes of the military precisely in order to own the defeat.
Moreover, the Social Democrats were divided into factions themselves and their
leader, the country’s new president Friedrich Ebert, did not want a socialist
revolution although that was, in the midst of chaotic activities, underway in
1918 and, sporadically, into 1919 and 1920.
Social-psychological responses to the war experience were apparently similar
in various countries, including Russia and Germany. As everywhere, the Great
War put the personal-individual and the collective-national in a new perspective.
Tragic individual losses had to be seen as a sacrifice for the higher good of the
nation, but in order to accept this, one had to have faith in the rationale of the
war and the mission of one’s nation in it. Responses we can trace in artworks
were diverse. In Italy, most futurists abandoned their initial pro-war enthusiasm
already during the war and returned to realism, rendering sad red cross-marked
trains that carried the wounded in bunk beds. Many German expressionists
displayed personal outrage rather than submission, while Russian artists,
Gurianova states, were “intent to avoid any individual, purely psychological
accents”36 about the war. The changing of the boundaries between private and
public, or private and national—if not communal—was also discernible in
Germany. Munich historian Karl Alexander von Müller writes that while before
the Great War people in Germany, among his acquaintances, had lived “as private
persons,”37 the war destroyed the boundary between the private and the public
spheres, so that, historian Peter Fritsche concurs, “more and more people quite
self-consciously put their own lives in a national perspective, and [the ongoing
war] intensified the individual’s awareness of and participation in a dramatic
process of national jeopardy and reconstruction.”38
There are similar accounts from Russia—for example writer and theorist
Victor Shklovsky’s mentioning his personal war experience of meeting many
in the army who “fiercely loved Russia and nothing more than Russia.”39 The
tendency to willingly give up the private for the public, a collateral effect of the
war on masses of people, had certainly played a role in fostering disapproval
for individual pursuits and preparing great masses of the populations of Italy,
Germany, and Russia for collective submission to a central will that would later
morph into totalitarian rule.
Opposed to this mass mentality were those among Germany’s left-wing
intellectuals whom the conservatives saw as being subversively individualistic
and accused them of putting their individual concerns before those of the
country, thus slandering them as traitors to the nation. Film historian and
sociologist Siegfried Kracauer reconstructs the psychological map of “the
Germans,” if one may, hypothetically, lump an entire population in a general

formula, seen through the evolution of the German cinema throughout the
existence of the Weimar Republic. He supported his views with observations
in his sociological essays on the German middle classes.40 Kracauer pointed out
that in spite of the new form of state, not much had fundamentally changed in
the German society, including the judicial system and bureaucracy, after 1918,
but a shift was taking place in outlook nonetheless. One sign of this, he argued,
was the postwar disappearance of the detective film that had been very popular
prior to the war as a German “national counterpart of Conan Doyle’s archetype
( . . . ) who makes reason destroy the spiderwebs of irrational powers, and decency
triumph over dark instincts ( . . . ) believing in the blessings of enlightenment
and individual freedom.”41 As opposed to this pattern, postwar films like Passion
(1920) and All for a Woman (1921)
poured balm on the wounds of innumerable Germans who, because of the
humiliating defeat of the fatherland, refused to acknowledge history as an
instrument of justice or Providence any longer. By degrading the French
Revolution to a questionable adventure in both [films], that nihilism moreover
revealed itself as a symptom of strong antirevolutionary, if not antidemocratic,
tendencies in postwar Germany [where] the majority of people lived in fear of
social changes and therefore welcomed films which defamed not only bad rulers
but also good revolutionary causes.42
A culmination point of storytelling for the purpose of appeasing the mass

audiences was the modified version of Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari), 1920. In the screenwriter’s original story side-show performer
Dr. Caligari, who hypnotizes a somnambulant to commit murders, turns out to
be also the director of the psychiatric institution where the somnambulant is
supposedly treated—that is, a madman of absolute power and authority with no
superior authority to keep him in check. In stark opposition to this, the storyline
was changed into being a character’s mere hallucinations, so that the asylum
director’s being identical with Dr. Caligari is nothing more than a sick phantasm.
Thus, Kracauer notes, the truly revolutionary original story of the film, where
the hypnotized somnambulant portrayed “the common man who, under the
pressure of compulsory military service, is drilled to kill and to be killed,”43
was turned into the mass-pleasing story of a merely imagined horror. Thereby
the film, albeit in harrowing expressionist style, subliminally satisfied both
the eagerness for thrilling horror and the desire of cheap escape from it. Such
concessions to audiences, Kracauer confirms, aptly characterized the nature of
mass culture already in the early years of the Weimar Republic.
This was the background against which both the German and the Russian
progressives shared the dream of a vaguely outlined collective future of a global,
classless society, inhabited by a new, “collective individual.” Some of the hottest
debates about the new Russian art actually took place in Berlin, in the Russian
art world’s German headquarters.
Ideas of the future society were drawn from a mix of past philosophies
such as eighteenth-century Enlightenment and utopian socialism’s concepts of
communality married with modern technologies and advanced sciences. The
confusion that followed the Great War had deep roots in nineteenth-century
redemptive reform movements and theories such as anarchism, syndicalism,
anarcho-syndicalism, and various versions and blends of these in both Germany
and Russia. A wide political range of the Deutsche Jugendbewegung (German
youth movement)44 experimented with communal living before and after the
war. Concepts of a new, improved society were germinating in Europe and Russia
before they forked and solidified as politically left and right directions, respectively.
The neoconservative, regenerative visions of the future were represented by, for
example, the French Nabis’ conversion to neo-Catholicism starting in the 1890s,
and many back-to-nature movements overlapped and blended with the ideas of
utopian socialists, anarchists, and communists in Germany, as well as in the East
European countries’ workers’ movements. Several fascist leaders like Mussolini
and right-wing political theorists like Georges Sorel in France had their roots
and original political education in left-wing syndicalist movements. According
to Zeev Sternhell, “Sorel himself signaled his shifting allegiances by replacing his
earlier anarcho-syndicalist myth of the general strike with the myth of an integral
nation-state as the ideological motor of social regeneration.”45 We see later
examples of unintended overlap of the populist vocabulary of left-wing avant-
garde manifestos and fascist rhetoric, bringing to attention that borderlines were
often tenuous between them, and they often used the same phrases.46
Berlin was also the city where, in the framework of shared utopias and mutual
interests, the new Russian art and culture received more visibility than in other
European artistic centers. Lissitzky, first to introduce Malevich’s painted and
written work in the West, was active in Berlin during the early 1920s; the First
Russian Exhibition was organized in Berlin in the fall of 1922; the first reviews
and interpretations of Lissitzky and Malevich’s work as well as surveys of the
new art in Russia were published in Berlin; and finally, besides the short, semi-
professional exhibition in Warsaw’s Polonia Hotel, Malevich had his only one-
man show outside of Russia in Berlin in 1927. Thus, in Malevich’s lifetime the
initial Malevich-image west of Russia was to a great extent shaped in Berlin, and
to a much lesser extent and confined to a narrower circle of artists and critics, in
Poland, Holland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.
Reins on the Avant-Garde in Russia
Turning from radicalism to a degree of conformism was a gradual process not only
in Germany but in Russia as well. The radical left-wing artists’ “conversion” from
futurism and anarchism to working for the IZO NARKOMPROS and publish
in Iskusstvo kommuny (Art of the community, Petrograd, December 1918–April
1919) and Iskusstvo (Art; Moscow, January–December 1919) could entail different
stories in each case. Some may have, at least for a time, identified futurism with
NARKOMPROS, particularly when so many progressive artists worked within its
organizational boundaries. Personal and political dynamics were in constant flux,
but the People’s Commissar for Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, controlled
the entire cultural scene. However, as Sheila Fitzpatrick writes,
NARKOMPROS’s style and methods were often criticized for their lack of
toughmindedness. Lunacharsky’s commissariat—and Lunacharsky himself—
were believed by many bolsheviks to be too permissive ( . . . ) [during the Civil
War years] the natural tendency of a communist government to give preference
to communist artists was counterbalanced by the instinctive dislike which most
communist politicians felt for the artistic avant-garde.47
Lunacharsky, highly erudite, and the committed apostle of a new, secular

religion, tried to handle both the cause of Enlightenment and party politics. The
fundamental fault line ran between the “futurists,” a term loosely used for all
nonconformist artists, and the conformist realists—similarly to the situation in
Germany, where rebels were generally characterized and lumped as “expressionists”
versus mainstream realist artists. In Russia, as Jangfeldt writes, “the terminological
confusion was so great that the word ‘futurist’ lost all precise meaning.”48 There was
strong opposition to “futurism” inside the communist Party, even against its own
IZO.49 The increasingly bureaucratic Soviet leadership shifted more toward the
conservative majority, seeing Russia’s young “futurists” as individuals who believed
that the communist revolution was their own personal breakthrough to a brighter
future only rather than the entire nation’s road map to a better world. As early
as 1922 the organization of realist artists, the AKhRR (Assotsiatsia Khudozhnikov
Revolutsionnoi Rossii, Association of Revolutionary Artists of Russia), was formed,
championing “heroic realism,”50 “speaking Bolshevik,” and pointedly opposing all
modernist tendencies represented by NARKOMPROS and INKhUK. AKhRR

positioned realism as the only true style that serves “the people.” They suggested
that the actual community—“the people”—was made up of those who confirmed
the well-known traditional idioms in art.
Russian artists and intellectuals, like their German counterparts, “acted
as the collective conscience of the Russian nation,”51 historian Robert Service
writes; therefore, they were influential and gave the bolshevik Party cause for
concern, which in turn had a double-edged policy toward them. “On the one
hand, intellectuals were subjected to the threat of censorship embodied in the
Decree on the Press52; on the other hand, the party appealed to them to lend their
support to the revolutionary regime—and material benefits were offered to those
willing to comply.”53 Parallel to Herzfelde’s disillusionment, art historian, critic,
and head of the IZO NARKOMPROS in Petrograd, Nikolai Punin wrote in his
diary in August 1919 that “my despair and my bitterness [are great]. . . . Together
with lost faith in the revolution, my energy is lost, and here I symbolically cry
out over the expanses of the earth.”54 One of the reasons of Punin’s pessimism
was that in April 1919 Lunacharsky banned Iskusstvo kommuny, a journal of
which Punin was an editor. The political and emotional ups and downs, hardly
communicable beyond Russia in their complexity, come across in Punin’s diary
entry a few months later about an evening at the theater:
During intermission Lunacharsky was in the wings with his court. Leschenko,
Lourie, Andreeva, Shterenberg, Altman, Lapitsky, Rapoport, Shklovsky, and
myself. He saw me, extended his left hand, and said, “Now here’s someone I like
a lot; he is the most intelligent man I have met in Soviet Russia.” ( . . . ) He was
drunk and happy. A strange person, I feel sorry for him, to the point of liking
him. ( . . . ) that he is a People’s Commissar is bad luck in the extreme, at least
for him. And what intrigue surrounds him, and how petty. Melancholy, tender
melancholy, because of this.55
This tells us about the tenuous and capricious personal dynamics of the
Russian cultural scene that both Malevich and Lissitzky inhabited, as well as
the unpredictable nature of the leadership they were supposed to trust and on
which they so depended.
The Russian Emigration in Berlin
Russian émigrés were a special colony in the midst of the many multinational
groups settling in Germany in the wake of the war. Due to the special relations of
Germans and Russians through the centuries and their geographical proximity,
Germany, most of all Berlin, was the main center of Russian emigration in the
years 1919–1923. The number of Russians in Berlin fluctuated: it was estimated
70, 000 at the end of 1919, but jumped to 560, 000 by the fall of 1920; and it
was estimated to have dropped below 300, 000 by spring 1921, because many
just transited Germany on their way to France or the United States.56 Williams
points out that émigrés—a term used in most cases for those who escaped the
bolshevik rule but not for the pro-Soviet travelers who intended to return to
communist Russia, even if many were uncertain about their future decision—
were mostly coming from the upper classes and the intelligentsia of Imperial
Russia. “The Russian emigration in Berlin was a pyramid whose point was the
only part which remained. The lower and middle classes were missing, along
with the workers and peasants, craftsmen, and shopkeepers. Instead, there were
army officers, bureaucrats, artists, financiers, politicians, and members of the old
court society.”57
Mostly concentrated in the southwestern part of the city Charlottenburg,
the name soon russified as “Charlottengrad”; Russians had their cafés,
newspapers, journals, shops, restaurants, and, as Williams adds, “hundreds
of other signs of a flourishing and independent existence.”58 Café Leon on
Nollendorf Platz, regarded as the temporary location for the Russian Haus
der Künste (House of the Arts), was a meeting and debating place for Russian
artists and writers of various political and aesthetic trends and convictions,
as well as the scene of meetings held by the Union of Russian Writers and
Journalists in Germany.59 Literary personalities, who were in transit even
if Soviets, were regulars. The crowd included Vladimir Nabokov, Boris
Pasternak, Alexander Blok, Alexei Tolstoi, and Ilya Ehrenburg; the poet
Marina Tzvetaeva, formalist critics and writers Andrei Biely, Viktor Shklovskii,
and linguist Roman Jakobson; painters Ivan Puni and Xenia Boguslavskaia;
sculptors Naum Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner; and, eventually,
Vasily Kandinsky on his way to Weimar. Others like Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Lily and Osip Brik, or Sergei Esenin visited or stayed for shorter periods of
time.60 The more markedly pro-Soviet artists, on the other hand, met at the
nearby Landgraf Café on Kurfürstendamm. This location also served as one
of the temporary locations of the House of the Arts and was “frequented
mainly by the writers around the pro-Soviet Berlin daily Nakanune (which
translates as the eve of an important, epochal event that brings change) and
other left-leaning intellectuals like Bely, Alexei Tolstoi, and Ehrenburg.”61 As
the lists indicate, several writers and artists attended both places. Launched
in March 1922, Nakanune was designed to win over the émigrés to the Soviet
regime. It was part of the efforts of its editors to exploit Russophilia in Berlin
and confirm the image of Russia as the young, up-and-coming power that
would defeat the old and declining West—a vision agreed upon by a variety
of otherwise often disagreeing cultural groups, both Russian and German.
Among them were the Smena Vekh (marked turning point, or landmark)
group and the Skifi (Scythians), with Alexander Blok, Bely, Esenin, and
their chief theorist Ivanov-Razumnik. Scythianism, the publishing house of
which, Skifi, brought out Lissitzky and Ehrenburg’s art journal Veshch
helped channel the messianic enthusiasm of Russian intellectuals for the east
into political support for the Soviet regime. ( . . . ) Ivanov-Razumnik62 [was
convinced that] the revolutions of 1917 in Russia represented an event of global
significance superseded in historical importance only by the birth of Christ, to
which it was not dissimilar. ( . . . ) The new ecumenical idea now incarnated into
the world through “backward,” “uncultured,” “dark” Russia, resembles the birth
of Christianity twenty centuries ago in dark, uncultured and backward Judea,
rather than in advanced, cultured, brilliant Rome.63
Whether Malevich knew Ivanov-Razumnik’s ideas is not certain, but Malevich’s

article on Lenin64 reflected similar views to Razumnik’s concerning the
magnitude of the revolution and its leader.
Nakanune, the publication of which almost coincided with that of Veshch,
Objet, Gegenstand, also appealed to revolutionary romanticism as well as to
national and religious emotions. This journal interpreted the revolution as the
ultimate victory of the Russian intelligentsia that now, it was suggested, was
in control of state power and thus was in the position to achieve centuries-old
ideals. The Nakanune circle, the smenovekhovtsi, and the Scythians shared a
strong sense of history regarding the fundamental, epochal significance of the
changes underway in Russia. This same scale of historical meaning resonated
in Malevich’s works and writings, affected Lissitzky’s vision, and pervaded the
thinking and artistic output of vanguard art in Russia. This new dimension
of possible changes that might affect life and society throughout the whole of
Europe fascinated Berliners, too, and kept them interested in the political and
cultural developments in Russia.
Lissitzky’s presence in Berlin, against such background, appears to be a
(perhaps self-imposed) mission to spread information and bring German and
Russian artists closer to one another. Lissitzky made efforts to reconcile the
Russian émigrés in Berlin to communist Russia by presenting a positive, young,
modernist, and unified image of the new Russian art that could become popular
in Germany. One of the clearly set goals of the 1922 First Russian Exhibition in
Berlin, meant to be a “nonpolitical event,” was to break the “émigrés” dominance
in shaping the image of Russia in Germany. Lunacharsky’s article in Izvestia
(News) praised the exhibition for “wiping out the émigrés.”65
Concepts of Constructivism as Kinetic Structure

versus Static Geometry in Berlin
Search for a new art that transcends expressionism was underway in Berlin
prior to the onset of constructivism. A new terminology to describe this
new art was being hammered out since as early as 1919–1920. Those familiar
with the cyclical nature of changes in art had long predicted the demise of
expressionism. Hungarian artist and theorist Leo Popper, György Lukács’s
closest friend, who traveled all over Europe and died at the young age of
twenty-five, wrote him in a letter as early as 1910 that the emergence of “a
new tectonism”66 was a necessity to counter-point the overflow of subjective
expression by solid objectivity.
Soon after his arrival in Berlin in the spring of 1920, Kállai pioneered the
term “the newest classicism” in a highly positive sense to describe recent works
of Carlo Carrà, George Grosz, and the Paris Section D’Or (Golden Section) that
offered a geometric-purist alternative to cubism. Kállai praised the solidity and
self-contained forms of these artists as opposed to what he held as inchoate
expressionist individualism. In these works, he wrote, “the creative power was
not arrested as an irresponsible deluge of lyrical impulses, but deepens and
widens factual statements into collective, and even cosmic truth. ( . . . ) It is
not adventure, but knowledge; not emotion, but action; not a process, but a
result. Objectivity.”67 Certainly independently from Kállai, the term “modern
classicism” was used in Tatlin’s and his colleagues’ manifesto “The Work Ahead
of Us,” dated December 31, 1920: “The investigation of material, volume, and
construction made it possible for us in 1918, in an artistic form, to begin to
combine materials like iron and glass, the materials of modern classicism,
comparable in their severity with the marble of antiquity.”68 That is, quest of a
new, technology-validated solidity that implied widely shared ideals of order
was a modernist pursuit that did not contradict avant-garde radicalism; use of
iron and glass was seen as a major artistic innovation by both the Russians and
the Bauhaus.
Kállai seems to have logically arrived at the term in search of the antithesis of
expressionism. Having discussed the classicism inherent in the new “objective”
trend, he remarked:
Let us not go as far as art. How much classicism: clear, transparent order,
delicacy, and the beauty of form and dynamism manifests in modern machinery!
How much earthly, human solemnity in the proud verticality of the factories,
skyscrapers, in the slow movement of steam liners, in the flight of airplanes, and
in the span of bridges!69
This description, as well as much of what follows in the article, anticipates what
will soon be known as constructivism in Europe. Based in Berlin and supporting
the international avant-garde, Kállai played a connective role between East and
West similarly to Lissitzky. He sent articles to Hungarian journals published
in Vienna, Budapest, Arad, and Novi Sad. While Kállai’s enthusiasm was
reminiscent of the Italian futurists’ fascination with modern technology, it
also squared with Larionov and Goncharova’s excitement about real objects as
tangible achievements of the new, modern times, listed in their 1913 Rayonist
Manifesto.70 Kállai even uses the term “construction” in the second part of the
essay as he surveys the contemporary art scene, very similarly to but predating
the constructivists of INKhUK: “In terms of purely form-related issues,
objectivism has got rid of painterly effects. It emphasizes linearity or volume.
Eschewing expression as well as academic composition, it achieves integrity and
law in constructions.”71
Constructivism, as this statement indicates, had been anticipated in Germany
prior to its arrival from Russia. The progressive international art scene was ready
for both a new, anti-expressionist formal idiom and a collectivist ideology, but
this was still very far from the Moscow developments, particularly the ideology
and the personal subtext of the INKhUK debates. Kállai employed the terms
“constructive” and “construction,” as opposed to “expression” and “composition”
independently from the Russians. “The construction of geometric and technical
forms” is a phrase that comes up in relation to Archipenko’s nudes, and Kállai,
as of the summer of 1921, also writes about the “constructive force of cubism.”72
The duality of “dynamic” versus “static” in the early European concepts of
constructivism reverberated until the late twentieth century. On the one hand,
pragmatic, three-dimensional objects were created or paintings evocative of
such structures—as in the works of Moholy-Nagy, Gert Caden (pseudonym of
Gerd Kaden), or Katarżyna Kobro. On the other hand, artists like Erik Buchholz,
Sándor Bortnyik, and Lajos Kassák painted strict, planar geometric shapes.
Kassák labeled his paintings “picture-architecture,” using Liubov Popova’s term,

charged with anticipation of utopian order, purity, and architectural structure.
Representatives of this trend admired Malevich’s work as a post-technological
but inherently visionary, high-tech image of the future.
By the summer of 1921, Kállai had overcome the rhetoric of expressionism by
coining terms that were antithetical to it. Thus, a decade after Popper’s insight—
of which he could not be aware, as it was included in Popper and Lukács’s private
correspondence—Kállai came to the concept of a “new tectonic,” “objective”
future art based on forms and gestures that refer to constructing, whether
architectural or painted. He instantly found artworks that illustrated this
concept, in which he could demonstrate the validity of his new terms. Kállai’s
short article on Moholy-Nagy—also written before he could have heard about
constructivism from Alfréd Kemény—celebrates “cosmic harmony” along with
“the mechanism of the modern machine,”73 thus inadvertently bridging the gap
between suprematism and constructivism—the Moscow conflict of which he
was equally unaware.
Kállai discovered Moholy-Nagy’s works as the first to corroborate the vision
of a self-contained, mechanically constructed model universe, describing them
as a new universe in the making:
[in Moholy-Nagy’s pictures] the anarchy is being visibly organized towards a

concentric system. New particles emerge and form new systems in the place of
disrupted conglomerates, although they do not evolve into closed and concentric
constructions. The newer constructions are still open-ended, but they are more
articulate, and more concentric. Here, the mechanism of the modern machine
and its kinetic system has been converted into art through the processes of a
fruitful coalescence of concentric pictorial factors with the creative principles
drawn on cubism and dada.74
Kállai's description of the “constructive” picture culminates in the exalted

statement: “Moholy-Nagy declares freedom and law, which illuminates the
infinite perspectives of the future.”75
By contrast to “the dynamism of the modern machines” in the geometric
abstract works of Kassák, who made his debut as an artist in 1921, Kállai
envisioned a different new, static model for “objective” art:
Architectonic articulation is all the more severe, and its forms all the more
abstract and simple, the less self-secured the social and economic order of
the collective spirit is. For every new collective indicates the elevation of a
victorious, objective historical will into an accomplished fact. The launching of
every collective involves the welding together of various forces into the most
solid agglomeration of power—thus it is construction, in the most inexorable
sense of the word.76
These descriptions anticipate the concept of constructivism as understood

at the Moscow INKhUK in 1921 and indicate the context in which Russian
constructivism and suprematism will be interpreted in the West. Lacking a
society undergoing as rapid a transformation as Russia’s, or a society with the
advanced technology of Germany, even despite the postwar setbacks, Kassák
deviated from both models and understood constructivism as a redemptive
doctrine. The force of a new revelation pervaded the version of constructivism
that Kassák developed in the early 1920s. He demonstrated preference for
timeless classicism and invested the geometric vocabulary with a majestic and
authoritative aura, in contradistinction to the pragmatism of both Russian and
international constructivism, both of which gave a relevant response to the need
for sustainable new standards in art after the war, not altogether different from
Kállai’s and Tatlin’s quoted concepts.
The double interpretation of the term “constructivism” in Berlin was
instrumental in blurring the contrast between suprematism and Russian
constructivism.
Kállai as art critic was closely tied to the circle of “objectivist” artists in Berlin
who regularly gathered in the studio of Gert Caden throughout 1921–1923. Moholy-
Nagy, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, El Lissitzky, van Doesburg, Max Burchartz,
Erich Buchholz—whose studio was also a meeting point—were among the
regulars who readily adopted the term “constructivist,” which was most likely
introduced to them by Kemény and Lissitzky.
The Magic of Words
“Futurism” and “constructivism” were not just descriptive terms of certain

artistic trends. Both were particularly inspired and inspirational, future-bound,
imperative, and energetic, calling for activity and participation, and thus
programmatic.
“Futurism,” as it traveled from Italy to Russia, lost its specific claim to the
future of Italy—Marinetti’s homeland which futurism was meant to shake up and
urged to be emancipated to the modernized industrial nations. Its main aspect
that resonated the most in Russia was the sense of a speed- and technology-
bound future, writ large—a new beginning with modern machines that will
make human life easier and sizzling with modernity. “Futurism” for the Russians
spelled modernity comprising the whole of mankind—unlike in Italy where the
future of the country was inherently anticipated to the point of Italians not shying
away from fighting wars for it. The concept of war as the “hygiene of mankind,” as
it stands in Marinetti’s 1909 Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, was entirely
overlooked in Russia. It fell into a blind spot, while the magic concept of the
future loaded with airplanes, fast trains, and utopian architecture was ringing
aloud. Evoking the future in verse and image was fascinating and harbinger of
the new imagination. “Future” spelled freedom and the will to change the world
from the syllables and words of the language to the utopian reconceptualization
of society and the entire universe. Futurism entailed the cult of youth, and
its dynamism proved to be an extraordinary inspiration. That is why various
groups of Russian poets—the Mezzanine of Poetry and the Centrifuge groups,
the Ego-Futurists, and others who gathered in the Café Futuristov—insisted on
calling themselves one or another kind of futurists: everyone, in Italy, Russia,
and elsewhere, saw themselves in progress to a future that was to be shared, and
so the term ‘futurism’, which illuminated the road to it, was a magnet.
Another magnet was constructivism, traveling in the opposite direction, from
Russia to the West. Some of the original political contents were also lost in the
process, as the Russian constructivists’ original commitment to communism,
which was modified in the West to a more general left-wing social consciousness.
Constructivism had a mobilizing power, inviting positive action to build and
construct, and implied a moral imperative to do so. “To construct” was an appeal
to not just “build” but become engineers of the future both socially and physically.
Constructivism advocated the use of new technologies in collective action to
shape the new human environment. Both “futurism” and “constructivism” had
claim to the new imagination of the future world of technology, progress, and
speed.
Suprematism, on the other hand, similarly to neoplasticism, prefigured a
timeless, supreme state of the universe that cannot be superseded. In contrast
to futurism and constructivism, suprematism and neoplasticism did not have
the ring of a call to action. Both lacked the future-bound velocity of futurism
and the engineering-bound agency of constructivism. Suprematism and
neoplasticism sounded as more of an epiphany than a process. “Supreme” is a
numbing adjective: bow to it.
Both futurism and constructivism urged progressive artists to join forces
and actively create a better, if vaguely outlined world. Suprematism, by contrast,
sounded majestic, which is why Malevich had to invent terms like the “Affirmers
of the New,” which were more inclusive and inviting to join a community, while
the term “suprematism” was used as an iconic symbol of the artistic style and
direction. Futurism and constructivism were movements, in the actual sense
of the word: urging their adherents to move ahead and work as activists, while
suprematism commanded admiration, even if expanding the circle of adherents
happened to be the program; and neoplasticism was simply announced as a new
order.
Words, needless to say, have power. Both futurism and constructivism were
tremendously energizing, often regardless of their original programs. The mere
ring of the words—both of Latin origin and thus easily traveling across national
and cultural borders—evoked the desire for activity and participation, and
therefore had great international appeal, popularity, and renown, even if their
meaning varied slightly in different locations.
The equally Latin-based term “suprematism,” on the other hand, implied
supremacy—the artist being superior to others and having power over them—a
kind of mastery which implied the artist’s privilege in having achieved it—and
which, in turn, instantly alienated some artists from it. This was the original,
inherent disadvantage of Malevich in comparison to the constructivists. In spite
of a wide array of followers, he remained, even when admired, a lonely visionary,
thought by some a genius, inviting some to follow him, but not someone to launch
a movement. His followers were, to a great extent, his imitators. When inventing,
and perhaps hesitating between, the terms “supremus” and “suprematism,”
Malevich aspired to the highest possible goal; but even UNOVIS, the community
he organized for the “affirmation” rather than construction “of the new,” fell shy
of the attractive invitation to participate in actively building that new. UNOVIS
was Malevich’s idea of the collective: a community each member of which is
branded, in terms of working for the common goal with no individual ambition.
That goal would be identified by Malevich. Unlike the potentially all-inclusive
constructivist program, suprematism appeared to be elitist.
When tracing the international trajectory of suprematism, proun, and De
Stijl’s neoplasticism and elementarism—art directions that had the form of the
square as their emblem or central motif and invested it with symbolic power, if
each in a somewhat different sense—we must be aware of the contrast between
the engagement in actively shaping the world proposed by constructivism on
the one hand and the spiritual commitment to affirm an idea proposed by
suprematism on the other.
6
As Many Narratives as Narrators

Russian Accounts of New Russian Art in the West
The 1914–1921 allied blockade of Russia notwithstanding, information about

the new culture of Soviet Russia was available in Germany as early as 1919, when
Alexander Bogdanov’s Die Kunst und das Proletariat (Art and the Proletariat)
and Anatoli Lunacharsky’s Die Kulturaufgaben der Arbeiter Klasse (The Cultural
Tasks of the Working Class) were published in German.1 Intense interest in the
communist state and its new culture, however, could not be adequately satisfied
as the image that resulted from the various firsthand accounts was contradictory.
It failed to give a relevant survey of the multiple, competing trends in the new
Russian art.
The First Accounts
The first authentic but incomplete overview of the new artistic developments
in Russia was given by an eighteen-year-old student, Konstantin Umansky,2
who traveled to Germany and had a stopover in Vienna in the fall of 1920. He
delivered a slide-illustrated lecture to members of the Hungarian Activists’ circle
in Vienna in November 1920,3 and on his arrival to Germany, published a series
of articles on new Russian art in the Munich journal Der Ararat. Umansky’s
book Neue Kunst in Russland (New Art in Russia) was published in Potsdam and
in Munich in 1920.4 “Tatlinism” was the focal point of his account. He helped
create a myth of Tatlin coining the misleading term “Maschinenkunst” (machine
art) that became part of the slogan “Die Kunst ist tot—es lebe die Maschinenkunst
von Tatlin” (art is dead, long live the machine art of Tatlin), advocating Tatlin’s
corner counter-reliefs “with their constructions and logic, rhythm, components,
material, and metaphysical spirit.”5 He traced back “Tatlinism” to French cubism
and claimed that it embodied the current Zeitgeist of Russia.
Umansky forged a relationship between Kandinsky and Malevich, telling

his German readers that these two representatives of “absolute expressionism”
stand out in Russia: “the solitary Kandinsky group and ( . . . ) the Malevich
group that adapted the ‘so-called’ [sic!] suprematism.”6 He discussed Kandinsky
as a “Russian messiah” who, albeit not popular among his Russian peers, “has
prepared the victory of absolute art—even if non-objective art is going in a
different direction today.”7 Umansky presented Malevich as a painter who had
further developed cubism and painted consistently planar images, whereas “the
artists of this trend are convinced of the danger of decorativity and ornamentality,
or other confusions of applied art. They go in a different direction seeking the
zero point of art,” by which, his footnote explains, “Malevich understands the
nearly total rejection of the means of artistic expression (color, form, etc.)—thus,
for example at the Tenth State Exhibition in Moscow, 1919 [Malevich] exhibited
a painting ‘White on White’, the utmost nihilism of Russian art.”8 Having skipped
Malevich’s period of colorful suprematism, and with “nihilism” as the last word,
the introduction of Malevich to the reader was wrapped up, and his name does
not come up again in the text. The illustrations of the book include, aside from
reproductions of nineteenth-century painters’ works, reproductions of works by
a variety of avant-garde artists, including Rozanova, David Burliuk, and Chagall.
Lissitzky is not mentioned at all—in Umansky’s survey, he was not part of the
new art in Russia.
Contradicting to Umansky’s account, Ivan Puni stepped up in Berlin as an
actual representative of the new Russian art. He had an exhibition of abstract
compositions at the Der Sturm gallery in February 1921. Puni used part of the
interior of the gallery as an extended artwork, as an artistically organized space.
Paul Westheim published an album with reproductions of eight paintings by
Puni for the occasion.
More information arrived directly from Russia. In the fall of 1921 Hungarian
painter Béla Uitz, who had attended the Third Congress of the Comintern in
Moscow, chose to travel to Berlin before returning to Vienna where he lived
in exile. In Berlin he met fellow Hungarians: critics Kállai and Alfréd Kemény,
and artists László Moholy-Nagy and László Péri. According to Uitz’s account,
he argued with them “for two days and two nights”9 in an effort to make a
convincing case for the values of nascent Moscow constructivism. In the same
year, 1921, the German communist Party sent Kemény—who, under the pen
name Durus, was a regular contributor of the party’s newspaper Die Rote Fahne
(Red Banner)—to attend the Comintern Congress in Moscow. Kemény, thus,
had gathered direct information about the latest developments in Russian art.
As Many Narratives as Narrators 117
Both Kemény and Uitz met Jolán Szilágyi, the widow of one of the leaders of the
1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, who had fled to the RSFSR after the August
1919 defeat of the Commune and studied at the Moscow VKhUTEMAS along
with her compatriot painter, Sándor Ék (Alex Kiel). Ék remembers having met
El Lissitzky, his teacher at VKhUTEMAS, at Szilágyi’s, where Kemény and Uitz
met other VKhUTEMAS faculty as well, including Rodchenko and, through
him, other constructivists. Kemény also became acquainted with Naum Gabo,
who “supplied him with photographic material and texts, including the Realist
Manifesto.”10
Kemény, who returned to Berlin from Moscow a few months later than Uitz
but not long after Lissitzky’s arrival in Berlin, brought more accurate and detailed
information than Umansky. Kemény had more recent, and more in-depth,
information about the developments at INKhUK, where he was invited to give
two talks about the latest artistic developments in Europe. On December 8, 1921,
Kemény spoke about “The Latest Trends in Contemporary German and Russian
Art.” According to the minutes,11 he compared and contrasted suprematism
and constructivism and, similarly to Umansky’s account, described “Malevich’s
suprematism as a kind of organized expressionism,” while he stated that
constructivism, by contrast, “supported a kind of art that proceeds forward into
life and turns against all kinds of aesthetically driven art.” Contrary to Lissitzky,
he declared that suprematism had nothing to do with the “material-constructive
direction of Russian art.” With this sharp division, as the minutes indicate,
Kemény was confirming INKhUK theorist Boris Arvatov’s views regarding the
deep fault line between Malevich and Tatlin. Acknowledging the latter as being
close to the constructivists, Kemény also pointed out the actual personal hostility
between Tatlin and Malevich. On December 26, the title of Kemény’s talk was
“Concerning the Constructive Work of the OBMOKhU,” in which he critically
stated that the young constructivists’ works had a tendency toward “technical
naturalism.” Although his accounts on the new Russian art were informative and
thorough, they nonetheless failed to reach a wide enough readership in Germany
and, likely due to this, were ultimately of little help to Westerners in sorting out
the actual differences between suprematism and constructivism in Russia.
Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand
El Lissitzky arrived in Berlin at the very end of 1921 and offered a very different
view on Malevich than Umansky or Kemény, albeit without clarifying the real
conflicts and disputes in Moscow. How his journey, an apparently open-ended stay
in Germany, was organized remains unknown, although speculations abound. It
has been suggested that with the Civil War’s end in 1921 and the blockade of
Russia being over, Lissitzky, who had a command of the German language as well
as previous experience living in Germany, was deployed by NARKOMPROS, for
which he had already been working, as an emissary to establish personal contacts
with German artists and develop cultural relations between Russia and Germany.
There is, however, no evidence of such government assignment.12 A more acerbic
view originates from the sculptor Naum Gabo’s wife Miriam, who recalled
that her husband had “once visited Lissitzky’s Berlin studio and was horrified
to see a CHEKA (the Soviet secret service) seal lying on the desk, and thus
Gabo identified Lissitzky as an informer in the employment of the Soviet secret
police.”13 Besides multiple examples of Gabo’s failing memory,14 notorious rivalry
with, and dislike of Lissitzky, this allegation was not even put in by Gabo himself,
let alone in writing. It was not found even in Gabo’s private correspondence,
only mentioned by Miriam Gabo in conversation with the authors of Gabo’s
monograph. One fragile speculation against this equally fragile allegation might
be that had Lissitzky been on the CHEKA payroll, he might have been better
funded to continue the journal Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand, which was in the
service of establishing the cultural ties he was supposed to promote in Germany
and which he would not have had to terminate after a mere three issues for want
of funds.15 Also, Lissitzky’s continued illustration of Jewish books in Warsaw
and Berlin in the early 1920s would have been antithetical to the Soviet policy
against Jewish culture, since the use of Hebrew lettering of the Yiddish language
was officially regarded as cultural separatism. Had Lissitzky been responsible to
the Soviet secret police for every move of his, as a CHEKA affiliate or informer
would well have been, he would not likely have ventured into creating such
works. Moreover, CHEKA’s agent David Maryanov was present in Berlin as
one of the organizers of the 1922 Russian Exhibition officially representing the
institution. Since Lissitzky designed the catalog, he might have been contacted by
CHEKA on account of that particular business, as he was requested to change the
original catalog cover with the Soviet red star into a more neutral design, which
he did.16 Such work may well have involved some official correspondence, which
is not to say that rational patterns should be necessarily sought in early Soviet
bureaucratic operations; nevertheless, some evidence would likely have already
emerged to prove such contentions were they actually grounded.
Whether or not he was officially entrusted with establishing Russian-German
relations in art, Lissitzky worked in the Berlin and the wider German and Dutch
art scene with amazing speed and results. His address book was soon filled with
the phone numbers and addresses of most of the progressive artists, critics,
and publishers in Berlin, Weimar, the Netherlands, Vienna, Hanover, and even
Paris.17 He certainly sensed the excitement that he raised by being a non-émigré
Russian; and his writings, correspondence, and activities reveal that it was his
ambition to exploit the great opportunity that came his way in order to move
freely in the European avant-garde art world, as well as to attempt to integrate
the emerging Russian art into the contemporary European trends, and vice versa.
To accomplish this, Lissitzky followed his own idiosyncratic strategy of
constructing a narrative that reconciliated the antithetical tendencies in the
new Russian art. One of the forums for promoting this unified image was
the aforementioned short-lived trilingual journal Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand,
which Lissitzky edited with writer Ilya Ehrenburg and published in the spring
of 1922 through the Skify (Scythian) publishing house in Berlin. Unlike many
other Russian journals in Berlin, Veshch, subtitled “An International Review
of Contemporary Art,” was not a venue for the Russian émigré community.
Modeled on De Stijl, it was, linguistically as well as in its contents and targeted
readership, an international bridge between Russians and Westerners, even if
the majority of the articles were in Russian. The title Object was chosen with a
nod to the constructivists’ anti-easel-painting stance, the Bauhaus, as well as the
now-international cult of “objectivity.” In spite of choosing the word “object”
for the title of the journal and underlining the imperative of constructivism
with the ending of the first issue’s introductory editorial in all-capital letters:
“AN END TO ALL DECLARATIONS AND COUNTER DECLARATIONS!
Make objects!”18 Veshch did not champion constructivism more than any other
trend it presented. Lodder points out that Lissitzky was said to have taken a
copy of The Program of the First Working Group of Constructivists along with
photos of their works with him19 to Berlin, but he did not reproduce them in
Veshch. The fundamental concept laid out in the opening editorial—regardless
of its cited ending—was to make it clear that “Basic utilitarianism is far from our
thoughts”20 and, to broaden the concept of art as well as the intended meaning
of the term “object,” Lissitzky added that “poetry, plastic form, and drama [are
also] essential ‘objects’.”21 Consistently with the spirit of this statement, Lissitzky
continued to paint in Berlin. Along with the Western reinterpretation of Russian
constructivism as a new aesthetic trend, there was sustained interest in, and
market for, geometric-abstract, oil-on-canvas paintings.
The deep divide between suprematism and constructivism was blurred in
Germany, and it was El Lissitzky who made conspicuous efforts to eliminate the
visibility of conceptual and strategic differences between the two in his accounts
of the new Russian art. Lissitzky, a painter himself, and a more informed and
articulate author than Umansky, was to a great extent responsible for the
misrepresentation of this antagonism and the subsequent ignorance of it outside
Russia. That Lissitzky did indeed confuse the two sharply opposed tendencies,
both in Veshch and a talk he gave in Berlin at the end of 1922, is a documented
fact. But we may well ask: Why did he do so? Did he want to deliberately mislead
Western audiences? Was he irresponsibly light on the facts? Did he desire
friendly relations between suprematists and constructivists to the extent that he
projected their union as a reality?
The misrepresentation of the actual conflict between the two sides was so
blatant on Lissitzky’s part that it is more than likely that it was intentional
and conceptual. However, rather than deliberately misleading his Western
audience, Lissitzky appears to have believed that a desired, anticipated unity
of the young progressive Russian art was imminent. On the one hand, he had
no intention of betraying either Malevich or the constructivists by siding with
either one of them; but, having joined the new art with significant delay, he
could imagine their imminent union much more easily than those who had
been familiar with the histories and deep roots of the bitter personal conflicts
and fights. Lissitzky believed that Malevich’s suprematism was first and foremost
a vision of the future rather than being “composition” in stark opposition to
“construction.” The future, Lissitzky was convinced, held the promise of the
ultimate unity of the two directions and—at least as far as a goal—the union
of all artists, art groups, and tendencies. Considering Lissitzky’s great relief in
the wake of the revolution, when he believed that finally everything he held
vitally important was coming together in the new, all-inclusive state and its
culture—a faith he transferred to suprematism—it stands to reason that he was
intent on mending every crack that emerged on what he saw as a desirable new,
general consensus. After all, one way or another, every artist was committed to
the future good of the country and the world, thus they were “communistic”
and “futuristic,” whichever way they understood the exact meaning of those
terms. In the light of this view, every conflict was temporary; and therefore,
it could seem a waste of time to attribute too much importance to them. If
“collectivity” was indeed a shared ideal, then it was only logical that eventually
everyone would fall in line accordingly. However, as Lissitzky had been wrong
about the bolshevik state’s politics regarding Jewish culture, he was, once
again, wrong in underestimating the depth of the rift and opposition between
Malevich and the constructivists as well. We must bear in mind that Lissitzky’s
strongest desire was an all-inclusive art and culture in Russia. As previously

demonstrated, Lissitzky did indeed attempt everything within his power to
reconcile the opposing parties while still in Moscow. When it came to the big
picture of the new Russian art in Germany, Lissitzky apparently considered the
inner differences to be temporary and discussing them as fouling one’s own
nest. Following both his inclination to adapt the constructivist social agenda
and his still-deep indebtedness to Malevich, Lissitzky tended to minimize the
differences between the two sides—first in INKhUK, and then in Germany,
while he hoped that time would also be on the side of reconciliation, and
something unified might emerge in Russia that could be simply called, as it
stands in the title of his account in Veshch, “New Art in Russia.”
It was also easier to represent the concept of a unified, more or less
homogenous new Russian art abroad, where barely anyone was familiar with the
finer, more complicated and local details. Lissitzky interpreted the multifaceted
new Russian art in sync with the dominant internationalist, rationalist, and
pragmatist stances of the progressive Western art scene. He appears to have been
convinced that the most he could do in the service of Russian art, as well as
himself, was to take up a position that was not antithetical to anyone, emphasize
the similarities rather than the differences between Western and Russian art.
Disregarding the extensive background of the international avant-garde of
1922 that included the post–First World War renaissance of German medieval
mystics, along with the still-continued popularity of such priestly presences as
Johannes Itten and Lothar Schreyer at the Bauhaus, Lissitzky, consistently with
his idealist views and historical expectations of communism in Russia, joined
the progressive internationalist art community in Germany. He proudly wrote
in the first editorial in Veshch:
The appearance of Objet is another sign that the exchange of practical knowledge,
realizations, and “objects” between young Russian and West European artists has
begun. Seven years of separate existence have shown that the common ground
of artistic aims and undertakings that exists in various countries is not simply an
effect of chance, a dogma, or a passing fashion, but an inevitable accompaniment
of the maturing of humanity. Art is today international, though retaining all its
local symptoms and particularities. ( . . . ) Objet is the meeting point of two
adjacent lines of communication.22
Lissitzky, as previously mentioned, joined the editors of G. Material zur

elementaren Gestaltung in 1923 (he was said to invent the name of the magazine
“G,” for Gestaltung, or design) and also worked for the left-wing ABC Beiträge
zum Bauen (ABC Contributions to Building). When he participated at the

Congress of International Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf in May 1922,
Lissitzky, representing Veshch, made a statement on Russian art, once again
streamlining Russian artistic culture and adjusting it to Western concepts:
[Russian] thinking is characterized by the attempt to turn away from the

old, subjective, mystical conception of the world and to create an attitude of
universality–clarity–reality. That this way of thinking is truly international may
be seen from the fact that during the seven-year-period of complete isolation
from the outside world, we were attacking the same problems in Russia as our
friends here in the west, but without any knowledge of each other.23
This characterization, along with the editorial, was not only meant to serve
the Russian artists’ interest of being accepted in the contemporary Western art
scene as familiar rather than foreign and exotic—despite many Russian artists’
persuasive aspirations at emphasizing their distinction,24—but also satisfied the
progressive Westerners’ keen interest in un-problematically embracing their
Russian counterparts. In his effort to facilitate the understanding of Russian
art for Westerners, Lissitzky simply left out what the constructivists judged as
being too subjective or mystical. Quite consistently with van Doesburg’s ideas, in
fact, here Lissitzky reduced the new Russian art to the “objective, universal, and
formative”25—where “universal” could equally refer to the geometric abstraction
of the constructivists as well as to that of Malevich. Suprematism was thus, once
again, bundled together with constructivism, while “objective” and “'formative”
were concepts that, as we have seen, had different meanings for the suprematists
than for the constructivists, as they stood for spiritual illumination versus the
transparent organization of an object, respectively. Instead of pointing out the
conceptual differences, Lissitzky relied on the formal similarities of the two
tendencies—namely, that both were abstract and used geometric forms—thus
encouraging Westerners to focus on the surface rather than study the deeper
ideas that may not have been as readily accessible to them. The fact that in the
person of El Lissitzky it was an innovative Russian artist, one of the very few
known in Europe in the flesh, who confirmed similarities between Russian and
Western art, was of the greatest importance in Berlin where the progressives
wanted to forge community with the Russians at a point when little was known
about them, and the First Russian Exhibition was still several months away.
After all, not only did both suprematism and constructivism use abstract visual
language, but Malevich had already created three-dimensional “architectons,”
models of futuristic, suprematist architecture, so not even the picture versus
object distinction applied any longer. Malevich’s “architectons,” however, are not
reproduced in Veshch, while Tatlin’s Tower is, on page 22 of the first double issue.
The fine web of personal and conceptual differences, emotions, and biases; the
conflicting views rooted in personal ambitions and animosities; and the different
interpretations of Russian history, philosophical and religious tradition, as well
as different views on the new state would include many details beyond the reach
and understanding of outsiders who would not see the entirety of the old and
new Russian context in and around the key terms themselves. Just as foreigners
were not able to fully fathom Berlin even if they were living there, Westerners
were not equipped to fully fathom the layers of Russian culture that underpinned
the discourse between various Russian artists and groups. To present and explain
the details and introduce many new characters of distinct positions and views
to a foreign audience would have constituted such a challenge that Lissitzky
apparently bypassed it. He decided on a streamlined, simplified summary
instead, one that could be easily delivered and comprehended abroad. It can be
suspected that this approach may have been mutually desired: after all, audiences
wanted to hear a transparent story they could grasp without much difficulty. To
this end, in Berlin Lissitzky apparently adjusted the interpretation of the new
Russian art to the roster of ideas and political debates of the non-Russian world.
Moreover, in the early 1920s, artists and intellectuals west of Russia were also
interested in, aside from similarities, the quintessential revolutionary message.
They were curious to see a new radicalism as the road map to the future rather
than hearing about the conceptual shenanigans and personal quibbles between
the various visual and ideational trends of competing artists and tendencies.26
This is not to imply that left-leaning Western critics were superficial: they
were intent on spelling out the decisive features of Russian art in search of a
model. In the years 1919–1923 the critics needed to chart out the culture of
the future in their own respective countries, as well as internationally, which
was an urgent task. Critics, art writers, and artists in the West needed prompt
supplies of ideas and visual works from the revolutionary country that they saw,
or wished to see, as a model. Communism was still a shared positive dream for
leftists, and actual information about Russia was still scarce in the West.
Lissitzky had entertained the idea of publishing an international journal of
modern art already in Moscow before he traveled to Berlin. When Veshch, the
first double issue of which came out in April 1922, was already in press, Lissitzky
wrote a letter to Rodchenko reporting that “here we have finally realized an
idea that we had invented in Moscow a long time ago—the publication of
an international journal of modern art. ( . . . ) We are asking you to send us
everything you have”27—meaning texts and photos of his works to be included

in the journal. Having Rodchenko in Veshch would have documented friendly,
collegial relations between Lissitzky and the constructivist artist, and would have
supported the image of a unified Russian art scene, as well. However, Rodchenko
did not ultimately appear in the journal.
Coediting Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand gave a distinguished position to
Lissitzky in Berlin just a few months after his arrival in the city. Now he had
a platform that gave him the possibility of inviting international as well as
Russian artists and authors with the prospect of a much-coveted exposure to
both Russian and European audiences and presenting the new Russian art in
an attractive way. He included news of the latest French art as well as pieces of
French literature. Lissitzky’s article “Exhibitions in Russia”28 bundles together
the “new Russian art schools” that are united in their goal to bring “art into life”
and are unified in their faith that “Art is one with production.”29 Eliminating the
deep rift between the suprematist Malevich and the constructivist Rodchenko,
Lissitzky juxtaposes them as each other’s counterparts in his account of the
1919 exhibition Non-objectivists and Suprematists, where “Malevich exhibited
White on White; Rodchenko Black on Black.”30
Veshch received immediate international attention and, perhaps more than
anything else, established Lissitzky as an active member of the international
community of progressive artists, ranking him with other prominent editors
and organizers. Thus, for example, Lissitzky found himself on equal footing
with Theo van Doesburg when the two met at the Congress of International
Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf, while Veshch was still in production, and the
two, as van Doesburg accounted for it, became friends and allies. Being editor
of such an important venue made Lissitzky a very desirable and commendable
partner. Contributors to the first issue of Veshch included, besides Russians, Blaise
Cendrars, Le Corbusier, van Doesburg, Viking Eggeling, Carl Einstein, Fernand
Léger, Lajos Kassák, and Ljubomir Micić. Lissitzky had already established close
contacts with a number of German artists with whom he cooperated, including
Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, Hans Arp, Gert Caden, Erich Buchholz, and
Hans Richter. He knew Herwarth Walden and his Der Sturm gallery and journal,
and met architecture critic Adolf Behne, who introduced him to Walter Gropius
with the suggestion that Lissitzky be hired to teach in the Bauhaus.31 In the
summer of 1923, Lissitzky visited the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar and kept
up his relationship with Gropius via correspondence. Aside from van Doesburg,
Lissitzky became friends with fellow architect J. J. P. Oud of the De Stijl group.
Lissitzky met Hungarians in Berlin as well, including Kemény, whom he had
known from Moscow, Moholy-Nagy, Péri, and Kállai, who was the first to review
his work.32 They put him in contact with Lajos Kassák, the Vienna-based editor
of the Hungarian avant-garde journal Ma, for which Lissitzky designed a cover
page.33 Veshch, which Lissitzky certainly hoped would have a longer run, secured
for him the opportunity to reciprocate the attention he received, providing his
peers with visibility on the international scene of progressive art.
Also in the first editorial titled “The Blockade of Russia Is Coming to an End,”34
which reads as the prequel to the above quoted “Statement of the Editors of
Veshch, Objet, Gegenstand,” Lissitzky, likely the sole author, makes further efforts
to unite constructivism and suprematism, without even naming the latter. For
example, the concept of economy in Malevich and Kruchenykh’s thinking was
not used in the sense of production, distribution, and consumption of goods—
the sense in which Lissitzky used the term “economy” in Veshch. As Gorjacheva
points out, Malevich meant “pure sensation,” in the sense of the philosophy of
empiriocriticism,35 considering the artistic sign as the most concentrated and
thus the most economic, intuitive, and ultimately unconscious expression.36
Lissitzky, however, came up with a personal, idiosyncratic interpretation of the
term “constructive” and used this term as well as “economy” at face value, the
way in which the Western reader was likely to understand them very differently
from how the Russian artists employed the terms in their inner debates:
We hold that the fundamental feature of the present age is the triumph of
the constructive method. We find it as much in the new economics and the
development of industry as in the psychology of our contemporaries in the
world of art. Object will take the part of constructive art, whose task is not to
adorn life but to organize it. ( . . . ) We consider that functional objects turned
out in factories—airplanes and motorcars—are also the product of genuine art.
Yet we have no wish to confine artistic creation to these functional objects. Every
organized work—whether it be a house, a poem, or a picture—is an “object”
directed towards a particular end, which is calculated not to turn people
away from life, but to summon them to make their contribution towards life’s
organization. So, we have nothing in common with those ( . . . ) painters who use
painting as a means of propaganda for the abandonment of painting. Primitive
utilitarianism is far from being our doctrine.37
Listing airplanes and factory products as artworks goes back not only to the
constructivists’ ethos but, as previously mentioned, also to Kállai’s 1921 article, and
as far back as Larionov and Goncharova’s 1913 Rayonist Manifesto, which used the
exact same examples. The Western reader, however, was not shown this historic
aspect of Lissitzky’s text, which, on the other hand, underlines the unnamed
other direction: the nonfunctional, albeit “organized” object as a fully recognized

artwork—thus, in point of fact, bringing Malevich’s paintings and architectons
into the pool of artistic achievements, although these were rejected by the Moscow
constructivists. The position that Lissitzky took in this article, mediating between
unnamed directions of the new Russian art, was, like his further communications,
instrumental in the later confusion about the Russian art -isms, rather than serving
as a clear identification of its new directions and intense debates.
Ivan Puni’s Fierce Critique of Malevich
The lecture that Puni gave in Russian at the Café Leon in Berlin on November
4, 1922, was also published in Berlin as a book in Russian, titled Sovremennaia
Zhivopis (Contemporary Painting),38 the following year. Puni had harbored
strong antipathy toward Malevich since the 1915 futurist “Streetcar V” and
“0.10” exhibitions, both of which he and his wife financed—and which, as he
also pointed out, he himself had organized as well.39 Puni’s animosity grew when
Malevich joined the Vitebsk school and took it over, causing Chagall to withdraw
and ultimately Puni himself as well as his wife to leave the school, too. By the
same token, Puni also disliked Lissitzky, who had brought Malevich to Vitebsk
and idolized him. The Russian papers and journals in Berlin, Dni, Rul, and
Nakanune,40 reported about not only Puni’s lecture but also the heated debate that
followed it, in the course of which “Archipenko, Altman, Shklovsky, Mayakovsky,
Shterenberg, Gabo, Lissitzky, and Ehrenburg burst into an intense dispute.”41 Puni’s
audience may have been surprised to hear that Puni saw Kandinsky and Malevich
as polar opposites in abstract painting, and that he sided with Kandinsky, harshly
criticizing Malevich (and “his pupil” El Lissitzky) for expressionism, categorizing
Malevich just as Umansky did—especially since, of the two artists’ work, Puni’s
own paintings were closer to those of Malevich than to Kandinsky.
In his book Contemporary Art, dedicated to the memory of Chlebnikov, the
first third of which included the text of the lecture, Puni pointed out that non-
objective painting originated not from Russia but from Germany (acknowledging
French orphism as well), namely from Vasily Kandinsky, who, deeply embedded
in the German art world, “understands the picture as a kind of washout of his
individuality and holds geometric forms as the generalizations of an abstract
spirituality.”42 Puni explained that Kandinsky’s abstract works are not flat, as
there is space and depth in them, a clear distance between the foreground and
the background, and declared that “Kandinsky is undoubtedly a great artist,” one
whom Puni respected as an authority.43 As opposed to this—again hesitating to

even recognize the term and using it with a hint of irony—“the painting that is
called suprematism ( . . . ) was a kind of artistic proclamation [claiming that]
painting must be logically purified ( . . . ) and has to end up in two dimensions
instead of three.”44 Like Umansky, Puni also called suprematism “a kind of
nihilism; the desire to start the entire art of painting from its embryonic forms all
over again and then develop it in its own, so to speak, normal environment: the
plane.”45 In a hostile, ironic tone Puni remarked that as far as he could remember,
Malevich had refrained from all kinds of tricks such as one-point perspective in
an effort to paint “naturally,” and not in an illusionistic way; still
“what do we see afterwards? ( . . . ) a white background that does not

communicate planarity to the viewer [and] flat, non-objective figures float in it.
( . . . ) Moreover, in the Malevich student Lissitzky’s works we find a blatant use
of academic perspective that encourages us to think that he understands form
also in the sense of academic art.”46
In what amounts to a rant against Malevich and suprematism, Puni made

efforts to argue that suprematism equaled the “mechanization of creation”47
and systematically misused the set rules of abstract art. He granted that the first
suprematist images, the Black Square and a few others, had “had great strength,”
but insisted that everything that followed was nothing more than mechanical
shifting and positioning of various elements of the compositions. Puni bitterly
stated: “At that time, [non-objective art] was America, today it is a province of
Saratov ( . . . ) degenerated into aestheticism.”48 Puni painstakingly dissected some
of Malevich’s compositions in order to demonstrate that in spite of Malevich
having intended his paintings to feature movement, they were chaotic and
movement appeared only in isolated details rather than pervading and holding
together the entire composition. His verdict was that all Malevich accomplished
was “compositional individualism, the failure of a fundamental, organizational
idea.”49 Puni’s talk was part of an internal, ongoing Russian discourse; however,
delivered in Berlin, his views could not remain hermetically sealed from the
German and the international art world.
“New Russian Art”: A Talk by Lissitzky, Berlin, December 1922
While Puni talked and wrote to a circle of Russian intellectuals in Russian,

Lissitzky gave a talk on the new Russian art to an international audience in
German,50 apologizing for his limited fluency in the language. Giving a detailed
account of the new developments in Russian art, in particular suprematism, once
again, with obvious intent, Lissitzky blurred the difference between Malevich
and the constructivists, even if he had provided a few specifics of their concepts:
Two groups claimed constructivism, OBMOKhU and UNOVIS. ( . . . )

The former group worked in material and space, the latter in material and
plane.
Both strove to attain the same result, namely the creation of the real object
and of architecture. They are opposed to each other in their concepts of the
practicality and utility of created things. Some members of the OBMOKhU
group [ . . . ] went as far as a complete disavowal of art, and in their urge to
be inventors, devoted their energies to pure technology. UNOVIS distinguished
between the concept of functionality, meaning the necessity for the creation of
new forms, and the question of direct serviceableness. They51 represented the
view that the new form is the lever, which sets life in motion, if it is based on the
suitability of the material and on economy. The new forms give birth to other
forms which are totally functional.52
Such an explanation was not only confusing in a similar vein as Lissitzky’s article
in Veshch was but also flew in the face of everything Lissitzky knew very well about
these two groups, representing suprematism and constructivism, respectively.
Was it the difference between “space” and “plane” that separated suprematism
and OBMOKhU’s constructivism? Did “functionality” ever mean “the necessity
for the creation of new forms”? Moreover, as will be demonstrated, Lissitzky
displayed ambiguity in presenting his own suprematism-inspired proun works,
relating them to both suprematism and constructivism—consistently with his
previous denial of their differences.
Listing UNOVIS as one of the groups that claimed to practice a version
of constructivism was a stretch by all means. On the other hand, such a
“consolidation” was instrumental in clearly reducing the number of the
protagonists—for better or for worse—to two: Tatlin and Malevich. This was
a strategic move to make sure that the audience, which was probably familiar
with Tatlin’s Tower, a work of legendary status early on in Germany, would
understand that Malevich and UNOVIS, along with the constructivists—whom,
at this point, Lissitzky did not distinguish from productivists like Tatlin—were
the two engines of contemporary art in Russia, allied with one another. As the
quote demonstrates, Lissitzky attempted to point out some fine difference—but
no conflict—between them.
How he streamlined his narrative and adjusted it to the German audience’s

preconceived ideas is also shown by his praise of Tatlin’s Tower in his Berlin talk
as well as by reproducing the model’s image accompanied with Punin’s praise in
the first issue of Veshch,53 although he had previously thought very differently of
it. At a discussion about this model held at the Paul Cézanne Club in Moscow,
on December 14, 1920, he voiced his dislike of Tatlin’s work. He wrote Malevich
about his opinion that he expressed in the debate:
[the construction demonstrated] that the synthesis of painting, sculpture, and

architecture is self-deception, that its synthesis with utilitarianism is a childish
lack of consideration and fiction, that the relationship with the material is
pernicious, that the construction is aesthetic and artistic, and not creative, ( . . . )
and that for a whole series of reasons it is the sum total of all the mistakes of the
past and the desire to correspond not to Venus but to modernity.54
Such dual take on Tatlin’s work was not shared with the German audience. It
was an internal affair, an ongoing personal discourse between Malevich and El
Lissitzky.
7
The First Russian Exhibition in Berlin, 1922,

and Its Reception
The First Russian Exhibition that opened in Berlin at the Van Diemen Gallery
in October 1922 was long-awaited and was expected to triumphantly introduce
the new art of the communist country. Curiosity was immense since Ivan Puni
participated at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Berlin Art Exhibition)
in the spring of 1922. He received some press coverage, if not always on a positive
note. Both the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung1 and the Hamburger Illustrierte
Zeitung2 published negative reviews about his exhibition. Aside from Kállai’s
article on Lissitzky in the July 1922 issue of Das Kunstblatt, which introduced
Lissitzky to the German public as creator of abstract compositions of geometric
solids, derived from the free-floating suprematist shapes, and a brief mention
of his journal Gegenstand as representative of the “Russian left wing,”3 there was
hardly any discussion of the new Russian art in the West prior to October 1922.
Few new Russian artworks were seen apart from those that a few artists exhibited
in the Der Sturm gallery and the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung.
The History of the Exhibition
The exhibition’s origins go back to 1918 when the Art Collegiums of Petrograd
and Moscow sent an Appeal to various societies of progressive artists in Germany.
The Russian artists first turn to their closest neighbors, their German colleagues,
for counseling and exchange of information regarding artistic creation. As
a practical measure to realize such an exchange we propose a congress of
representatives of German and Russian artists that would be the first step
towards a later World Conference.4
Peter Nisbet thinks5 that it was probably Kandinsky, in his capacity as head of the
Moscow branch of IZO, who initiated this contact and may well have written the
text, which is all the more likely by Kandinsky’s command of German as well as a
sentence in the first paragraph of the Appeal which emphasizes the importance of
“the new creative work that originated from shortly before the world-shattering,”
a period that had been clearly Kandinsky’s and his Der blaue Reiter’s pre–First
World War prime time, a triumphant era of his own achievements that he liked
to bring to mind as well as to continue. Due to the efforts of his friend, artist
and diplomat Ludwig Bähr, who was stationed in Moscow establishing contacts
between German and Russian artists, steps were made to prepare a Russian-
German conference. Adolf Behne and Walter Gropius, however, who were also
friendly with Bähr, suggested an exchange of exhibitions instead, on behalf of
the Arbeitsrat.6 The preparations for this were suspended as Bähr was arrested
in Lithuania in 1919 while escorting thirteen crates of artworks that were all
confiscated. Relations between Germany and Russia cooled down throughout
1920, but after the bolshevik Party prevailed in the Civil War and then grappled
with serious economic problems and a devastating famine, it approached
Germany and the two countries signed a trade agreement in May 1921. The
famine, and the goal to help it with the sale of artworks, was such an important
reason behind the exhibition that one of its organizers was the Auslandskomittee
zur Organisierung der Arbeiterhilfe für die Hungernden in Russland (International
Workers’ Aid for Helping the Starving in Russia).7 The desire to establish good
mutual relations was so obvious that already two months before the agreement,
in March 1921, Kandinsky proposed a Russian art exhibition of new works.
The proposal was so enthusiastically received by the Germans that the director
of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin Ludwig Justi offered the Kronprinzenpalast,
the gallery’s fashionable venue for modern art, for housing the show.8 This
suggestion was coordinated with the Soviet Foreign Ministry that authorized
the official Russian support for the exhibition. This intention was communicated
to the German government by Victor Kopp, Soviet plenipotentiary for prisoner
of war affairs in Berlin, on March 31, 1921,9 within a month of Kandinsky’s
initiative. This move was followed by a personal negotiation between Johannes
Sievers of the German Foreign Office and Umansky, now an empowered Russian
emissary. However, because of a general strike and armed riots that broke out
in Germany that spring, a Soviet exhibition that would have been inevitably
politically charged, was not altogether desirable, and the plan for the exhibition
was put off once again until November of the same year, when Lunacharsky,
on a visit to Berlin, personally raised the issue.10 This time it was accepted on
the condition that “the show contain no propaganda, should not be officially
organized by the bolshevik government, and should be subject to a German
The First Russian Exhibition and Its Reception 133
jury.”11 The exhibition was also expected to tour several cities in Germany and
several European capitals, as well as New York.12 Although these rules were clear,
the preparation of the exhibition was marred, as Nisbet says, “with the interplay
between propaganda, commerce, diplomacy and art often difficult to disentangle
from the available documents.”13 While preparations turned chaotic, a parallel
initiative came from Willi Münzenberg, head of the International Workers’ Aid.
Münzenberg proposed to set up a propaganda exhibition in Berlin to counter
the cacophonic messages of the Russian émigré community in Berlin, whom he
thought compromised the reputation of the new communist state. Münzenberg
turned directly to Lenin, who secured 70 million rubles for this project, and
Lunacharsky calculated about 5 million marks from sales at the show.14
Münzenberg, now in charge, acted rapidly and arranged several wagons to be
loaded with artworks, only to be revealed, when unloading them in February
1922 in Berlin, that they were propaganda materials, not works of art. Since this
violated the previous agreement, the show was cancelled altogether as of March
1922. As Nisbet points out, the organization of the exhibition was ultimately
the direct result of the German-Russian Treaty of Rapallo, “the resulting
special relationship, the spirit of Rapallo”15 that called for the realization of the
original project, and NARKOMPROS hastily gathered artworks in Moscow and
Petrograd. This did not happen to the satisfaction of the artists, however. Early
in 1922, a representative of the Petrograd Society of Left-wing Artists, Nikolai
Punin, IZO head David Shterenberg, and others
wrote Lunacharsky to voice their concerns over the proposed art exhibit of
contemporary Russian artists in Berlin. The works had been chosen by the
Commissar of Enlightenment without the artists’ permission. Several artists
had been dissatisfied with the choices. The society also wanted to express strong
support for having the artists travel to Berlin with the exhibit. Their argument was
that without the artists there to discuss their art, the art would be meaningless.16
Artists felt the need to provide their own interpretation of their artworks to the
Berlin audience that was unfamiliar with the development of the various visual
languages and their coded references to different concepts as well as the ever-
changing group dynamics of the new Russian art.
On the only surviving photo we are presently familiar with, taken of the
organizers of the exhibition, we see Shterenberg and Altman, representatives of
IZO NARKOMPROS; Naum Gabo, who was in Berlin at the time and was one of
the participants of the exhibition; and the previously mentioned David Maryanov
from the Russian security agency CHEKA, in the company of Friedrich Adolf
Lutz, who was present on behalf of the Van Diemen Gallery. Gabo’s role is not
entirely clear, apart from his participation in the exhibition,17 while El Lissitzky,
who is not on the photo, was nonetheless involved not only as a participant but
also as designer of the catalog cover. According to the future architect Berthold
Lubetkin, whose task was to unpack the exhibits, both Gabo and Lissitzky were
present most of the time, although the principal decisions about hanging the
works were made by Altman.18
Russian artists did not travel to Berlin, after all, to accompany the exhibition
and interpret their artworks. The exhibition was not officially organized by the
government of the RSFSR per the agreement with the Germans—but, in spite of
rhetoric to the opposite, it was a political event on behalf of both countries, with
catalog texts by David Shterenberg as head of the IZO NARKOMPROS, and Dr.
Edwin Redslob, Reichskunstwart (Imperial Authority of Art Matters, equivalent
to Minister of Art and Culture) in Germany. The exhibition itself, however, was
neither bolshevik nor otherwise political propaganda, unless we take the RSFSR’s
demonstrated claim to cultural continuity with prerevolutionary Russian art for
a propaganda statement. A number of impressionist, postimpressionist, and
realist works were on view, while the presence of the avant-garde was limited to
just one room. Nisbet suggests that many factors must be considered regarding
this preference:
It was not only the demands of diplomacy, which influenced the selection of
works. There were financial constraints as well. The exhibition was, after all,
intended to raise money for famine relief (and the Soviets had inquired as early
as September 1921 about the possibility of selling art in Germany). The works
on view therefore, had to be available for sale, as well as be sellable. ( . . . ) The
organizers in NARKOMPROS decided to draw heavily on works already owned
by the state ( . . . ) One cannot argue that the overriding motive was to present
the most representative exhibition with works of the highest possible quality.
Amazingly, in his essay about the exhibition, published in Izvestiya on December
2, 1922, Lunacharsky himself admits the many shortcomings of the show [that
were] wholly excused by [its] political and diplomatic success.19
Winfried Nerdinger points out that the Russian leadership had, in fact,
reconsidered its preferences regarding the new art, as “a phase shift” was in place:
the avant-garde, increasingly popular in the West as the art of the future, was
officially already disapproved (although not yet banned) in Russia. Lunacharsky
saw left-wing abstracts as being insufficient representatives of the new ideas for
the wider public abroad. This change was particularly significant as some of
the Russian artists like Gabo, Pevsner, or Medunetzky had already been living
abroad, and several others returned to the Soviet Union only years later.20
The Selection of the Artworks
The catalog of the First Russian Exhibition lists 594 items, 25 of them porcelain
and other applied art pieces.21 Although Nisbet warns “against attempts to
over-interpret the Van Diemen exhibition [as it] cannot be used to draw
conclusions about such questions as the state’s view of its avant-garde artists
or the relative strength of various tendencies,”22 the Berlin audience could not
but take the exhibition at face value, as an actual report on the state of Russian
art, especially the latest trends, the presentation of which had been anticipated
with so much curiosity. Shterenberg’s “Foreword” in the catalog acknowledged
these expectations: “Our goal with this exhibition is to offer to Western
Europe every proper information concerning the creative achievements of
Russian art during the years of the war and the revolution.”23 This statement
explained the conservative character of the majority of the exhibits—a direct
message from the Soviet officialdom to the German viewers at the time when
the realist artists were already organizing their group against the avant-garde
in both countries. In fact, Shterenberg confused the reader by pointing out
that “only works by those various art tendencies are exhibited that stepped
actively forward in the most recent times. The works of the left-wing groups
demonstrate the laboratory work that has been going ahead in the course of the
artistic renewal.”24 “Left-wing,” in this statement, referred to loyal communists
as well as revolutionaries only—but how would the German visitor sort this
out? In fact, as Shterenberg goes on to mention, the exhibition included works
by members of the Sojuz russkikh khudozhnikov (Society of Russian Artists),
an organization of older artists and the Mir iskusstva (World of Art), including
symbolists, Art Nouveau painters, and impressionists, largely outnumbering the
cubists, suprematists, and constructivists. The untitled catalog essay by Redslob
and an entry by German left-wing journalist Arthur Holitscher, as well as an
unsigned “Introduction,” are, if possible, even more confusing. Since the latter
is not signed, its author was only guessed at until Naum Gabo identified him
as Shterenberg, who probably did not want to sign two contributions in the
same catalog.25 The “Introduction” lists the traditional art groups represented
in the exhibition without sharing much substantial information about them.
Suprematism is only vaguely explained, and the list of its representatives is
bewildering as it includes Malevich, Kliun, Rozanova, Exter, Lissitzky, Drevin,

Mansurov, and “in some works,” Rodchenko. Moreover, according to this text
“Kandinsky considers himself to share the same outlook, albeit he expresses
himself in a different way of non-objective painting”26—another stretch in the
account deliberately allowing to confuse Kandinsky’s expressionist painting with
Malevich’s suprematist geometry, on the shaky grounds that both artists had a
fundamentally metaphysical outlook. According to Shterenberg, the dividing
line between them was nonobjectivity versus figurative painting—a claim that
casually blurs the more complex differences between the various nonfigurative
directions that saw each other as polar opposites. Constructivism is mentioned
naming Tatlin as its single representative whereas, in fact, he was not even
part of that group. Shterenberg mentions Tatlin’s “Tower” as a “transition” piece
to his own brand name of productivism, whereas it was exactly that particular
work that did not fit that category. Shterenberg also characterizes Rodchenko
as an artist who “gave up the canvas for production art”27 but, at the same
time, “who is represented by strong suprematist and constructive works”28—a
double mistake, as Rodchenko was neither productivist nor suprematist, not to
mention that considering their sharp opposition, it was highly inappropriate to
connect the term “suprematist” to “constructivist” with “and.” No wonder that
even the informed Berlin art critics who read this text for more understanding
were unable to appropriately sort out the new trends in Russian art and their
representatives’ respective orientation and loyalties.
Informed viewers could also experience that the exhibition, where the
presence of contemporary art was reduced, did not square with either Lissitzky’s
account of the new art in Russia as presented in Veshch nor with Umansky’s
description of the subject. Umansky included many reproductions of medieval
and nineteenth-century artists’ works as relevant tradition, while Lissitzky,
focusing on the latest art only, omitted introducing such influential painters
of the recent past as Arkhipov, Kustodiev, Krimov, or Korovin and others who
prominently figured at the First Russian Exhibition. Berliners expected the
exhibition to be a sampling of the art of the revolution, firsthand information
about the latest currents in the art of the revolutionary state that would clarify
the many legends and words-of-mouth that circulated in the West. Presenting
the young revolutionary art as a brief coda to the bulk of traditional artworks
with a wrong identification of directions was in no way helpful in informing the
German public or the international visitors about the actual state of the new art
of Soviet Russia, and the confusion it caused was reflected not only in the show’s
many reviews but in the later writings on the Russian avant-garde as well.
The First Russian Exhibition in Berlin showed all the traces of the
disorganization, adjustments, and compromises that had paved the way to it.
Progressive artists were limited to less than one-fifth of the entire show. Reduced
in number, the works of the avant-garde were not representative enough to reveal
the great variety of the new art, nor the alliances or the conflicts still brewing
and developing in Moscow and Petrograd. The exhibition did not inform the
audience about the specific features of such different trends as constructivism,
productivism, suprematism, cubism, cubo-futurism, and other short-lived
trends listed by Stepanova, such as Primitivism or Color-Dynamism.29 The
Van Diemen Gallery’s exhibition space presented the objects without the rich
context in which they were deeply embedded back in Russia: the whole of the
past and present of Russian culture, religion, poetry, theater, politics, and the
ongoing public discourse on related social and cultural issues. The writings in
the catalog included mostly formal generalities, marking the significance of the
event. This exhibition, as will be further demonstrated, greatly contributed to
blurring the image of the various new directions of the new Russian art and led
to the emergence of the general view in Berlin that all new Russian artworks
were variations of one and the same kind of modernist geometric abstraction.
Malevich’s suprematist paintings were shown outside Russia for the first time
in the Van Diemen Gallery. The catalog lists five paintings of his: the cubist Knife
Grinder (1912–1913), three paintings titled Suprematism: Black Square (1915),
Black Circle (1915), and Black Cruciform Planes (1915), and White on White (1918).
A book cover design was listed among the prints, too. Vasilii Rakitin suggested
that Malevich chose pictures in an attempt to offer an introductory, emblematic
UNOVIS image in the West. Rakitin points out the conspicuous exclusion of
Red Square (1915), which “at the time was hanging in Mikhail Matyushin’s house
in Petrograd. There would have been no problem in borrowing it for the show,
but Red Square was not important to universal UNOVIS,”30 since, as we know,
Malevich validated the Black Square as the emblem of the group. The catalog also
includes two paintings titled Suprematism by Kliun and Rozanova, respectively,
one with the same title by Alexander Drevin, and one, erroneously so titled, by
Rodchenko. Lissitzky had four drawings and three paintings on display.
Reception and Major Press Reviews of

the First Russian Exhibition
“This exhibition is a disappointment,” Paul Westheim started his review in Das

Kunstblatt, adding: “and at the same time it is one of the most interesting artistic
surveys that we have had for years.”31 Westheim voiced the dissatisfaction of
many who expected the show to be the triumphant display of the new Russia and
its groundbreaking new art. In spite of the restrained presence of revolutionary
art, Westheim still focused on it with scant mention of the rest and had a strong
grasp of the issue at the core of the show: the sweeping radicalism of the new.
Disregarding or ignoring the role of traditional Russian art and seeing in the
exhibition what he had been intent to see, the avant-gardes, Westheim writes:
“Revolutionary Russia rejects all tradition on principle: it is a virgin territory
for art, ruled by the idea of building everything anew, from scratch. ( . . . )
This instills into creative work a freedom and audacity unknown in Europe for
centuries past.”32 Comparing the new Russian works to the less radical Western
progressive art, he expressed fascination with
( . . . ) this sudden fanaticism, this total incapacity for moderation, this tendency
to take everything to extremes ( . . . ) Take Malevich, for example. He is a great
believer in the need to “simplify.” So, Malevich simplifies. More and more is
removed from the picture area. First, of course, all representation of objects.
Then color. All that remains is a single contrast between black and white: an
abstract form, a black quadrilateral or a black circle on white ground. And even
this is not the ultimate simplification. Malevich then dispenses with black and
paints his celebrated work, White on White. On a white ground there is nothing
but white. Simplification has been taken to such an extreme that nothing remains
within the white frame but an empty expanse of white. This takes intellectual
experimentation as far as it can go.33
Westheim harshly contradicted Umansky’s judgment of White on White as being

extreme nihilism and reconstructed Malevich’s road to reductive abstraction
without having known his previous work, as there was no way for him to see it.
Constructions were also indicative of a major shift in the concept and practice of
art, and, as Westheim attempted to clarify the actual novelty of this exhibition,
these constructions were subject to a similarly close, analytical scrutiny:
Tatlin and others following him have started to build their constructions with
real materials: iron, sheet metal. This, again, is a negation of painting, and in
its way a tangible proof of the “hatred of painting” that I once identified as a
recurrent phenomenon in the latest generation of artists. It is work that craves to
be treated as “engineering,” and yet ultimately it is neither more nor less than the
“romance of engineering.” In the course of all this conceptual experimentation
and exploration, the two-dimensional pictorial space became suspect, on the
grounds that it involved an illusion. The cry went up for pictorial space to be
developed into real space.34
Concerning the perception of this art in Berlin, Westheim was compelled to point
out that the Russian artworks of the new artists had nothing to do with art in the
way that art was understood in Europe. Seen from that perspective, he found the
works utterly primitive, even barbarian, but then this brought him back, once
again, with amazing sensitivity for someone unfamiliar with zaum and pictorial
alogism, to underline the audacity of the artworks: “those ‘Barbarians’ of the east,
for their part, have in mind the possibility, indeed the necessity, of giving art a
new Archaic Period. They see it as their mission to set about their work afresh,
empty-handed. ( . . . ) Artists are still wrestling with basic grammatical concepts;
language itself is still a thing of the far distant future.”35
Perceptive to the radicalism of the new Russian art, Westheim did not get
carried away, though. He said that it was too soon to see what this art would
become. Consistently with the Russian artists who wanted to be present next
to their artworks in order to interpret them, Westheim said that this exhibition
showed mostly brainwork. With the danger, he added, of falling back into
dogmatism or even scholasticism, the Russian artists
have more to say than to show ( . . . ) their theories and options, manifestoes and
programs, arguments and theses, have more to teach us than an exhibition like
this one. ( . . . ) The composition White on White means nothing as an “image,”
and yet, ( . . . ) there is much to be learned from an intellectual situation that
leads logically to this.36
Reminding his readers of the necessity of fathoming the concepts behind the
artworks, Westheim’s review was exceptionally fine-honed, sorting out the artistic
and intellectual problems, and pointing out the historical significance of the
moment in Russian art, as documented by the exhibition. He acknowledged the
radicalism of suprematism but expressed dismay over its crossing the boundaries
of what he could still conceive of as art. In spite of some confusion about who
belonged to which tendency, Westheim clearly pointed to suprematism and
constructivism as the two poles of the new art, the two diametrically opposed
strategies to surpass “painting.”
It was on this same note that the committed left-wing critic Adolf Behne
wrote as well. He put most contemporary artists of the show under the umbrella
term “constructivism,” but clearly understood the radicalism of the new Russians
and asked if, in the light of these new works, “the image as such can continue
to supply us with an accepted, fruitful area of work, [as] the image itself is in
crisis—not because a couple of painters thought this up but because the modern
individual has experienced changes in intellectual structure that alienate one
from the image.”37 Behne did not engage in a discussion about individual
artists but, with a touch of utopian thinking and lagging behind the actual
developments, he pointed out the superiority of the Russians. Consistently with
his leftism and expectations, he praised both the artists and the officialdom that
“would so frankly embrace art, the times, and all that is of current vitality.”38
According to Behne, German art was at least ten years behind the Russians. He
admired the Russian artists for their compelling sense of history and for being
part of the ongoing communist experiment of Russia.
Many artists and critics made the pilgrimage to Berlin to see this exhibition.
The Serbo-Croat avant-garde poet Branko Ve Poljanski39 turned his review into
a pro-Russian diatribe.
A memento! What these Russian artists have created so far, untouched by

European influences, is of the utmost importance for European art and culture.
The strongest representative of this independent, non-European Russianism is
none other than Malevich. His most basic colors are used to construct a form,
which is sharp, clear, mobile, and eternal. This form has no object as its model.
He has reached the highest level of pure creation in his elemental suprematist
painting Red Square.40
As already mentioned, no such painting by Malevich was exhibited. Poljanski

must have meant Rodchenko’s painting Rote Farbe (Red Color), catalogued
under No. 166, one of his monochromes painted in 1921,41 which happened to
be square-shaped. While Behne mistakenly included Malevich in a nonexistent
group, “the constructivists, splendidly represented by Malevich, Rodchenko,
Lissitzky, Tatlin, Altman, and Gabo,”42 Poljanski followed his own thoughts when
identifying the painter of Red Color as Malevich. Also deliberately, and following
his own imaginary ideal, he identified Malevich as “An artist, mathematician,
a physicist, a painter, a sculptor, a revolutionary anti-bourgeois—a Russian
without a soul—a Russian with spirit,” who, as opposed to the artists of old who
had belonged to religion, creates art “for factories!”43
Such looseness in identifying trends and artists and prioritizing the author’s
own concepts occurred in almost every account of the exhibition and created,
over time, a haze around this exhibition and around the Russian avant-garde,
which lasted for decades. Once Malevich—or another artist—made a strong
impression on a reviewer, the latter was bent on creating a narrative around that
figure, lining up a deliberate selection of others as his followers or adherents.
Poljanski even took the liberty of offering the following description: “Besides
suprematists and constructivists (who are the same but just a tiny bit different!),
who are the strongest and the most Russian at this exhibition, there is also a
whole pleiade of Cézanneists, Van Goghists, Hodlerists, cubists, Picassoists,
Braqueists, expressionists, Impressionists, depressionists, dadaists, and others,”44
which is noteworthy not so much for characterizing Poljanski, but because such
views were the only source of knowledge about the newest Russian art for many
readers of the art press.
Alfréd Kemény who, as mentioned, had firsthand knowledge of the
conceptual differences between the constructivists of the Moscow INKhUK
and the suprematists clearly sided with constructivism in his review, as “the
correct path to take.”45 In his disciplined ideological interpretation published
in Hungarian in the Vienna-based communist journal Egység (Unity), both
suprematism and constructivism had great potential to lead “art and society
alike from the isolation of individualism to the universality of the collective,”
although suprematism had, according to him, already slipped away and was on
its way to becoming irrelevant:
Suprematism has tremendous historical significance, [but it] has become as

obsolete as futurism, which it is a continuation of. During the second stage
of its evolution, instead of further developing the architectonic potential of
the square as a planar form (as Mondrian did in Holland, independently of,
and at the same time as, Malevich, when he started out from the square as the
simplest, most objective and least psychically loaded form), suprematism turned
away from the laws of two-dimensionality and, starting out from the white
ground of the picture as infinite space, endeavored to create the illusion of the
dynamic conflict of cosmic energies. As such, the dematerialized, illusionistic
metaphysics of suprematism differentiate it from the objectively constructive
demands of contemporary life that will find their appropriate artistic expression
in the collective urban architecture of the future.46
Anticipating some of the 1960s concepts of urban architecture and collectively

owned urban space, what Kemény really wanted to see in “post-suprematist
Russian art”47—a category that resonated in Berlin and later in Warsaw—was
something new, transcending both suprematism and constructivism. This was
consistent with Lissitzky and van Doesburg’s aspiration to transcend their
respective masters Malevich and Mondrian, proving themselves, with due
respect to their elders, to better understand the latest directions in culture, the
new technologies, and the new spirit of pragmatism and design.
Hungarian poet, artist, and editor Lajos Kassák traveled to Berlin from
his Vienna exile specifically to see the Russian exhibition. He found that
suprematism was “the first consciously new step taken by young Russian
artists,”48 which “opened the gates toward progress.”49 This opinion, voiced in
Hungarian, due to which it did not directly reach the German-speaking public,
was soon to become the general consensus in Berlin: Malevich was seen as a
great initiator, and constructivism became solidified as the true art of the future.
It was, therefore, Malevich who came to be seen as the face of the new Russian
art, and “suprematism,” “productivism,” and “constructivism” were terms used
alternately, more or less as synonyms.
Kállai expressed utter disappointment at the exhibition in the article he sent
to Vienna to the left-wing Hungarian dadaist journal Akasztott ember (Hanged
Man), edited by Kassák’s communist brother-in-law Sándor Barta:
The most serious among the several shortcomings of the Russian exhibition in
Berlin was the fact that it refused to take any stand whatsoever and settled for
providing a neutral survey of the most diverse visual objects, much to the delight
of bourgeois democrats and aesthetes. It gave no indication that it had originated
in a country going through the painful struggle of attaining communism, from
where it was dropped into the midst of the luxurious bourgeois environment of
Unter den Linden. Those few little neat Soviet posters in the impressionist style
and one or two Soviet emblems on silk or china had the effect of awkward beauty
spots modestly hiding among the hundreds of drawings and paintings.50
Kállai, probably unaware of the expected use of the income the exhibition was
hoped to generate for helping the starving in Russia, criticized the minimal
presence of the left-wing avant-gardism at the exhibition:
It would seem that Lunacharsky and the others did not want to scare away the
bourgeois viewers of the exhibition. This would explain why they refrained from
any kind of overt revolutionary content. But I still find it incomprehensible that
this Russian exhibition has overlooked the problem of proletarian art ( . . . ) even
the slightest allusion to the much-debated central issues of proletkult. ( . . . ) Even
the concept of an as yet nonexistent proletarian art, as the unknown quantity
“x,” would have been an important factor in this exhibition, if the introductory
texts in the catalogue had paid some attention to the demands, prospects, and
obstructions presented by this concept. ( . . . ) Here was the opportunity to give
an account of the results at a public forum available to all of Europe. It is greatly
to be regretted that this opportunity has not been seized.51
Proletkult—a narrative, programmatically realist art, easily understandable to

all regardless of the level of education—and the politics and aesthetics of the art
of social progress were of paramount importance to the strategies of left-wing
artists, critics, art forums, and organizations, even if they were deeply split by a
number of fault lines regarding their views and programs. At the time of the First
Russian Exhibition, the Hungarians in Berlin and Vienna, scathed by the defeat
of the 1919 Hungarian Commune, were to the left of even the left-wing Berlin
artists and art critics, so they were more disappointed about the Russian show
than the Germans and judged the exhibition more harshly. Kállai, however,
recognized the importance of faktura (material texture) of the Russians stating
that their work with material and surface texture was exceptional and surpassed
those artworks that were “only optically organized.”52
Berlin-based international constructivism tended to prefer the future-bound
combination of elegant geometry and the real-life, real-material approach of
the constructivists as anticipation of a regulated, egalitarian, and democratic
future social order. Nevertheless, Malevich was recognized as one of the most
significant artists of the Russian avant-garde at the First Russian Exhibition, even
if he was introduced there as a painter and, to a lesser extent, porcelain designer,
his architectons and writings still unknown. His early writings on suprematism,
such as From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism and Suprematism
34 Drawings, had not been translated by the time of the exhibition, nor were any
of his writings published until 1924, 1925, and 1927, respectively.53
In spite of his critique, Westheim invited David Shterenberg to contribute to
Das Kunstblatt an authentic Russian interpretation of the exhibition. Shterenberg’s
article “The Artistic Situation in Russia”54 was published in the same issue of the
journal as Westheim’s own, correcting the latter on several points. Shterenberg
took great pains to explain the exhibition’s proportional coverage of old and new
art. First of all, he referred to the palpable presence of “official art also in the
West, as well as in Russia”55 beside the avant-gardes; then he called attention
to the importance of many Russian artists who, even if radically modern, “did
not give up the true tradition of Russian art [and] while the Western artists
considered Cézanne as their master, they turned to the old icons of Novgorod (
. . . ) to find the foundations of the Russian art of the present.”56 He interpreted
the square as a negative statement, referring to Malevich, Rozanova, and other
artists’ interpretation of it in their written works as the rejection of everything
that had happened in painting before: reducing the painting to a square, “in their
negation of the past they drew all the logical consequences of this negation.”57
Destruction of the past in the name of anarchism had been the precondition of
building a future for Marinetti and the Italian futurists as well as the Hungarian
Kassák and, as we saw, the equally anarchist-leaning Russian cubo-futurists.
Shterenberg, however, clearly on behalf of the Soviet officialdom, expressed
confidence that the suprematists would soon understand that destruction of the
old is not sufficient for the construction of the new. If they did not engage in the
constructive work of the ongoing revolution, such artworks as Tatlin’s corner-
counter-reliefs which, according to him, make only superficial use of metal
and other materials, might become irrelevant as “pure ornamental art.”58 This
was a strong statement, amounting to an insult: “ornamental” and “decorative”
meaning bourgeois, past-bound, useless, and unnecessary. Such reservations
served as an explanation for the limited number of radically modern artworks
in the Van Diemen Gallery. Shterenberg mentions the constructivists as being
hesitant between aesthetic and pragmatic creation but does not clearly take
their side. He does not name a dominant direction in Russian art, stating that
there are a number of directions that fight one another, but does not specify
these. When he names representatives of suprematism, constructivism, cubism,
impressionism, and abstraction, he gives a very difficult-to-follow road map of the
Russian avant-garde, only fostering further confusion about it. The fundamental
problem of Shterenberg’s article is the attempt to balance between easel painting
and utilitarian object-making, as well as between Soviet officialdom, radically
innovative Russian artists, and the supposed Western views. Forgetting that the
Russian Exhibition was meant to be a nonpolitical event, Shterenberg ends up
writing on a repeated diplomatic note, underlining that with the Russians’ first
step in establishing contacts with the West, the next step in mutual relations is
expected from the other party: the Western artists. In light of the fact that the
First Russian Exhibition was the result of joint efforts between the two countries,
rather than Russia’s only, this statement has an awkward ring to it.
As far as van Doesburg was concerned, the First Russian Exhibition alienated
him from Russian art as well as from the Soviet Union. Having seen the exhibition,
van Doesburg dramatically changed his original, unconditionally positive
expectations of Soviet Russia. He was eager to see the exhibition, as a letter to
Antony Kok dated a few weeks after its opening indicates.59 Upon attending it, he
saw the great number of realist, impressionist, and postimpressionist artworks as
a demonstration of reverence for the past, whereas he, like many other viewers,
expected the rejection of that past tradition in favor of a celebration of the spirit
of radical innovation. Van Doesburg anticipated the revolutionary country to
proudly identify with her new art and exhibit exclusively revolutionary works.
He may have been informed about the NEP—Novaia Economicheskaia Politika,
or New Economic Policy—introduced in Soviet Russia in 1921 out of necessity,
compromising the idea of the egalitarian communist society for the sake of a
somewhat controlled form of capitalist market economy. Referring to this
state of affairs, van Doesburg closed his letter to Kok on a disillusioned note:
“In Russia, via state capitalism, a private capitalism of the worst kind is being
formed! A bolshevist Russia only existed as a fantasy. The truth of the matter
is that everything is being rebuilt on the old foundations!”60 Thus Russia was
no longer that desirable new world of the future for van Doesburg which it had
been in 1919; and this, too, may have affected his decreasing enthusiasm for his
Russian friends and colleagues, and the Russian avant-garde altogether.
Probably not satisfied with the coverage of the new Russian art by
Shterenberg, Westheim commissioned Ivan Puni to write an article in order to
continue the discussion about the First Russian Exhibition in the German press.
Published in the summer of 1923 in Das Kunstblatt,61 Puni criticizes the Western
requirement—or so he understands—that artists have to consistently work in
one and the same direction throughout their career while, as he states, they have
an inner dynamic that compels them to change style and direction at will. He
coins the term “constructive naturalism”62 and strikes a hostile chord with regard
to van Doesburg, mentioning “the dilettant revue De Stijl.”63
Surveying the reception of the First Russian Exhibition, it stands out that in
spite of the confusion and the limited amount of information it offered, Malevich
and the concept of constructivism dominated the general image it gave. All the
recognition, reservations and disappointments considered, the exhibition may
have reduced enthusiasm for Soviet Russia but kept the curiosity in the new
Russian art alive.
8
Respectfully Challenging the Master

Lissitzky and Malevich
Since Malevich had provided Lissitzky with a new, quasi-theoretically as well as

politically supported geometric vocabulary that offered a solution to Lissitzky’s
existential dilemma in 1919, Malevich had grown into a father figure for
Lissitzky, who, his admiration notwithstanding, had to grapple with Malevich’s
work in order to stand his own ground. Lissitzky increasingly saw Malevich
as a precursor rather than a peer. This struggle remained an undercurrent in
Lissitzky’s creative work in the early 1920s while he lived in Germany. Having
adopted suprematism, he also modified it. Lissitzky challenged Malevich’s
concepts and artistic practice while doing his best to introduce Malevich in
the West between 1922 and 1924. Harold Bloom’s theory about the “anxiety of
influence”1 explores many previously hidden channels through which one artist
contributes to the formation of another, and reveals the duality of indebtedness
and the will to self-assertion behind the lasting wrestle with the precursor.
A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares: Surpassing Malevich
In his proun paintings Lissitzky architecturally organized Malevich’s white,

bottomless void replacing his flat geometric shapes with virtually three-
dimensional geometric solids. This modification was, in Bloom’s terms, a
“corrective movement”2 to suprematism: a polemic against Malevich’s free-
floating flat shapes. Lissitzky’s architectural vision, often including a narrative,
collage technique, photographic details, or life-size reality among other things,
manifestly differed from Malevich’s suprematism. Lissitzky asserted himself as
an artist with architectural and engineering expertise that informed his painted
works.
Malevich did not point out any symbolic difference between the black and
red squares in 1915 when he first painted and exhibited both motifs. It was only
during the ideologically and strategically charged UNOVIS era in Vitebsk in
1919–1920 that this color symbolism was first invested with meaning. The first
UNOVIS flier included an address to the group members signed by the “Art
Committee of UNOVIS,” which declared: “Red teaches people a new way, and
we learn the creation of a new art. Youth of the west, east, and the south, go
to the red pole of the new earth, because there is the flag of the new art.”3 The
same flier includes the already quoted appeal: “Have the overthrow of the old
world carved in the palm of your hands! Wear the black square as the sign of
world economy!”4 “Draw the Red Square in your studios as the sign of world
revolution in the arts!”5
A dualism and a hierarchy of the two colors appear here: the youth is
suggested to have a physical connection with the black square and are called
to display it as a sign of their community, even a cultic code, while the red
square belonged in the studio as a symbol of the revolution. As Shatskikh
points out, “only Lissitzky employed the red square as an emblem of UNOVIS
(in his design for its seal). Malevich and the true UNOVIS suprematists
always considered the black square ( . . . ) to be the symbol of UNOVIS.”6
This remark makes an important distinction between Lissitzky and the “true
UNOVIS suprematists,” raising the question, where exactly did Lissitzky
stand within UNOVIS and within the Russian avant-garde generally, and
whose views was he representing in Germany? And, if Malevich proposed
the Black Square as the sign that UNOVIS members were to wear on the palm
of their hands and on the cuff of their jackets, was the Red Square likewise
Lissitzky’s deliberate choice for an UNOVIS symbol, marking the group’s
close ties to the revolution?
Lissitzky’s suprematist Tale of Two Squares addresses this dilemma. The
booklet was, in Lissitzky’s words, constructed in Vitebsk in 1920 but published
only in Berlin and then in De Stijl in 1922. Tale of Two Squares was, after the
invention of proun, his first articulate, coded dispute with Malevich’s work,
narrated in images charged with symbolic meaning. In it, Lissitzky reached back
to his former practice of creating children’s books, but this time he was also the
author rather than merely the illustrator of the book. The concept of harnessing
the suprematist imagery for a narrative by using compositional elements
as characters and story-building is fundamentally opposed to Malevich’s
abstraction in which there was no room for narrative, on the contrary: it had
been, as previously mentioned, the art of “pure sensation.” Thus, Tale of Two
Respectfully Challenging the Master 149
Squares is, indeed, applied suprematism narrating the ultimate future victory of a
new world that would feature elements of both suprematism and proun.
Malevich interpreted the black square for UNOVIS as symbol of “world
economy,”7 a site for global energies “racing towards a single center” and “towards
a policy of unity,”8 calling UNOVIS members to wear the Black Square as a badge
of a tribal insignia rather than just a symbol. The Black Square bore the color of
anarchism, too, to which Malevich and his cubo-futurist poet friends had been
committed to at the time of its creation. The color red, on the other hand, chosen
by Lissitzky for UNOVIS’s emblem, was explicitly the color of Communism. The
transparency of its meaning worked against the quintessential mystery of the
Black Square, which was once regarded as “a royal infant” and “the first step of
pure creation in art.”9 Now the emblem of a movement, long gone were the times
when Malevich announced: “The face of my Square cannot become merged with
a single master or age”10 (see Figure 8.1, a–g).
Lissitzky’s Tale, a suprematist-communist cartoon, further simplified the
implications of both squares and their respective colors: he cast the red square in
Figure 8.1 El Lissitzky: Tale of Two Squares, 1922. Photo Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles (930030) © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
the role of the positive, world-changing communist of the future and the black
square, its counterpart, in the role of the predecessor representing the past: the
symbol of the old world that is being overthrown in this narrative. The active
“hero” of the tale is “the red square of the world revolution,” which distinguishes
itself from the black by actively transforming and recoloring the world.
Suprematist Tale of Two Squares, as several authors have observed, was an
initiative to create the international visual language of the future.11 It addressed
children, the generation of the future. The Tale’s simple neutral geometric idiom
and brief “story” embodied the prototype of a new, universal narrative. There is
rhythm and movement in the sequence; indeed, a choreography; and cinematic
vision in the alternation of close-ups, wide shot-type compositions, and various
vantage points throughout the altogether six-scene book,12 the narrative of which
is strikingly reminiscent of Victory over the Sun,13 re-performed in Vitebsk by
UNOVIS in 1920, at the time of Lissitzky’s “construction” of this booklet.
The plot is simple. The Red Square, a superior power, arrives from the cosmos
in the company of the Black Square and triumphs over the old, disorderly, black-
colored system on earth by disrupting, reconstructing, and recoloring it red. The
Black Square, having witnessed the transformation of the chaotic black world
into a clearly organized and regulated new red one, recedes back into the distance
while the Red Square proceeds forward and directs its motion toward the viewer,
covering the now red world, as if “stamping” it. The fourth “scene,” where the
Red Square visibly disrupts the old realm, appears to be a “square”-version of the
off-stage scene in Act Two of the opera, in which the sun is defeated, and the old
world is destroyed. Lissitzky’s fifth “scene” is the vision of the red, upright world
of the future featuring the well-organized modern architecture, with the “old”
black square serving as its ground in an optimistic contrast to the ambiguous
last scene of Victory over the Sun. There is an UNOVIS emblem—a red square
inscribed into a white circle—on the final page of the book as identification with
“world revolution”.
Lissitzky also used the red square separated from the black one to mark
the “New Man” in his 1923 Victory over the Sun portfolio (see Figure 8.2),
confirming red as the true color of the communist future. In the light of this
symbolism, the Tale narrates a historical-political rivalry between two look-
alike squares “who” turn out not to be equal: the black square represents
the original suprematist element while the red square stands for the new,
UNOVIS idea, apparently suggesting that even Malevich’s own UNOVIS has
outgrown its founder’s original concepts. In this context, the old-world Black
Square is overwritten by the newer, fast-paced developments of history. It is
Figure 8.2 El Lissitzky: “New Man,” from Figurinen Cabinet Victory over the Sun,
1923. Photo Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (89-F15) © 2019 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
gently defeated—not destroyed, not even offended, just proven to belong to a

former phase of development and left behind—by the new, energetic, young
Red Square. That is: Malevich is gently and reverentially posited into the past,
surpassed by Lissitzky, man of the future.
Malevich’s own focus on the iconic black quadrilateral of suprematism at
the First Russian Exhibition in Berlin thus seemed to confirm the interpretation
by El Lissitzky, his friend, follower, and rival. By way of the radical, suggestive,
and futuristic contents of Tale of Two Squares, Lissitzky positioned himself as
a modernizer, a man of the new world versus Malevich whom, by contrast, he
positioned—albeit with admiration and due respect—as archaic, a man of the
past.
Proun Room, 1923, as a Further Riposte
Lissitzky’s Proun Room,14 a real-space installation at the 1923 Grosse Berliner

Kunstausstellung held in a large exhibition hall near Berlin’s Lehrter Bahnhof
(today’s Central Railway Station), also demonstrated, among its many other
pursuits, Lissitzky’s surpassing of Malevich.
Malevich also had plans to work in a three-dimensional, actual space
rather than on canvas. He sketched out the design of “a wall, a surface, of a
whole room, or a whole apartment painted over in the suprematist system,” in
Vitebsk in 1919.15 Furthermore, to transcend the flat surface of paintings and
extend the physicality of his work into an actual, three-dimensional space,
Malevich started to create three-dimensional “planits” and “architectons” in
1921–1922. Lissitzky’s Proun Room, an actual space in which the visitor could
walk along the geometric compositions mounted on the walls, was dramatically
more “real” than Malevich’s “new painterly realism,” where it was the painted
surface that Malevich considered “a real, living form.”16 Proun Room occupied
actual space in which one could move around, unlike Malevich’s model-size,
sculptural “architectons.” Proun Room was four-dimensional, as time was also
a factor in walking through the area it occupied; however, it was an exhibit
rather than an actual functional space, which is why Lissitzky called it a
“demonstration room.” That is, Lissitzky’s views of the “real” were close to
the ideas of the constructivists during their “laboratory phase” when they
realized their ideas by creating objects that were not actually functional or
utilitarian.
Proun Room was not only a critique of suprematism by superseding it in
conquering actual space. It was also a step toward constructivism as well as
toward similar contemporary Western developments of working in real space.
Lissitzky may have seen inspiring examples in Berlin. Painter Erich Buchholz
redesigned his apartment on the Herkules Ufer in 1922, turning it into a
modernist artwork of a living room that doubled as his studio space which
Lissitzky visited many times. Buchholz explained that he proceeded “from
the walls through reliefs attached to them into plasticity and architecture”17
to create an interior he called “gegenwartsraum” [sic],18 the “room of the
present.” Buchholz thought that it had informed Proun Room19 which may
have been another reason why Lissitzky emphasized its experimental,
“demonstration room” character. Buchholz claimed to have surpassed the
so-called dimension of styles, thus creating a “nonaesthetic room” where the
planes of the walls, the furniture, and the decks were interrelated in such
a way as to produce “a room where one can live, not only rent.” Buchholz’s
room as well as Proun Room were not unlike some geometricized De Stijl
interiors that Vilmos Huszar designed around 1918–1921, creating artistically
composed bedrooms and living rooms. Buchholz used blue and green colors
for the walls and mounted abstract compositions on them, including a
small wooden sphere with interconnecting rods, to which Lissitzky’s similar
unit on Wall 2 of Proun Room may have been indebted. Not as ambitious
or conceptually supported as the De Stijl interiors, Buchholz’s studio was
nonetheless the first realization of an abstract real-life interior in Berlin
which introduced the idea that one’s living room at home could be turned
into an artwork as a spatial composition.
By constructing Proun Room and showing it in a well-attended exhibition,
which garnered a great deal of publicity in thriving Berlin, Lissitzky could
prove himself to be in the first line of progress. He made viewers walk along
dynamic suprematist-style motifs on the walls, so they were not entirely
passive spectators anymore. Moving in the room, they could actively change
their viewpoints and perception of the visual motifs as well as their sense of
the space.
Further Berlin examples for real-space artworks included Puni’s previously
mentioned exhibition design in his 1921 exhibition at Der Surm, which
included compositions of geometric shapes hanging from the ceiling, and Vasily
Kandinsky’s designs for the Juryfreie Kunstschau (Jury-Free Art Exhibition) in
Berlin in 1922.20 Puni’s taking the exhibition out into the neighboring streets on
opening night, having friendly visitors walk in geometric costumes around the
gallery, thus integrating urban space into his work, anticipates the 1960s urban
movements’ concept of the city as a collective and potentially artistic space,
to be inhabited and possessed, such as the “psychogeographical” ideas of the
Situationist International.
Kandinsky, who frequently designed spaces in the form of stage sets for
theater, described a Russian peasant house he had seen, where “The table,
the benches, the great stove, ( . . . ) the cupboards, and every other object was
covered with brightly colored, elaborate ornaments. ( . . . ) In these magical
houses I experienced something I have never encountered again since. They
taught me to move within the picture, to live in the picture.”21 Lissitzky was not
a follower of Kandinsky, whom he considered a “German Romanticist”22 rather
than a Russian modernist, but he was certainly attentive to the works that his
fellow Russian artists Puni and Kandinsky created and conceptualized in actual
space. Work in real space was a cutting-edge concept in the early 1920s involving
movement, pointing farther ahead than Malevich’s three-dimensional “planits”

and “architectons,” which were static objects.
Moving from the picture plane into space was the new sensation in the
segment of the Berlin art world that most interested Lissitzky. Published in
various periodicals including De Stijl, fiery declarations, new materials, and
the new genre of kinetic sculpture set the tone for, and laid out the principles
of, the new art. De Stijl became a particularly integral part of the German art
scene while van Doesburg was staying in Weimar in 1921–1922 converting
a group of Bauhaus students to his concepts of a rigorous geometric formal
vocabulary. Shortly before Lissitzky’s arrival in Berlin, Raoul Hausmann, Puni,
Arp, and Moholy-Nagy published Aufruf zur elementaren Kunst (Appeal for
Elementary Art) in De Stijl, which was addressed to the “artists of the world!”23
Elementare Kunst, by choice of the term, was an announcement of solidarity
with van Doesburg’s elementarism. It was defined as anti-philosophical and
anti-individualist: genuine, pure, new design work, free from both aestheticism
and usefulness, later termed “concrete art.”
The abstracted formal language of Proun Room with its bold diagonals
and invitation of visitors into the interior space of a visual work reflected a
sense of utopian unreality endemic to the Berlin scene of the postwar years.
It projected a possible future art that was, at best, in an experimental phase.
However, Proun Room superseded Malevich’s real-space designs that had
remained on paper.
In God Is Not Cast Down, dated in Vitebsk, 1922, Malevich wrote: “What we
call reality is infinity without weight, measure, time or space, absolute or relative,
never traced in a form. It can be neither conceived nor comprehended.”24 With
Proun Room, however, Lissitzky once again meant to give a different direction to
Malevich’s metaphysical concept by working in conceivable and palpable reality,
which did have “weight, measure, time [and] space.” Proun Room was closer to
being “actual” in Tatlin’s sense: that is, consisting of real materials in real space—
even with its visionary proun-suprematist imagery complete with the black
square, which was one of its motifs. It was a flashback on suprematism from
the vantage point of an innovative new development: working in actual space,
Proun Room surpassed UNOVIS’s activist program as well as the constructivists’
material concept of reality to the extent that Bloom calls “a movement towards
discontinuity with the precursor.”25 Realizing this project in the actual space of
the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, Lissitzky also proved himself a progressive
artist of international standing at a time when Malevich was aspiring at the same
status for UNOVIS as well as himself.
Victory over the Sun on Paper, 1923
Lissitzky’s recast and, in a sense, appropriation of Victory over the Sun as an

“electro-mechanical show” for figurines in his 1923 portfolio of lithographs was
another corrective response to Malevich. His designs show a modernized and
technologically developed version of the opera, if on paper only, including a
“Designer of the Spectacle,” or “Stage-Master,” who controls the light, sound,
and movement of the marionettes operating an electric keyboard. Deviating
from the original opera as well as its 1920 Vitebsk remake, it addressed the
constructivists’ anticipation of a fully mechanized and automated future. The
“Designer of the Spectacle” runs the show, thus presenting a model of the
mechanized universe of a coming world. This element gives a spin to the more
rustic 1913 and 1920 concepts and performances, turning the production, at least
on paper, into a smooth-running, centrally directed mechanical show. Lissitzky
may have seen the Bauhaus students Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Rudolf
Schwerdtfeger’s electrically operated color-light shows in the Bauhaus in 1922 or
1923, which, limited to the movement of abstract color shapes, introduced the
idea and practice of electrically run visual performances. Modernity in the
sense of technical superiority is strongly emphasized in Lissitzky’s portfolio.
He may also have been inspired by another Bauhaus production, Kurt Schmidt
and Georg Teltscher’s 1923 Mechanical Ballet, featuring mechanical action and
mechanical figures on stage, as well as Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet with
geometricized human figures, which premiered in 1922 and was performed at
the Bauhaus in the summer of 1923. The onstage presence of the Kunstfigur, the
artificial figurine, was the focus of the debates on avant-garde performing arts in
Germany. Aware of the similar initiatives at the Bauhaus, Lissitzky did, indeed,
send a copy of his Victory over the Sun portfolio personally to Walter Gropius.26
The lithographic portfolio, while only a sketchy reference to Victory over the
Sun’s actual stage productions, alters the opera to the extent that, in Bloom’s terms,
it “generalizes away the uniqueness of the earlier work”27 of the predecessor, in this
case Malevich. The original 1913 futurist opera, which certainly strongly resonated
in the 1920 UNOVIS performance, becomes generic modernist raw material here,
an archaic source, translated into the formal vocabulary and technological vision
of international constructivism, blended with figurative reminiscences, and turned
into stills of an automated spectacle of marionettes. Moreover, it is also a visit to
Malevich’s original source of suprematism and a fresh, modernized update of it.
Lissitzky recreated only a few of the characters of the original opera and ended
his introduction to the portfolio by announcing that “The further adaptation and
application of the ideas and forms set down here I leave to others while I proceed to
my next work,”28 as if echoing Malevich’s earlier words commenting on Lissitzky’s
“architectural suprematism”: “I am entrusting the further development of what is
already architectural suprematism to young architects.”29 It is the voice of the founder
and the father that Lissitzky appropriated and echoed in 1923, with emphasis on his
moving on to yet newer tasks. Incomplete as his portfolio remained in comparison
with the futurist opera, it appears that his ambition was to overwrite it with modern
technology’s means in order to demonstrate a more tangibly real vision of the
future, a manifest statement characterizing the original as archaic.
The Lenin Tribune, 1924
The 1924 Lenin Tribune is perhaps Lissitzky’s sharpest and most direct corrective
response to Malevich. Late in 1923 and early 1924, Lissitzky tried to organize an
exhibition of Malevich’s works at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover with the
help of Sophie Küppers. He set to translating some of Malevich’s writings for a
publication that could accompany the show. Besides, Lissitzky organized financial
as well as material help for Malevich, notifying artist friends who were in contact
with international help organizations about Malevich’s needs and difficulties.30
Lissitzky was working on translating writings of Malevich that the latter
sent him from Russia in installments throughout the first half of 1924 all
while Lissitzky was confined to a sanatorium room hoping to recover from
tuberculosis in Orselina, a suburb of Locarno in Switzerland, eventually moving
on to other hospitals. Despite having to grapple with Malevich’s convoluted
and grammatically problematic Russian, Lissitzky truly admired his thoughts,
and together with Sophie Küppers, who in turn corrected Lissitzky’s German,
worked hard to make the Malevich book reality.31
Among the texts that Malevich kept sending to him, Lissitzky came across
Malevich’s essay on Lenin dating from January 25, 1924, only days after Lenin’s
death,32 which he translated and thoroughly edited. This essay, a version of which
was published in Das Kunstblatt in the fall of 1924,33 may have prompted Lissitzky
to mark the historical event of Lenin’s death with a work of his own as his share of
the commemoration. He apparently pulled out of his files his former student Ilya
Chashnik’s 1920 Speaker’s Tribune,34 drafted in Vitebsk. Lissitzky pasted Lenin’s
photo onto it and changed the words that Chashnik, in one version, had scribbled
on the screen above the speaker’s head from Vsja Vlast’ Sovietam (All power to the
Soviets)35 for Proletarii, in reference to the more internationalist slogan Proletarii
Figure 8.3 El Lissitzky, Ilya Chashnik: Lenin Tribune, pencil, photo on paper, 1924.
Photo Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (930030) © 2019 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
vsekh stran soedinyaites! (Proletarians of all countries unite!), thus redesigning

and renaming it the Lenin Tribune. On March 21, 1924, he wrote to Sophie about
his ideas for a planned exhibition of his own in Paris and, possibly inspired by
Malevich’s Lenin essay, he outlined his further plans: “The next thing is my movie
(it will be dedicated to Lenin, and will be called a ‘Lenin Construction’).”36 The
idea of a movie was part of the Soviet discourse about adequately evoking Lenin
in artworks and memorials;37 Lenin having famously declared that film was the
most important art for Soviet Russia. Making a film may have been a faraway
project, while working on Chashnik’s design was feasible even in the confines of
a sanatorium room. Lissitzky included the Lenin Tribune in the proun section of
the book Kunstismen,38 which he edited together with Hans Arp at the time, to be
published in 1925, with the caption: “Atelier Lissitzky, 1920.”39
The Lenin Tribune is not only different from but also pointedly opposed to
Malevich’s anxious vision of Leninism as a new ersatz religion. Transparent,
light, optimistically and dynamically diagonal and clearly constructed, bringing
to mind Tatlin’s Monument of the Third International,40 the Lenin Tribune posits
modern futuristic technology against Malevich’s heavy analysis of an emerging
materialist mythology or religion, which replaces Christ with Lenin and the
church with the factory.41 Thus, Lissitzky’s version of the Tribune, a streamlined,
futuristic design, cast Malevich once again in the role of an honored, though
transcended, archaic forefather who has grave misgivings regarding the future’s
belief system, while the future, as the Lenin Tribune asserts, is bright, well
constructed, and will open as a positive new chapter in history.
The difference between Malevich’s text and Lissitzky’s design on paper
revealed the thus clearly articulated differences between the two artists, as well
as Lissitzky’s distance from the ongoing debates in Moscow about Lenin’s legacy
and nascent cult. Malevich’s somber writing reckoned with the inevitability of
Lenin becoming a cultic figure, eventually an ersatz Christ, in the process of “the
replacement of the old prophet, the replacement of the holy by the technical.”42
Malevich observed that in the emerging cult of Leninism the former leader, who
had ceased to materially exist, was being elevated to the rank of an idea and
image, along with the institution of the factory that gained a new symbolism
elevated to the rank of the church. Malevich saw this development as a course
of necessity marking new conditions for the “priests and artists” and “art and
religion.”43 Unfailingly attaching art to myth and cult, Malevich saw the new
era differing from the old culture, which was dominated by religion, in the new
object of worship: material reality. However, instead of the square, Malevich
now proposed the cube to be accepted as the basic symbol of the “rectangular
culture” of the new age of Lenin,44 offering the cube, as he had the Square, to
stand for the “embryo of all possibilities” versus the “static”45 cult of materialism.
That position would thus ensure the transcendental survival of the square in the
form of the cube that he now offered as symbol of the new myth of Lenin.
There is no evidence, however, of the extent of Malevich’s familiarity with the
efforts and ideas of Lenin’s funeral committee46 or the ongoing debates about the
public discourse regarding Lenin’s legacy. Lissitzky, for many years absent from
Russia and somewhat isolated in the sanatoriums, was most probably unaware of
these concepts and actions as well. As his Lenin Tribune indicates, Lissitzky saw
the idea of the revolution living on in unbroken continuity. He demonstrated
this by accepting and validating a 1920 constructivist design as a relevant symbol
of Leninism in 1924.
Malevich’s Lasting Influence
In Lissitzky’s whole typographical and book-designing career, throughout

most of which he used suprematist emblems such as the black square, the
red square, and the circle, the Lenin Tribune was a constructivist-leaning
reinterpretation of suprematist geometry. Lissitzky’s use of the ritual locus of the
palm of the hand, another obvious reference to Malevich’s charismatic UNOVIS
leadership, referring to his slogan “May the overthrow of the old world of art
be imprinted on the palms of your hands!”—in such a crucial and personal
work as his 1924 photo-montage self-portrait The Constructor, as well as in his
1922 illustration for Ehrenburg’s story Shifs-Karta,47 and its use once again in the
1927 VKhUTEMAS book cover Architecture—reveals his lasting involvement
with the ideas that captivated him in Vitebsk in 1919. The endless space and
the irrational geometry of virtual space which Lissitzky evoked in his proun
paintings and wrote about in “A. and Pan-Geometry”48 remained fundamental
elements in his works. However, he found new possibilities in the designing of
a book, a tangible object, which he saw as the Gesamtkunstwerk of the people’s
culture. The book, he wrote as early as 1919, “has become in our time what the
cathedral with its frescoes and colored stained glass windows used to be, what
the palaces and museums, where people went to look and learn, used to be.”49
Lissitzky’s book design and graphic design also affected his interpretation
of Malevich. His graphic designs were leaning to constructivism as well as to
the consolidating social and economic scene with the ensuing rationalism and
newfound “objectivism” of the vanguard art in Germany. Working on paper
rather than on canvas also suited Lissitzky’s new situation as his illness propelled
him toward activities that he could pursue in the limited space of a hospital
room. At the same time, his graphic design was also fueled by a vision of the
future, which had drifted considerably far away from the vision that he and
Malevich had shared for a brief moment in Vitebsk in 1919. While Malevich
bitterly contemplated the rising communist ideology as a new quasi-religious
system comprising a redefinition of the spiritual and was profoundly convinced
that the world was, and would always be, ruled by ideas, Lissitzky saw the new
state, at least during his stay abroad, as a rational machinery, the improvement of
which was a matter of increased pragmatic efforts. He posited his own work and
his concept of the “artist-engineer” as a correction and contrast to the concept of
the “artist-priest,” a tradition that Malevich meant to continue. “The idea that art
is religion and the artist the priest of this religion we rejected forthwith,” Lissitzky
wrote in the manuscript of his Berlin lecture “New Russian Art” in 1922.50
Malevich’s 1923–1924 “planits,” as well as his drawings of architectural units seen
in cosmic suprematist perspective, may, to some extent, be seen as the continuation
of the dialogue between himself and Lissitzky. Adopting the architectural volumes of
the Proun compositions, they preceded Malevich’s three-dimensional “architectons”
or “blind architecture,” constructed between 1923 and 1927. Mostly variations of

the “basilica” format51 originating from the square, they assert pieces of solemn,
cultic architecture—markedly opposed to Lissitzky’s pragmatic architectural and
book designs like Cloud Iron, 1925, or For the Voice, 1922, respectively.
Although Lissitzky remained indebted to Malevich, his original fascination with
the utopian implications of pure geometry was eventually replaced by a rational
and more humbly utilitarian work program, one that was more compatible with
constructivism than with suprematism. His proun paintings were not only at the
“intersection of architecture and painting,”52 as he defined them but also at the
intersection of suprematism and constructivism. They featured three-dimensional
architectural solids as well as the infinite void of the universe.
In his efforts to introduce Malevich’s art and ideas to the West, Lissitzky
appears to have been motivated by conflicting aspirations. On the one hand,
he was enthralled with suprematism’s universal vision and wanted to introduce
Malevich, accordingly, as the progenitor of this significant new idea on the
international scene. On the other hand, however, Lissitzky wanted to build a
consistent image of the new Russian art in the West without compromising his
own idea of progress and technological modernity, in order to bring Russian
progressive art closer to Western modernity. Moreover, he wanted to outline
his own artistic lineage, proudly tracing it back to Malevich. Struggling with the
work of translating Malevich’s texts reminded him again and again that it was
not possible to completely translate and transfer an entire culture to another.53
He tried to reconfigure, rephrase, and reframe Russian concepts and Russian art
so that they would be understandable and palatable for Westerners—that is, he
felt it necessary to simplify and streamline a great deal, and he struggled with
the near-impossibility of transferring the new Russian visual culture, with all its
contexts, implications, layers, and richness to the West.
As we could see in Kemény’s review of the First Russian Exhibition, Lissitzky
was not the only one in Berlin who saw suprematism as somewhat obsolete,
already history, along with futurism. Kemény bluntly expressed the need to see
something new that would transcend both suprematism and constructivism.54
Lajos Kassák, on the other hand, saw suprematism as “the first consciously new
step taken by young Russian artists,”55 which “opened the gates toward progress.”56
This duality, as will be demonstrated, characterized Malevich’s reception in
Warsaw and in the Bauhaus, as many artists and critics were hesitant to uphold
the original avant-garde ideas after the early 1920s. Malevich was seen as a great
initiator, but many in the art world awaited even newer, younger directions to
appear—and Lissitzky identified himself as that new type of artist.
9
The Book That Was Not. Van Doesburg’s

Thumbs-Down on the Malevich Volume
Had some of Malevich’s writings been published in German in 1924 when El

Lissitzky translated them, that volume would have disseminated Malevich’s
principles which were, at the time, largely unknown in the German-speaking
West. Some of the myth generated around his person and the legends that were
spreading by word of mouth might have dissipated, and his views as well as his
distance from constructivism would have come across more clearly.
Translating Malevich’s Writings
Lissitzky and Sophie Küppers, as previously mentioned, were tackling the

difficult task of making a few of Malevich’s texts accessible in German. “Things
are rather complicated with the Malevich—his Russian is not quite correct,
the grammar is completely wrong, and there are incredible word formations,”1
Lissitzky wrote in a letter to Sophie. Anna Muza observed, “Kazimir Malevich’s
critical prose is almost as remote from conventional norms of Russian writing
as his painting is from the Russian realist tradition.”2 Throughout the first half
of 1924 Lissitzky wrote to Sophie in details about his ongoing efforts at tackling
Malevich’s language.
“As you see, I have translated quite a lot for the Malevich book,” he reports in
March 1924. “I am translating it more or less like poetry, otherwise I would have
to make too many comments. But even where I do try to disagree, I am faced
with such pounding force that I stop resisting. ( . . . ) Now I have the hardest
part left: the chapter on suprematism. Malevich didn’t write anything definite
about it. The best was the first brochure in 1915, which I unfortunately do not
have. ( . . . )
Last time I sent you ‘Pure Coincidence’; I am enclosing now: 1. ‘On New Systems
in Art’, 2. ‘The Innovator in Art, State, Society, and Criticism’, 3. ‘God is Not
Cast Down. Art, Church and Factory’. That makes four parts. There will also
be ‘Suprematism’, ‘On Poetry’, and ‘Art and Artists’ (about Monet, Cézanne,
Van Gogh, Gauguin, and aphorisms)3. Then I will add sketches of illustrations
needed for each chapter. For the most part they are facsimiles from Malevich’s
notebook.”4
Lissitzky was determined to select parts that he thought would fare well with
foreign readers and that he, too, found transparent, to ensure that Malevich
could be presented in the best possible light and the volume might be a success.
He admitted: “Some of what I have here I don’t want to translate so as not to
present it all in an untrue light; that’s how inflexible and mystical these remarks
are.”5 Convinced, however, of the great value in many parts of Malevich’s written
work, Lissitzky edited the texts to the best of his ability, excluding some parts he
thought would confuse rather than clarify Malevich’s ideas to the public.
Malevich’s previously mentioned article on Lenin,6 written in the wake of the
Soviet leader’s death, presented Lissitzky with problems of exceptional difficulty. He
thoroughly edited the article, omitting long parts which he did not judge as being
palatable or even comprehensible for Western readers. The English translation of
the text runs through fifty-three (small-sized) pages, whereas the version published
in Lissitzky’s translation in Das Kunstblatt7 takes up three and a half (larger) pages
only. As Yve-Alain Bois confirms, Lissitzky had, indeed, “censored” Malevich in
two important ways: omitting most of the criticism of the nascent cult of Lenin
and streamlining Malevich’s writing to focus on one main line of thought, deleting
most detours of metaphysical ruminations.8 However, a considerable part of the
text was tied to concrete contexts and even persons Malevich was in dialogue
with, and many of its elements functioned as coded communication referring to
historical or concrete contemporaneous views, artworks, or public utterances, all
of which belonged to the ongoing Russian discourse.
Aside from his many disagreements with Malevich’s text, Lissitzky, away from
Russia for three years already, did not know that not only did Stalin intentionally
use religious references to anoint himself as Lenin’s legitimate successor, but
that a whole operation was happening in Russia to deliberately link religion
and Bolshevism in somewhat covert ways, a practice which Malevich strongly
opposed in his article on Lenin. As Nina Tumarkin relates, “These links were
provided by three bolsheviks who valued the spiritual, who were actively engaged
with religion at the beginning of [the twentieth] century, and who, upon Lenin’s
death, became imaginative contributors to the most mystical aspects of the
Doesburg’s Thumbs-Down on Malevich 163
Lenin cult.”9 At the moment Malevich was writing his essay he could not yet have
known that the three members of the committee charged with arranging Lenin’s
funeral, Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruevich, Lunacharsky—in his capacity
of Commissar of Enlightenment—and Leonid Krasin, were deeply engaged in
restoring religious enthusiasm for Lenin and the Soviet system, and considered
socialism as a secular religion. Malevich was, most likely, unaware of the three
men’s shared faith in the eventual bodily resurrection of the dead when they
were in charge of organizing Lenin’s funeral, or their making decisions regarding
the construction of the mausoleum and the preservation of Lenin’s body. While
Malevich could not have yet known these facts, he nonetheless clearly saw the
nature of the preparations and was informed of the intense debate between those
who supported and those who opposed the mythic cult of Lenin.
As discussed in the previous chapter regarding the differences between
Malevich and Lissitzky’s respective concepts regarding Lenin’s legacy, Malevich
was concerned by the prospects of Lenin indeed being regarded as the new
Christ. Malevich was adamant in rejecting the concept of such a religiously
permeated and designed transfiguration of the deceased leader, and, as he wrote,
in rejecting the institutional replacement of the church by the factory in the
Soviet Union. Lissitzky must have found this anxiety absurd and thought that
German readers would do so, as well. In his essay on Lenin, although somewhat
critical of the developing cult of the deceased leader, Malevich still put Lenin,
symbolically, where he had put the Black Square in 1915: into the shrine. With
all his critique of the exaltation of Lenin to a savior of sorts, Malevich ultimately
blended his own suprematist art and the cult of Lenin so that in the end of his
text he proposed a black cube to be erected as Lenin’s tombstone, as an ultimate
symbol of his. Taking the discussion about the idolized communist leader to the
level of a substitute religious faith and comparing Lenin’s adherents to a quasi-
religious cult may have been the adequate description of the situation in Russia,
but it was far from the objectivity and clarity that Lissitzky had painstakingly
construed and wanted to attach to the Russian avant-garde in Europe. Lissitzky
kept on presenting the image of a rationally collective and constructive new
Russian culture to the Western discourse.
Poetic imagination and poetic language, literary or visual, and rationalism
were not mutually exclusive in Germany, but a programmatic text had to have
clarity and conceptual transparency. Moreover, Westerners were unaware of
the emerging conflict between those who were busy creating a new Lenin-
iconography in Russia and those who opposed it, not to mention the construction
of monuments to Lenin.10 At the time when Malevich wrote his article, just days
after Lenin’s death, the Lenin cult, as well as the opposition to it, was still in an
initial phase, but by the time of the article’s publication in Das Kunstblatt in
October, the conflict between the two sides was already rampant.
Contributing to Lenin’s emerging cult in spite of his critique of it, Malevich
invested the cube—the expanded, six-sided spatial version of the square—with
an overarching symbolism:
the result of [one’s] path will be the cube, as the cubic is the fullness of your
comprehension and is perfection. ( . . . ) The cube will be a symbol which
man wants to turn into the fullness of knowledge. ( . . . ) In the cube lies all
man’s culture and development; by the cube the first epoch or the first cycle of
the objective cognition of ideas will be symbolized; the new epoch will move
towards a new creation of form, which he thinks to achieve because he will move
the cube of his knowledge into space farther; or the cube as mobile space will
create a new body, a new space.11
This text gave a new meaning to the cube in the context of Lenin as an eternal
leader and positioned the cube as the iconographic emblem of a possible
communist cult. Malevich extended the symbolism of the cube—six squares—
to an exalted Lenin figure. This description suffused the square and the cube
with very different meanings compared with what the international consensus
approved in the West European avant-garde. For Malevich, however, proposing
the suprematist form as an eternal symbol of the eternal leader was still part of
the struggle to validate suprematism as the sole face of the new Soviet country.
While the square’s metaphysical aspects and its universal implications were
accepted as a halo around this form, it was impossible for a Western audience to
agree with this kind of carried-away idolization of Lenin or any other public political
figure, for that matter. The use of the motif of the square was not conceivable as this
kind of symbolism. It may have symbolized universalism for Mondrian and van
Doesburg, and the spirit of a well-engineered world in the Bauhaus, but it was by
no means invested with any sort of cultic meaning let alone that of surrounding a
human being. Western constructivists wanted to turn the square to a pragmatically
acceptable emblem of a new egalitarianism, clarity, and simplicity.
Van Doesburg Kills the Malevich Volume
Dissatisfied with the published version of Malevich’s Lenin article, Lissitzky

sought a publisher for the book who could issue the collection of Malevich’s
essays in a way that would do the author justice. It was not an easy task, as
Malevich was very little known in Germany, even after the flurry of articles
following the First Russian Exhibition. Lissitzky took the manuscript to the
Vensky Verlag publishing company in Oldenburg and started negotiations,
but to no avail.12 Meanwhile, Sophie Küppers had plans to translate Malevich’s
writings into French, an idea which Lissitzky found excellent.13
In May 1924, Lissitzky wrote to Sophie saying he could not get a contract from
the Vensky.14 A few weeks after he designed the publisher’s logo,15 Lissitzky wrote
Sophie: “I do not like the whole history with the Vensky Verlag. ( . . . ) Damn all
the publishing houses, one has to be one’s own publisher.”16 A few days before
Sophie’s visit in the sanatorium in Orselina where Lissitzky was convalescing,
Lissitzky wrote: “Concerning the Vensky, we shall discuss it here. It appears that
the earth is strongly shaking over there and the pockets are tightly buttoned
up.”17 He also wrote to Moholy-Nagy, editor of the Bauhaus Bücher series, who
had apparently asked Lissitzky for a publishable manuscript, that he was ready
to work on a book of his own for the Bauhaus, also mentioning that he “has put
together a Malevich book, but has committed it to a publisher already.”18
Giving up on the Vensky Verlag, a couple of months later, however, Lissitzky
turned to Paul Westheim, editor of Das Kunstblatt, who had a steady interest in
covering Russian art and worked closely with the journal’s publisher, the Gustav
Kiepenheuer Verlag. Upon Westheim’s request, Lissitzky agreed to contribute
to Westheim and Carl Einstein’s planned volume Europa Almanach, offering
an article titled “A[rt] and Pangeometry.” In the same letter of agreement to
contribute, Lissitzky mentions a plan to write a book of his own which he would
title Amechanik der Kunst (A-mechanics, or lack of mechanics, of art)19 and adds:
Meanwhile I have selected, put together, and finalized the German translation of
Malevich’s writings. It is a completed manuscript of 40 typed pages. Seven sketches
of his paintings would accompany them from his notebook.20 It has the following
7 chapters:
From “The New Systems in Art”
Suprematism
The Novelty in Art (State, Society, Criticism)
On Poetry
From “God is Not Cast Down” (Art, Church, Factory)
Lenin (From: On Non-Objectivity)
The Pure Process
It is high time for this to be published. I am in contact with a publishing house
regarding this, but the current crisis in Germany causes delay. Perhaps you could
make it happen in your publishing house, this is just a small booklet. You could
include one chapter from it in Europa.21
This is the most detailed account we have about the contents of the projected book
that failed to get published. Westheim may have encouraged Lissitzky to submit the
manuscript to Kiepenheuer, who probably assigned it to Hans Müller, previously
linked, if in a complicated way, to the Kiepenheuer publishing house in Potsdam.
Gustav Kiepenheuer, who had run the publishing house with his wife Irmgard
since 1909, employed Hans Müller as managing secretary until the latter founded
his own print and illustrated book publisher: Müller & Co. Verlag in Potsdam
in 1919, with Gustav’s wife Irmgard after the Kiepenheuers separated in 1917.
Müller & Co. changed its name to Müller & Kiepenheuer in 1925, after winning
a lawsuit filed by Gustav Kiepenheuer, who continued to live in Potsdam and
hosted a cultural salon there, being in friendly contact with contemporary artists,
including many from the Bauhaus in Weimar. Müller apparently commissioned
van Doesburg as a main authority on contemporary avant-garde art and writing,
and judging from the contents of De Stijl, a trusted expert in contemporary Russian
art, to write a reader’s report on the manuscript of the Malevich volume. Having
published both Lissitzky and Malevich’s works in De Stijl, van Doesburg was a
logical candidate to evaluate the manuscript and could be expected to support the
planned book. Having read it, however, he adamantly rejected the project. Dated
Hanover, February 20, 1925, van Doesburg wrote to the publisher:
Dear Mr. Müller!

Today I sent you back the Malevich manuscript from Berlin.
I would like to sum up my judgment on it as follows:
Maybe a short article of 3, or at most 4 pages could be put together out of the
whole in an aphoristic format. The contents are mostly vague and dim, without
any consequence on the development of thinking. The ideas are, inasmuch as they
are enveloped in a romantic-symbolist phraseology, neither new, nor important,
and they are full of contradictions. The deification of Lenin (Christ-Lenin) is
outright ridiculous. Lenin himself would certainly not have liked to function as a
born-again Christ.
In summary: The author lacks the power and the skills to develop his ideas clearly
and logically so that they could become valuable for a transnational culture.
2. Although Malevich does not lack the instinct for the issues that matter in our
time, he unfortunately does not have enough mastery over the literary material to
bring all that to a generally understandable form.22
This report singlehandedly killed the publication project of Malevich’s writings.

The document does not offer the full name of the editor, nor does it include the
name or the address of the publisher. The Doesburgs did, indeed, stay in Germany
between January 17 and March 14, 1925. They were staying in Hanover late in
February.23 Moreover, Müller corresponded with Lissitzky about the fate of the
planned book but, probably after he received van Doesburg’s report, stopped
discussing it with him. Lissitzky mentioned Müller in relation to Malevich in
a letter to Sophie from Russia in June 1925: “I have not settled anything with
Müller. Malevich came to see me a few times during the last month, and we
agreed to go to town together ( . . . ) but he has not shown up.”24 Not having settled
on anything concerning the book with a publisher, along with Malevich’s silence
about the project, seems to have sealed the fate of the book project. Lissitzky
returned to Russia, as his visa was not extended in Switzerland; and although he
returned to Germany a few times in the late 1920s, he was not able to arrange for
the publication of the Malevich volume. He received further medical treatment
in Russia and died in 1941.
Van Doesburg’s Reasons
What evidently displeased van Doesburg on reading the Malevich manuscript,

aside from the contents, was that the text was, most likely, not convincingly
organized as a series of clear, cohesive statements. It lacked numbered chapters25
and subchapters, as well as typographically enhanced statements with bullet
points to give the reader the visual impression of strong logical structure, as
many modern publications had it. As a matter of fact, Malevich was criticized by
Anatoly Lunacharsky as well, for lack of clarity in his writings:
The trouble begins when Malevich ceases to paint paintings and begins to write
brochures. I heard that the Germans, too, were reduced to a state of confusion
by the artist’s writing. I tried to read the bombastic and vague theoretical works
of the leader of the “suprematists.” Malevich tried to somehow connect his goals
and his paths, getting in a tangle, both with the Revolution and with God.26
The similarity of the two judgments originate, aside from Malevich’s poetically
infused texts, from both readers’ respective political positions and strategies,
even if van Doesburg and Lunacharsky belonged to very different worlds.
While Lunacharsky did not find Malevich’s way of thinking acceptable from
the perspective of communist ideology, van Doesburg did not support him
because it was Malevich’s vagueness and inclination to mysticism which were
not acceptable to him; nor would have any of this helped his strategic moves in
the international avant-garde, where van Doesburg stepped up as a fighter for
authoritative clarity and transparent, generally understandable and convincingly

phrased ideas. In his earlier article “Elemental Formation,” van Doesburg wrote
in the journal G: “The requisite of our time [is] PRECISION [sic].”27
Aside from all that, van Doesburg’s judgments on Malevich’s works were often
directly dependent on the ups and downs of his relationship with El Lissitzky,
who, in this case as translator and former contributing editor of Veshch, was
also known to van Doesburg as the most ardent supporter of Malevich in
Western Europe. Van Doesburg had promoted Malevich and Lissitzky, both of
whom appeared to share concepts and formal language with him, and could
have helped to advance his own agenda, strengthening his own positions in
the spirit of widespread internationalism. Van Doesburg had offered his own
De Stijl as a platform for their writings and images. Lissitzky, however, often
proved unpredictable, as his ideas did not always square with Doesburg’s. Prior
to writing his reader’s report which prevented the publication of the Malevich
volume, van Doesburg had strongly disagreed with both Malevich and Lissitzky
on several occasions.
The first contretemps we are aware of occurred when Lissitzky led a walk-
through in his 1923 Proun Room for the Novemberlinge (November Group
members), including Mies van der Rohe and Hans Richter, where van Doesburg
also happened to be present. Members of the De Stijl group also exhibited works
at the same event. As Kai-Uwe Hemken notes, Lissitzky did not comply with
the unwritten but agreed rule to reject the commercialization of art and had
put price tags on three elements of the Proun Room.28 Hemken believes that this
was the cause of the “intense quarrel” (heftiger Streit) between the two of them,
van Doesburg having detested the idea of putting revolutionary art up for sale.
According to Richter the event—where Lissitzky was “half dancing” through the
space he had created “to demonstrate the sequence of the wall decoration”—was
controversial, and his performance, along with the price tags, may have alienated
and upset van Doesburg.29
The next conflict was caused by Malevich’s aforementioned article on Lenin,
published in the October 1924 issue of Das Kunstblatt, which must have been
a fresh memory to van Doesburg at the time of writing his reader’s report the
following February. Although van Doesburg was not aware that Lissitzky had
significantly streamlined the article already, he had strong misgivings about it
even in its abridged form—though at the time he read it in the planned volume,
the text must have been closer to its original length. A book that van Doesburg
judged to be disorganized, irrelevant, and confusing would not, if published,
shine a positive light on his documented relationship with the author and the
translator. Having published both Malevich and Lissitzky in De Stijl, it was in

van Doesburg’s vested interest to avoid any retroactive embarrassment on their
account. As his history with the Bauhaus had indicated, any disappointment
entailed the risk of provoking personal attacks, a pattern in van Doesburg’s
dealing with his fellow avant-garde artists.
Public Intellectual versus Prophet
The difference between the reception of visual and written works has been an
under-examined aspect of the Western reception of the Russian avant-garde.
Images were put on public view sooner than texts related to them were made
available to wider audiences. Writings either failed to get translated and published
or, once they were accessible in German, found an even more limited audience
than the artworks. It would be fair to surmise that texts were far less known than
even the rarely shown Russian avant-garde paintings, photos, and sculptures.
While texts required translation and editorial work as well as a publication
forum, visual works, once transported to a gallery space or reproduced,
spoke for themselves, however they may have been understood. As we saw in
Lunacharsky’s comments, artists’ written works did not necessarily fare well
with their compatriots either, albeit that depended on a number of political and
personal conditions. The square as insignia anticipated the “international of the
square” in the West. It represented formal and conceptual discipline, which may
have appeared suitable to symbolize the regulated language of the avant-garde.
In 1923 and the ensuing period, van Doesburg was fired up by, among other
things, his recent anti-Bauhaus course30 in Weimar, held almost across the street
from the school itself, which was attended by a number of young Bauhaus
students, many of whom became faithful friends and came to form a cohort of
his. Since van Doesburg venomously attacked the Bauhaus’ expressionism and
the lack of an architecture course at the school,31 he felt confident that by way of
an alliance with Lissitzky and other kindred spirits he would be able to overcome
the obsolete trends of individualism that the Bauhaus, according to him, was
still validating. The more international and larger the group van Doesburg
was to command, the greater hopes he could attach to a new collective era in
the arts. He proudly printed a Lissitzky proun image on the cover of De Stijl’s
June 1922 issue, with a manifesto-like excerpt from Lissitzky’s text “No World
Visions, BUT World Reality.” Malevich’s Black Square on White Ground was on
the cover of the September 1922 issue of De Stijl, followed by van Doesburg’s own
(unsigned) account of the new Russian art in “Plastic Russia.–Suprematism–New

Painting–Proun–Counterreliefs.” These were the new Russian developments in
art that van Doesburg was ready to welcome in his avant-garde international.
What van Doesburg was still missing was a conceptual framework for the new
art over which he intended to preside. However, it was precisely the written texts
that blew this homogeneity of the visual language apart. All those artists whose
works could be seen as speaking one and the same artistic language proved to
be—as van Doesburg’s reading of Malevich indicates—strangely at odds when
the artists themselves articulated their concepts in writing.
Moreover, published writings were more controlled and strategic than
personal letters, the private communications often revealing thoughts that
opened up different paths of thinking, in stark opposition to the perceived
meaning of some artworks, the new visual language, and its central element, the
square. Even if the meaning and interpretation varied to some extent, there was
a strong consensus regarding the visual symbolism of the square. Hesitations,
however, are reflected, for example, in a letter that El Lissitzky wrote to Dutch
architect J. J. P. Oud32 in March 1924, telling him both about his work on the
Malevich book and his second thoughts about the square:
The book of my friend Malevich I have been working on is almost ready. [

. . . However,] I am not so sure that our time really has “the square” as staple
(according to Plato, concept of harmony and completion), but new methods will
be found without the square, I am sure about this, and will want to demonstrate
that in systematic work. You know, I am a rationalist, but I have moments when
I am scared of “Ratio.”33
Throughout their correspondence, Lissitzky confessed to Oud further doubts

about van Doesburg’s ideas in June 1924, unaware of the reader’s report that
van Doesburg would soon submit: “It is symptomatic that we go on struggling
( . . . ) so we would not ossify in a Mandarinism of the square. ( . . . ) Doesburg
talked to me about the opposition of nature and art. I do not agree with that idea
that the Universal=straight line+right angle ( . . . ) the Universe does not know
straight lines.”34
To enhance this latter point, Lissitzky guest-edited the August 1924 issue
of the Hanover dadaist Kurt Schwitters’s journal Merz, emphatically titling
the issue Nasci, Latin for “to be born.” The Lissitzky-edited issue of Merz is a
programmatic homage to nature as opposed to artificiality, including the
concept he had once shared with van Doesburg: that art is superior to nature. To
underline his stance, Lissitzky topped the last page with the heading “Enough of
the MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE with which man has achieved modern
artistic production,” to clearly take the side of nature in his old debate with van
Doesburg.35
While committed to a vision of modernity which he saw embodied in
Malevich’s paintings, and projecting his own concepts into Malevich’s squares
and abstract compositions, van Doesburg found that Malevich’s texts were not
comprehensible and thus not publicly presentable. As an authority in matters
of art and the discourse about art, van Doesburg commanded a language of
succinct, pithy, brief statements in his articles and in his book Principles of Neo-
Plastic Art.36 Or so he thought: his book Principles of Neoplastic Art, published
in 1925 as Volume 6 of the Bauhaus Books series with typography by Moholy-
Nagy, actually also operates with a number of lofty, commonplace statements
that are not much more transparent or logical than those of Malevich. Many of
these declarations are flat, like “Everything that surrounds us is an expression of
life”;37 or difficult-to-discern pronouncements, such as “The aesthetic value of
a work of art depends upon the degree of distinctness of the aesthetic accents.”
Van Doesburg uses undefined terms like “aesthetic accents” and “mixed aesthetic
experience,” among many others, that are spectacularly arranged in the elegant
typography complete with bullet points and added emphasis, which lends
the appearance of enhanced conceptual structure to the text. Van Doesburg’s
ultimate conclusion is also lackluster (“Aesthetic understanding of an exact work
of art is possible only when the observer has an exclusively aesthetic relationship
with works of art”), and the book does not deliver on the promise of its title: it
does not present us with an understanding of the principles of neoplastic art. Van
Doesburg’s use of strict language (“exact work of art,” “exclusively”) functioned
rather as a code system of precision and claim to clarity than an actual
consistency, logic, or clarity. With his choice of words and the visually strong,
highly organized typographic framework, van Doesburg’s text exuded a sense
of power; but, unlike Malevich who stepped up as a prophet, he assumed the
power of a public intellectual: a secular expert who is an authority in the current
cultural discourse. His tone is aggressive and imperative. Oskar Schlemmer,
who met van Doesburg at the Bauhaus, noted about him in a letter: “Perhaps
because of his fanatical, agitational sermons, something’s gone wrong with his
good deed.”38
The fact that van Doesburg chose to focus his personal venom on Malevich’s
language makes his critique also addressed to the translator, El Lissitzky. Van
Doesburg was certainly appalled by some of Malevich’s statements, such as
“Cubism is the culminating point of the culture of painting, as communism is
the culminating point of socialist culture. ( . . . ) Not without reason was the
symbol of the cube used for Lenin—as for eternity, Lenin is the culminating
point.”39 Citing “eternity” and “culminating points” resonated as lofty talk for van
Doesburg, who was in no way inclined to see the culmination of history in the
person of Lenin. A comparison between cubism—which was a closed chapter of
modern art to him—and communism—a perhaps still possible future—was, in
his estimation, a nonsensical or at best deliberately Soviet-centered view. Had
Malevich been a painter only, without any published writings, as Lunacharsky
suggested, he would have been much more unproblematic and welcome, even
raised to stardom by van Doesburg. But Malevich’s ambition to be a prophet of
the future and an artist-priest of the present, claiming supreme power in the
international battlefield of the avant-garde, would hardly have been acceptable to
van Doesburg, even if it had come in the form of convincing verbal articulation.
The controversy notwithstanding, van Doesburg’s suggestion in his reader’s
report for Mr. Müller to assemble aphoristic excerpts from Malevich’s texts
apparently squared with an idea already formed prior to van Doesburg’s letter.
While the book was not yet rejected, the initiative to edit a selection of Malevich’s
statements, perhaps as an introductory publication, thus bringing the planned
book and its author to the attention of the public, may have occurred to its editors.
Carl Einstein and Paul Westheim’s Europa Almanach, a Gustav Kiepenheuer
publication of the same year, 1925, included “K. Malevich /Suprematism (From
writings 1915-20),” a compilation of slightly more than two densely printed pages,
including several excerpts from Malevich’s 1916 “From Cubism to Suprematism”
essay, the 1919 “On New Systems in Art,” and the 1920 text “Suprematism
34 Drawings.”40 This fact allows us to deduce that a positive reader’s report was
anticipated, and that in spite of the ongoing legal conflict between them, there
was still cooperation between Hans Müller and Gustav Kiepenheuer.41 What
makes it likely that the Europa Almanach was edited independently from van
Doesburg’s suggestion or that the editing had been concluded prior to obtaining
van Doesburg’s reader’s report is that Malevich received a copy of the book in the
mail from Lissitzky on February 4, 1925,42 and thanked him for it, more than two
weeks before the date of van Doesburg’s report. Van Doesburg may have had a
conversation about this with someone from the Kiepenheuer publishing house
prior to submitting his written report, as the Europa Almanach’s compilation of
Malevich quotes appears to follow his suggestions—but also, it may just as well
have been pure coincidence.
The compilation of excerpts from Malevich’s writings in the Europa Almanach
is illustrated by a suprematist painting of his as well as a proun composition
by Lissitzky, in reference to their artistic kinship and also to Lissitzky’s part in

making the Malevich texts available in German.43 While it seems beyond a doubt
that Lissitzky translated the Malevich texts excerpted in the almanac, the identity
of the editor who made the selection remains veiled, and no credit to anyone
else is included in the volume, neither for the editing nor for the translation.44
The volume’s editors may have directly taken the texts out of the manuscript
which Lissitzky had submitted to Mr. Müller. One likely reference to the Europa
Almanach is a letter of Malevich’s to Lissitzky, dated February 11, 1925,45 in
which Malevich mentions “letters of architecture” that he will send “to Gustav
Kiepenheuer”46 and another “little article I sent to Gustav, the extracts from The
World as Objectlessness.”47 It is not clear, however, whether Malevich did in fact
mail these pieces of writing, and if so, whether in Russian or as translations;
nor is it clear that, if received, why they were not published. Since there is no
evidence of a second reader—the Kiepenheuer Verlag’s 1924–1925 documents
are unfortunately missing from the holdings of the Stadtarchiv Leipzig, where
the publisher’s papers are deposited48—and as the volume of Malevich’s writings
was never published in German, it appears that van Doesburg did, indeed,
terminate the project with his report.
In the Europa Almanach the following motto is printed before the Malevich
texts, presumably written by him: “Space is a receptacle without dimensions,
where reason places its creations. I would like to place my creative form also
there.” This is one of many examples demonstrating that taken out of their original
context, Malevich’s textual excerpts read as pontifications. Such statements as
“We can sense space only when we get detached from the earth and our secure
contact with it disappears”; or, “Without color the world is impossible, without
color there are no distances” made Malevich appear simply declarative without as
much as making an effort to persuade his readers of the validity of his theses, thus
vindicating van Doesburg’s verdict. This publication misrepresented Malevich first
of all because in many—if not all—of his essays, he covered a lot of ground before
coming down so decidedly on certain points, unlike the way in which the short
collection of his ultimate conclusions presented him in the Europa Almanach.
The End of a Friendship
While van Doesburg had never met Malevich in person, and as of 1925 his
ideas were mediated to him only by Lissitzky’s translations, van Doesburg and
Lissitzky had a stormy relationship, a mix of camaraderie, rivalry, and hostility
that ended bitterly in 1926. By rejecting the Malevich book early in 1925, van
Doesburg also negated Lissitzky’s work as a translator as well as his art historical
lineage.
It was particularly van Doesburg’s statement that “Malevich ( . . . )
unfortunately does not have enough mastery over the literary material to bring
it to a generally understandable form” that was a devastating critique addressed
to Lissitzky, implying that the translator either chose the wrong text to work on
or was incompetent himself in bringing the Russian original to an acceptable,
clear German version.
Both van Doesburg and Lissitzky had, at different points of time, cooperated
with Kurt Schwitters and his journal Merz. Following their 1923 fallout at
the walk-through of Lissitzky’s Proun Room, the two did not have any sort
of exchange until the summer of 1924, when the Nasci issue of Merz was
published,49 in which Lissitzky signed one of his articles not only with his name
but also with the location of writing it, namely “Locarno, Hospital.” Having
seen that, van Doesburg must have sent a postcard to Lissitzky inquiring about
his health, whereupon, relieved to see their friendship on the way to being
restored, Lissitzky responded in a long letter in July 1924. Among other things
he wrote the following, most likely in reference to the Proun Room event where
others “happened to be present” as well, and the conflict between him and van
Doesburg broke out:
The attention and appreciation that modern people give each other in Russia
does not originate from their differences in views on art but from the very force
of their respective, opposing artistic expressions. That is why you disappointed
me so much when you allowed that our unexplained differences of opinion
affect our friendship. To the satisfaction of some who happened to be present,
odd differences [between us] were revealed. That is why your postcard now gave
me such pleasure.50
Lissitzky informed van Doesburg that he was in a sanatorium, had had surgery
that left him with only half a lung, but that he hoped to recover. Then he quickly
switched to discussing work and future plans. Van Doesburg must have soon
responded, as Lissitzky replied to him in a letter in August saying, “You have
written so much in your letter that I cannot take in all of it at once. ( . . . ) Thank
you for the photos, too.”51
The friendship, however, had not survived the year 1924. Nasci may have
played a role in this, because it could be understood as Lissitzky’s betrayal of
the ideas he had shared with van Doesburg back in Düsseldorf about the supra-
natural status of geometry. Relating to developments that are not known to

posterity, in a letter to Sophie in December 1924, Lissitzky wrote that he planned
to dump a lot of his mail, “first of all Doesburg. DAMNIT. Don’t let me be taken
for a perfect fool.”52
The tension between the two was exacerbated even further after van Doesburg
read Lissitzky’s “A. and Pangeometry” article in the Europa Almanach, which
included a comment on Mondrian in a footnote that van Doesburg would not
tolerate:
Mondrian accomplished the ultimate solution in the development of Western

painting. He reduces surface to its primeval state, namely surface only, in the
sense that there is no longer anything spatial inside or out of a given surface. (
. . . ) Whenever De Stijl artists transpose Mondrian’s principles onto the three
surfaces of a room, they turn into decorators.53
“Decorator” was the ultimate defamatory insult and term of belittlement in the
avant-garde discourse, and van Doesburg took it for an offense. He had already
emphatically announced that “The age of decorative taste is past; the contemporary
artist has entirely closed down the past.”54 Now, van Doesburg retorted in a vitriolic
way. He remembered suprematist motifs that Malevich and other suprematists
applied on teapots and other chinaware made at the Petrograd Porcelain Factory
which had been on display at the First Russian Exhibition in 1922 as a project for
changing the character and style of household objects from classical into futurist-
suprematist. All of that was in fact decorative. In response to Lissitzky, van Doesburg
published photos of suprematist-decorated mugs, jars, teapots, and a plate in
De Stijl, with the comment “BAZAR, BAZAR, BAZAR, BAZAR” (junk, junk,
junk, junk)—exactly echoing Lissitzky’s repetition of “ENOUGH of MACHINE,
MACHINE, MACHINE” in upper-case typeface in the Nasci issue of Merz.
The four-time repetition of an all-upper-case-printed word55 may be a clear
enough response to Lissitzky, but nonetheless van Doesburg addressed the “A.
and Pangeometry” essay more directly, writing in a shockingly new tone:
In Westheim and Carl Einstein’s Jewish Almanac “Europa” Elia Lissitzky stoops to
the depths when he states that as soon as the “artists” of “De Stijl” transpose their
principle into 3 dimensions, they become mere “decorators.” ( . . . ) Of just what
kind of artsy-crafty tinkering Malevichian suprematism (confined to Moscow
and Warsaw) is capable, we can see by the little mugs and jugs above, for which
the Polish artist Malevich designed the decorations! In a similar way, Kandinsky
decorates artistic dinner sets, which makes it evident that expressionism and
suprematism are expressive forms of one and the same mentality.56
Figure 9.1 El Lissitzky: MACHINE, MACHINE, MACHINE, Merz (Band 2, Nr.8/9),

April–July 1924, interior page 1924. Photo Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
(930030) © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Figure 9.2 Theo van Doesburg: Kazimir Malevich: BAZAR, BAZAR, BAZAR, De
Stijl, 1926–1927, pages 57–8. Photo Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (87-S1754
vol.7 no.75/76) © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Previously unprecedented racist-nationalist language, anger and contempt are

pouring out here from van Doesburg: the Almanach is “Jewish”; Lissitzky’s name
is now contemptuously given in Yiddish as “Elia” rather than considering him a
Russian artist; Malevich is now a “Polish artist,” “confined” to faraway, and thus
obscure and irrelevant “Warsaw and Moscow,” excluded from van Doesburg’s
earlier internationalist project; and, if that were not enough, “Malevichian
suprematism” is compared, as it was by Umansky and Puni, to Kandinsky’s

expressionism, the style that van Doesburg, as revealed in his 1922 anti-Bauhaus
attack, had the greatest disdain for. This article marks the end of van Doesburg’s
intentions to cooperate with Russian artists altogether, distancing them from
the Western art world as orientals, with whom collaboration and harmonious
work was out of the question in van Doesburg’s part of the world. The fact that
this contempt for the porcelain work was generated by the Lissitzky article and
these lines were a message personally addressed to Lissitzky is all the more
obvious, as van Doesburg did not comment on such pots and plates when he
saw them in the Van Diemen Gallery back in 1922 where they were exhibited.57
At that time, they were seen as demonstration of transforming tradition into
modern forms even in household objects in order to reeducate the population;
they did not arouse van Doesburg’s passionate repulsion, which he expressed
in 1926, as he either skipped them or was not interested in critiquing them
in 1922, when he did not interpret these objects against Russian artists as an
ultimate abomination.
Personal or Cultural Issues?
Was van Doesburg’s rejection of Lissitzky and Malevich purely personal, or

was there a deeper than previously identified cultural difference between the
Western cultural discourse and the new Russian art and art concepts?
Not unlike Lissitzky’s observations on nascent German nationalism in 1924,58
Malevich was also intensely aware of cultural differences and rather bitter about
them. He outlined his views in a letter he wrote to Lissitzky on February 11,
1925, coincidentally only a few days after the date of van Doesburg’s reader’s
report. Discussing his painting Head of a Peasant,59 interpreted as the image of
“The New Savior,” Malevich wrote, in part bringing Lissitzky’s aforementioned
letter on Tatlin’s Tower to mind:
I painted an ordinary head of a peasant, it turned out that it wasn’t ordinary, and
indeed, if you look at it from the perspective of the East, then it is everything
that is ordinary for Westerners, but for people of the East it becomes something
not ordinary, everything that is ordinary turns into an Icon, for the East is in fact
iconic, and the West is a machine, an object, a latrine, utilitarianism, technology,
and here [the East] people will be set free through a new image, ( . . . ) a new
Savior. ( . . . ) I painted that Savior between 1909 and 191060, he became a Savior
through the Revolution. ( . . . ) Tatlin’s tower is a fiction of Western technology,
he is sending it now to the Paris exhibition,61 and of course, he could also build
an iron and concrete pissoir. . . . It is all so clear to me.62
Malevich, whose acerbity could have increased as the Russian constructivists

were to represent the Soviet Union at the Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris later that year, while the suprematists
were excluded, used a language similar to van Doesburg’s. He recognized
that clarity was the issue in which East and West differed: they construed and
read their respective ideas differently, which led to misunderstandings and
misinterpretations of both Russian artworks and texts in the West. In Russia,
Malevich could hardly have found a more derogatory phrasing for his longtime
adversary Tatlin’s work than a “fiction of Western technology,” the word “fiction”
citing verbatim Lissitzky’s earlier judgment of the object.
10
Enter Malevich
Exhibitions in Post-Utopian Warsaw and
Berlin, and the Bauhaus Book, 1927
Both the attitudes and the historic context of the interwar avant-gardes changed
in and around 1923. Utopian expectations drifted away as hard-core pragmatism
and new concepts of the social usefulness of art gained currency. The rebuilding
of post–First World War Europe entered a new era of down-to-earth rather than
idealized goals: material and budgetary considerations were prioritized over big
ideas.
Malevich’s visit to Warsaw, Berlin, and the Dessau Bauhaus, as well as his
only solo exhibition in Berlin in 1927, all took place in the midst of these new
conditions. As an avant-garde artist, Malevich faced hostility from the officialdom
in the Soviet Union and hoped to find a more receptive climate abroad.
Although he gave up painting around 1921–1922—as painting was declared
obsolete by most progressive artists in Moscow—and created three-dimensional
“architectons,” the majority of the works he exhibited in Berlin were paintings,
oil on canvas.
With several of the pictures of the Berlin show lost or missing today,1 it was
that exhibition and the preservation of most of its material that nonetheless
kept Malevich’s work accessible for posterity. The manuscripts he left in Berlin
were also retrieved in 1954 and, translated into German and published in 1962,
served as the other pillar to the recovery of his oeuvre.
1923: A Watershed Year
The second half of the year 1923 can be, with more or less precision, pinpointed
as the end of the heightened revolutionary and utopian expectations of the avant-
gardes that emerged in the wake of the First World War. Events and documents
of 1923 indicate a sea change in the outlook and conditions of the international
avant-garde in or around that year. Planning the future gave way to work in
the real world of the present. The events of 1922—the First Düsseldorf Congress
of Progressive Artists in May, where the International Faction of Constructivists
was formed, the momentum of which energized the Conference of Dadaists and
Constructivists convoked by Theo van Doesburg in September, followed by the
First Russian Exhibition in October—did not lead to the further advancement
of the vaguely outlined idealist avant-garde project. Despite the activities of the
“anti-authoritarian authorities” mentioned earlier, no international leadership
materialized. Several “little journals” had a longer lifetime and circulation, but
after 1923 the paths of the progressives who had met and planned activities in
the wake of the Great War—including van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy,
Hans Richter, and others—diverged.
It was in 1923 that both Malevich and van Doesburg reached a point of
culmination in the radicalism of their visionary ideas. Van Doesburg, under the
pen name I. K. Bonset, published the article “Toward Constructive Poetry”2 in
his journal Mécano, stepping up as a dadaist against the emerging utilitarian
concepts: “To accept the purely utilitarian as the whole foundation for a new
art form = madness.” He lampooned the “blue jackets” for claiming a kind of
pragmatism that they could not deliver on. Since “blue jacket” was, as Bann
notes, a slang term for sailor, this brings to mind the productivist, utilitarian
Tatlin’s 1911–1912 Self Portrait as Sailor as one of van Doesburg’s targets. Harshly
critiquing the concept of functionality, van Doesburg asserted that the poet
creates, in spite of “‘disinterested abstraction,’ a world and a new man”3 purely
from the language, nothing else, regardless of any social or practical usefulness.
At the same time, in the spring of 1923 Malevich, as Masha Chlenova relates,
“exhibited two blank primed canvases close to the ceiling of a gallery space as
the culmination of the UNOVIS display at the exhibition Petrograd Artists of
All Trends,”4 titling this work Suprematist Mirror. In the accompanying text of
the same title, Malevich announced that both “comprehension of God” and
“comprehension of nature” equal “nothing”: there is no comprehension of
anything whatsoever, all efforts to understand the world amount to nothing; and
the world is the world of non-objectivity.5
At the same time, in the spring of 1923, Kállai, already an important voice
in the German art scene, was carried away by a grand vision of constructivism.
Kállai wrote an article titled “Constructivism,”6 which marked the apex of his
thrill with the geometric abstract works of both constructivism and suprematism.
Written in Berlin, it was published in the Vienna-based Ma. Consistently with
Enter Malevich 181
the dominant perception of both trends in Germany as the art of the future,
Kállai envisions and celebrates them as the victory over alienation in society.
“Constructivist consciousness experiences itself in space-time in terms of the
absolute here and now. . . . The constructive consciousness is ahistorical. ( . . . )
A suprematist single square is the realization of the will to achieve ultimate
unity and identity with oneself.”7 These exalted lines were the last celebratory
ones Kállai wrote about constructivism and suprematism as harbingers of an
ideal future society. Already in the same May 1923 issue of Ma, editor Lajos
Kassák published an article titled “The Tragedy of a Generation,” admitting the
defeat of the utopian illusions. He described the progressive Hungarian artists—
an account easily applicable to the entire international avant-garde—as having
started their careers during the war and the revolutions “determined to climb
the mountain peak, and now humbly descending halfway from the slopes.”8
Once again in tune with the vibes of the changing international scene, in the
summer of the same year Kállai published the antithesis of his “Constructivism”
essay, titled “Correction (To the Attention of De Stijl).”9 Addressed to the De
Stijl, critiquing what Kállai had called their “exclusive constructivism”10 and
“aesthetic games,”11 he redirected the concept of art from an imaginary future
to actual present-day reality, which “would mean sacrificing constructivism, the
isolated cult of future life, to the cult of today’s life.”12 Changing his mind almost
overnight, he was done with all the purity and transcendentalism of geometric
abstraction, and pronounced, “Art in its totality. . . is tied to the psychological
and biological laws governing the organism that creates it.”13
In Berlin, the infinite dimensions of Lissitzky’s vision of the future dating from
Vitebsk, 1919, gave way to the new concept and practice of day-to-day work in
the form of advertisement design for the Pelikan firm that produced stationery,
fountain pens, and ink in Berlin. This was happening at about the same time as
when the 1919 Bauhaus utopia symbolized by the “Socialist cathedral” gave way
to more pragmatism in the Bauhaus with a similar shift in the views and activities
of Walter Gropius who, in his capacity as director, replaced the quasi-religious
mysticism of Johannes Itten with the constructivist lucidity of László Moholy-
Nagy in 1923; and substituted the religious ecstasy of Lothar Schreyer’s stage
work with Oskar Schlemmer’s clearly planned geometric choreography. Not that
Moholy-Nagy or Schlemmer had been limited to exclusively rational modes of
thinking or working, but they both mustered a matter-of-fact professionalism
that was the order of the day.
Palpable change in history also registered with the Russians. In 1923 the
VKhUTEMAS had a newly appointed rector, Vladimir A. Favorsky, who worked
on realizing the government’s 1923 Educational Reform, which placed emphasis

on the school’s collaboration with industrial production.14 Soviet-Russian writer
Mikhail Slonimsky’s 1923 short story “The Emery Machine” accounts for the
dramatic reversal of the great postrevolutionary illusions:
I won’t fuss at all. I’ll shoot myself in the head. We have shot in the head, crushed
and annihilated everything that even slightly resembled the past. We have
skipped forward a thousand years, a millennium separated us from those we
exterminated. . . . In brief, I struggled against time and space, I wanted to make
the future present. This had seemed possible in those panic-stricken, confused
years when time seemed to vanish, but now that the panic has ceased, life again
proceeds in time and space. And even if space can be conquered, time cannot.
Life is again motivated by the same old things: love, money, and fame.15
This short story precisely marked the nascent political and artistic changes.
The French writer Jean Cocteau’s 1918 “Call to Order”16 had, at least at face
value, its equivalent in Russia after the turmoil of the revolutionary and Civil
War years: the establishment-organization AKhRR17 formed in 1922 advocated
heroic realism and enhanced loyalty to the Soviet state. Its members attacked
the artists of both INKhUK and NARKOMPROS as bourgeois and claimed
exclusive right to be considered left wing. They organized their first exhibition
in Moscow in May 1922, all proceeds of which were used, similarly to the First
Russian Exhibition in Berlin, for relief of the Russian famine of 1921. The Neue
Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, the new group of realist painters headed by
Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, emerged in Germany in 1920, but they organized
their first exhibition only in 1925. Anti-expressionist as well as anti-abstraction,
they engaged in a realist style of social critique that was opposed to—and even
mocking all sorts of—idealism. Hartlaub published an article in Das Kunstblatt
in 1927 titled “Looking Back on Constructivism,”18 clearly putting it in the past
tense and anticipating an idea that would, three decades later, be one of the
central program points of the Situationist International: “Our theoretical relation
to abstraction and indirectness corresponds to the abstraction and indirectness
of our relation to the world”19—meaning to urge actual activity and direct action
instead of alienated “indirectness.”
Critique of utopian idealism also came from inside utopian-progressive
movements. After Raoul Hausmann, Hans Arp, Ivan Puni, and László Moholy-
Nagy published the previously mentioned “A Call for Elementarist Art” in the
fall of 1921, Kemény and Moholy-Nagy published Dynamisch-konstruktives
Kraftsystem20 (Dynamic-Constructive System of Forces) at the end of 1922, a
Enter Malevich 183
declaration in which they called for a reassessment of the criteria of “constructive

art.” They claimed that “constructive art” has become static—or, in the language
of the avant-garde, dead—and, as Kemény put it at INKhUK in 1921—a kind
of “technical naturalism.” Instead, they proposed new “dynamic constructions,”
where material is not considered more than “the vehicle of energy,” and
emphasis is shifted from tangible material to intangible energy-systems—a
modern concept of electric current and various rays. Such novel works, they
suggested, would activate spectators and stimulate them. They also suggested the
examination of free-hanging sculptures and the use of films for the purpose of
studying the interrelationship of space, material, and energy.21
Kemény and Moholy-Nagy’s manifesto voiced a faith in the capacity of
new materials and new systems in art. They proposed to draw art closer to the
sciences—a view shared by many progressive artists at the time. Gabo’s plastic
string sculptures, with their virtual volume created by movement; Moholy-Nagy’s
interest in transparency and kinetic objects; Péri’s interest in space, manifest in his
three-dimensional objects made of concrete; and van Doesburg’s concept of color
planes in both spatial works and paintings, all pointed toward a reassessment of
the interrelationship of space and object. Lissitzky’s already discussed 1923 Proun
Room must also be considered in this context. Kemény published another article,
“Das dynamische Prinzip” (“The Dynamic Principle”), in Der Sturm,22 advocating
“cosmic constructions,” each of which would be dynamic.
Critique of constructivism as “static” soon reached the point of the above
artists’ and critics’ siding with a potentially popular figurative art. Kemény and
Moholy-Nagy, along with Péri and Kállai, criticized abstraction embodied in
constructivism in a “Nyilatkozat,” or Declaration they signed and published
in the Hungarian communist periodical Egység (Unity), in February 1923.23
Similarly to AKhRR, although likely unbeknownst of its existence, they now
proposed the organization of politically committed communist proletarian
cultural units that would guarantee the cooperation of different artists’ groups
and the termination of “bourgeois aestheticism,” which they claimed corrupted
the true spirit of constructivism. They saw direct ties between communism and
“true” constructivism, stating that the true art form of the collective society of
the future would be what they called “collective architecture.” The Declaration
voiced Kemény’s critique of the young OBMOKhU constructivists’ mechanical
outlook24 in Moscow, too—a derogatory assessment that the authors now
extended to the De Stijl group, as well. They urged the organization of proletkult
movements in Europe—that is, initiatives for artists to create an easy-to-
understand, transparent, ideology-driven realist art for the working classes.
The Bauhaus organized the “Bauhaus Week” in Weimar, a week of

presentations and exhibitions in the summer of 1923, which was successful
both nationwide and internationally but generated increased hostility in
Weimar, and was followed by the school’s ousting of the town as a result of the
1924 parliamentary elections in its home region of Thüringen. Conditions for
future-bound utopian art were changing. Lissitzky commented bitterly on the
demise of the internationalist and collectivist-spirited avant-gardes in a letter to
Sophie at the end of 1924:
Forget about making international exhibitions in Germany. Now comes

GERMAN national painting. I would very much like to be wrong, but we may
witness how Burchartz, Schlemmer, and Röhl will step up as representatives
of National Constructivism and National Bauhaus. I am not sure even about
Kurtchen. And in this Germany, you want to propagate Malevich and Mondrian.
Forget about it.25
Lissitzky had a very dark outlook but, in point of fact, turned out to be mostly
wrong: neither Kurt Schwitters (“Kurtchen”) nor Schlemmer became nationalists,
nor did “national” get attached to art directions as yet; on the other hand, however,
he turned out to be right about Burchartz and Peter Röhl, both of whom joined
the nazi Party in 1933. His pessimism notwithstanding, Lissitzky, as early as 1924,
captured the new direction of the future that was, in the long run, antithetical to
the internationalism and utopianism of the immediate postwar years.
Noting the Zeitgeist of the times, Ernst Kállai gave the telling title “The
Twilight of Ideologies” to an essay he published in 1925,26 stating that “today we
are witnessing a time of professional consolidation and absorption in objective,
expert work.”27
Malevich’s travel and exhibitions in Europe in 1927, as he brought his
revolutionary avant-garde paintings and ideas to the West, must be examined in
this framework as well.
Malevich in Warsaw
Malevich’s visit and reception in Warsaw on his way to Berlin in the spring of
1927 was, in a sense, a prequel to his reception in Berlin. He had a commanding
reputation in both cities, but many of his colleagues found that he represented
concepts that have become, by the time he arrived in Warsaw and then Berlin,
obsolete.
Enter Malevich 185
Because of his family background and personal contacts,28 Malevich had close
ties to Poland, and Polish artists regarded him as a fellow countryman who just
happened to be living in Russia. The leading Polish constructivists Władisław
Strzemiński (1893–1952) and his wife Katarżyna Kobro (Ekaterina Kobro,
1898–1951)29 had both studied at SVOMAS (Svobodnie Masterskii, The State
Free Art Studios) in Moscow in 1918, with Malevich among others, and were
connected to the Smolensk branch of UNOVIS. Until about 1921 they were the
only artists outside Russia who had firsthand knowledge of Malevich’s work and
ideas. After the couple moved to Poland in 1922, Strzemiński published “Notes
on Russian Art” in the Polish journal Zwrotnica (Switch-Points). The editors of
the journal appended a note, stating:
The author of the following article recently came back from Russia, where he
took an active part in artistic movements. In the letter addressed to our editorial
board, he asks for help to bring Mr. Malevich, our countryman and one of the
leading artists in the Russian art world, to Poland. We draw the matter to the
attention of the Department of Culture and Art.30
Indeed, back in 1922, Strzemiński declared that Malevich was “a giant,” whose
development had been “blocked by Commissar Lunacharsky,” who had failed
to recognize true artistic value. Instead, the Commissar of Enlightenment
had supported the productivists, whom Strzemiński criticized for having “no
idea about the efforts that have led to cubist and suprematist developments.”31
Strzemiński, however, switched positions on both suprematism and productivism
by the end of the decade, which is a clear indication of changes both within and
without the avant-gardes.
Views on progressive art in interwar Poland may have been matters of
principle; however, the group dynamics of the progressive Polish art scene
that reflected various trends did not entail the political hostilities of the
Second Polish Republic.32 Progressive artists did not adapt a stance of militant
opposition to mainstream Polish art—regained Polish independence made
everyone enthusiastically patriotic—but they were marginalized by both the
public and the officialdom. Mainstream art in Poland consisted of neoclassicism
and neorealism, both of which, as Irena Kossowska observes, “resulted from a
rejection of the self-referential experimentation with non-representational and
abstract form manifest in modernism, and a denunciation of the intellectual
speculation typical of the avant-garde.”33 This was a general trend, which
accompanied and was parallel to the thriving international avant-garde during
the first years of the 1920s, which nevertheless also developed in Poland.
Strzemiński’s “Notes on Russian Art”34 was a controversial article. The

rampant anti-Russian and anti-Soviet sentiments in Poland made all utterances
about Russian culture provocative. The author, therefore, stressed Malevich’s
Polish ethnicity, pointing out that he “is not the first pre-eminent Pole in
Russian art.”35 Strzemiński‘s unequivocal admiration of Malevich had changed
by 1924, however, when he founded the Blok (Block) Circle and journal of the
same title, including fellow abstract artists Kobro, Henryk Stażewski (1894–
1988), Mieczyslaw Szczuka (1898–1927), and Teresa Zarnower (1895–1950).
Typically, these self-confessed cubists, suprematists, and constructivists blurred
the boundaries between these respective artistic trends, while the group became
increasingly committed to constructivism, in particular to the utilitarianism
that constructivism entailed. As early as March 1924 Stażewski identified what
he referred to as “post-suprematism” in the first issue of Blok and announced
the “bankruptcy of suprematism,” maintaining that with its invention, “A
new notion of beauty is born—the beauty of utilitarianism.”36 Blok started to
criticize Malevich in harsh terms, deliberately skewing the arguments in its
editors’ favor. “Suprematism did not define the concept of shape in painting,”37
Strzemiński stated, and he reproached Malevich for misunderstanding
the relations “between art and technology, art and astronomy, and art and
[geometry].”38 By this time, Strzemiński was developing his own rigorous
concept of “absolute painting,” which, he asserted, had to be absolutely planar,
reduced to one flat picture plane, and avoid any interaction between forms—a
system whose details he fully elaborated on in his manifesto, Unism in Painting,
published in 1928.39
Having sent four drawings to the Second Exhibition of Contemporary
Architecture in Warsaw in 1926,40 Malevich arrived in Warsaw for the first
time in March 1927, with works for a retrospective exhibition, the material of
which was, by and large, that of his upcoming Berlin show. He spent about three
weeks in the Polish capital. His invitation and exhibition were the initiative of
Strzemiński and Szczuka, apparently Strzemiński helping Malevich obtain the
necessary travel documents.41
In Warsaw, Malevich received a mixed reception. On the one hand, he was
enthusiastically welcomed and celebrated by the Polish artists who organized the
exhibition and arranged a festive banquet in his honor (see Figure 10.1). Poet
and art critic Tadeusz Peiper (1891–1969), for example, greeted him warmly and
expressed the wish that he could become a permanent member of the Polish art
world, as “Polish artists are overcome with melancholy at the thought that the
Pole Malevich is not here working at their side [because] our artistic life is not
Enter Malevich 187
Figure 10.1 Welcome reception for Malevich in the Polonia Hotel, Warsaw, March
1927. © Sotheby’s. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
exactly rich with artists of his calibre. We miss Malevich. ( . . . ) Malevich should
not just visit us!”42
Malevich met members of the Praesens group, including Stażewski, Helena,
and Szymon Syrkus, as well as Strzemiński and Kobro. As Andrzej Turowski
relates, “Malevich’s exhibition in Warsaw was held at the Polish Arts Club in
the Polonia Hotel, where the club occupied the entire first floor. ( . . . ) The
Polonia occupied an important place on the social, cultural, and political map
of the capital. Its position in the traditional city center in direct proximity to the
international railway station, bestowed a certain prestige.”43 In the large clubroom
of the hotel an improvised exhibition of Malevich’s paintings was arranged and
shown for a week, as the art community celebrated the painter. A great number
of reviews and articles on Malevich were published in the Polish press.44
Not all of these articles were celebratory, however. For example, Szczuka
attacked Malevich in an article titled “The Funeral of Suprematism,”45 pointing
out the many strong modernists in Poland who had come a long way since they
had admired Malevich about a decade earlier. Szczuka stressed that “Malevich’s
exhibition is a little too late for our country”46 and, coining a new term, explained:
“Kazimir Malevich is the founder of ‘Eastern-European suprematism.’” This, he
claimed, has failed to achieve “complete flatness” as dictated by Strzemiński’s
Unism, which was much discussed ahead of its publication among Polish artists.
Szczuka admitted that complete flatness is “an unattainable objective” but, short
of this achievement, he maintained that suprematism has ended up being merely

a form of “abstract museum painting.”47 “Eastern-European suprematism,” he
wrote, lacks dynamism while, he claimed, it also features “a certain literary
character, resulting from the juxtaposition of abstract shapes, thrown onto an
unrelated background.”48 In other words, Szczuka argued that Malevich failed
to keep the picture autonomous and non-referential. Therefore, his work is, in
Strzemiński’s ultimate derogatory term, “baroque,” implying “decorative” and
antiquated. More profoundly detaching himself and all “true” Polish modernists
from Malevich, Szczuka asserted: “the characteristic feature of Malevich’s
psychology is an abhorrence of the word ‘construction’, applied to works of art.
He is a romantic who loves painterly means for their own sake.”49
This last statement, which happens to square with Puni’s and Umansky’s
earlier judgments as well as the constructivists’ earlier critique, marks a turning
point in the Polish interpretation of Malevich’s work. Consistently with the
international shift from idealism to pragmatism after 1923, this critique of
constructivism reflected a fundamental change within the Polish avant-garde
as well, one that was now firmly committed to the rigor of utilitarianism—in a
way that was similar to that of the Moscow constructivists but on the grounds
of different aesthetics. The earlier fascination with Malevich’s cosmic abstraction
was turning into a contempt for “Art for art’s sake, served by the artist priest. [ . . .
] Mystical and theological speculations in which Malevich attempted to contain
his conception of art.”50 Szczuka’s rant, which on some points agrees with van
Doesburg’s critique, still has more to do with the change in the Polish avant-
garde than with Malevich’s art and ideas, and precisely because of this it vividly
conveys the sharp tone that characterized the Polish avant-garde discourse of
the late 1920s. The multitude of views expressed in a large number of articles
suggests a serious and informed discussion about the future possibilities of the
visual arts in Warsaw. Unism, however, was not the only authoritative voice in
the debate. Malevich’s views and suprematism both had a catalytic impact on
different artistic concepts which, in turn, dismissed him as imperfect or obsolete.
And yet, whatever stance the Polish artists adopted, Malevich’s work and ideas
consistently remained points of reference for them.
The Berlin Exhibition’s Context
Malevich was offered a Sonderausstellung, a distinguished solo exhibition at the

1927 Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, an annual event at which Lissitzky had
Enter Malevich 189
participated earlier, in 1923. Malevich was presented this opportunity by way

of help from his friend, architect and November Group member Hugo Häring
(1882–1958) who, with his Russian-speaking wife of Latvian origin, had helped
establish contacts between Russian and German artists.51 Malevich’s friends,
engineer Gustav von Riesen and his family who had lived in Moscow and spoke
fluent Russian, were his hosts and interpreters during his stay in Berlin from
March 29 to June 4, 1927.
According to Troels Andersen, Malevich took seventy paintings to Berlin,
about one-third of which were suprematist, besides earlier mostly cubo-futurist
works, as well as a number of drawings, architectural models, and “theoretical
charts.”52 While Andersen suggests that with his “theoretical charts” Malevich
wanted to demonstrate the ongoing theoretical work at Leningrad’s GINKhUK
(Gosudarstvennii Institute Khudozhestvennoi Kulturi, State Institute for Artistic
Culture), where he was working at the time as leader of one of the experimental
departments, the demonstration boards were meant to be used in future lectures
that Malevich hoped to give in Germany—at the Bauhaus, for instance—as well
as in Paris and Vienna, where he had hoped to travel and exhibit his works while
also teaching art courses.
Malevich’s invitation to a solo exhibition in Germany demonstrated the
further development of official German-Soviet relations in the second half of
the 1920s. This opportunity, however, came rather late for Malevich, as the
cosmic, utopian imagination he represented was being increasingly replaced
by pragmatic professionalism at the time of his visit to Berlin. This tendency
is demonstrated by a number of articles in the art press, including an essay by
architecture critic Siegfried Giedion, who proposed that it was time to switch
from the lofty term “architecture” to the more pragmatic and humble term
“building,” and discuss the realization of functional rather than representational
projects.53 Throughout the same period, the political shift to the right was
unmistakable. One early symptom and consequence of this shift was the public
humiliation of Walter Gropius by the Dessau press that, among other reasons,
led to his resignation as director of the Bauhaus in 1927, effective 1928. Thus,
Malevich’s exhibition in the same year came too late for becoming a celebrated
or memorable event. So much so that many art journals skipped reviewing it
altogether. As in Poland, so in Berlin Malevich was representative of the recent
past that all too soon became history. His suprematist imagery brought back the
recent memory of a free, unlimited imagination unrestricted by pragmatism.
Moreover, Malevich exhibited mostly paintings in Berlin, in spite of having ceased
to paint altogether54 five or six years earlier, as he instead turned to designing and
making three-dimensional “architectons.” Malevich either trusted the radicalism

of his paintings to be accepted as being revelatory in Berlin, or he was informed
to the effect that paintings were still more coveted in Germany than more radical
designs of a futuristic, imaginary architecture. In any case, the fact remains that
he presented works from an earlier, already closed period of his art.
After the 1922 Van Diemen Gallery exhibition, articles discussing the new
Russian art in general, and constructivism in particular, became more frequent in
the German press than previously. To refer to just a couple of surveys aside from the
positive reviews of the Soviet participation in the 1925 Exposition Internationale des
Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, Alfréd Kemény and Ernst Kállai’s
articles stand out. Kemény’s “Abstraction from Suprematism to the Present”55 was
published in Das Kunstblatt, the editor of which inserted a note between the title and
the text announcing that the article does not reflect the journal’s value judgments.
Thus, even the progressive Das Kunstblatt was cautiously tactful regarding the art
talk of the previous years. Kemény, a staunch communist, discusses “new designers”
rather than “new artists” and asserts an “East-West polarity: the antithesis between
the social dynamism of Russia and the comparative social immobility of the
West,”56 representing the left-wing concept that did not admit to a slowdown in
Soviet dynamism regarding the arts and was equally blind to the ongoing shift
to the political right in Germany. Kemény underlines that Malevich’s Square is
“the symbol for the principle of economy in art,”57 a minimal form; and while the
Russian artist stepped out into infinite, dynamic space, Mondrian, often seen as
his Western counterpart, achieved ultimate equilibrium, supreme harmony, using
the same form of the square as part of his grid paintings. Kemény, in his article,
ranks dynamism higher than equilibrium. He emphasizes the significance of the
cinematographic experiments of Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter, mentioning
Lissitzky as an example of transcending suprematism with proun—the real space
of which could expand into the fourth dimension, time. Using constructivism’s
self-definition, Kemény clearly posits “the art of material culture in the age of
technology” as a counterreaction to the “metaphysical emphasis of suprematism.”58
He corrects the erroneous concept of Tatlin’s art as “machine art,” explaining it
as experiments in space and mentions his fellow Hungarian artist László Péri as
a similar new designer of spatial modules. Kemény’s survey, if representing the
political left’s views, is one of the most adequate reports of the state of affairs in the
international avant-garde as of 1924, but even so, it did not seem to have much of
an impact on the overall art discourse.
In the same year, Kállai also published an overview on the art scene of the
time.59 Less emotional than he was in 1923, Kállai now described constructivism
Enter Malevich 191
as the art of utmost formal discipline, a clear contrast to expressionism,

which he downplays as the art of “baroque ecstasy.” His former critique of the
“bourgeois” character of De Stijl’s constructivism now revised, in 1924 Kállai
confirms that only the Dutch and the Russians produced actual constructivist
works in the true, material, and functional spirit of the term. Examining most
artists of the progressive scene from the point of view of constructivism in
the revised, more functional sense of the term, Kállai surprisingly also lists
Malevich among the constructivists. However, he also attempts to point out the
subtle differences between Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Tatlin, Gabo, Moholy-Nagy,
and other representatives of the avant-garde, but he ultimately puts UNOVIS
and OBMOKhU in the same camp, as did other authors. He gives special
mention to film, photography, and theater as being the most important media
in constructivism, as well as in the new art in general.60 In this 1924 article,
however, Kállai discusses constructivism in the past tense.
Another factor that played a role in making Malevich’s exhibition in Berlin
happen was the Bauhaus, which contributed to strengthening the German-
Russian relations in the field of culture. As part of mutual visits, several official
Soviet delegations visited the Bauhaus in the fall of 1927,61 including such
prominent personalities as Lunacharsky and Ehrenburg.62
The catalog of the 1927 Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung had the following
one-page information about Malevich’s exhibition:
The Russian painter Kazimir Malevich’s development is characteristic for the

development of the art of the present. The artist, born in Kiev in 1878, started his
career as a naturalistic painter who proceeded first to impressionism, then to the
Cézanneists to arrive to futurism and cubism. In 1915 he founded the group of
suprematists, a direction that he initiated. Suprematism is objectless and idealess
art that creates forms and color in order to render sensations.
It is characteristic for the recent artistic developments that the Paris-based
Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who works by similar principles has, as opposed
to Malevich’s dynamism, arrived at a completely static concept of art.
In some of his architectonic designs Malevich uses suprematism in three-
dimensional space.
Malevich is leader of the experimental laboratories of the State Institute for Art
History in Leningrad.
This special exhibition is the first in Western Europe that presents, in their
historical development, the works of an artist who has been known here through
his students only.63
This introduction would have been different, for better or worse, had Malevich’s
writings been published and had he not been known “through his students only”
in Germany.
Visit to the Dessau Bauhaus
Malevich visited the Bauhaus in the spring of 1927 unannounced—a strong

indication of his detachment from Western ways. He arrived in Dessau on April
7, accompanied by his friend Tadeusz Peiper as his translator. Malevich had
hopes to find some work, if only temporary, at the school. He attached hopes to
the Bauhaus as an important venue for spreading suprematism internationally.
Unbeknownst to Malevich, who failed to check the date or coordinate his
schedule with the Bauhaus faculty, it was the second day of the Easter holiday,
so the school was closed and many of the professors and students had already
left town. Malevich and Peiper called Kandinsky from a payphone in a café,
but to no avail. Another call—still no answer. They then called Gropius, who
answered and set out to pick them up. “He is very pleased,” Peiper wrote, “offers
us to spend the night in his home, drives up to the café in the director’s car.”64
Peiper’s description of Gropius’s house gives us an idea of what Malevich, too,
found strange and unusual in this “machine for living,” as modern housing was
referred to at the Bauhaus.
Entry hall. A wall that consists of a thin, sandy cloth curtain behind which
stands—as we will see the following day—the dining room, which is directly
connected to the kitchen, with a sliding door between the two. The walls are
painted to match the architectonic divisions of the room precisely. Just as the
room is divided into two sections, the ceiling is divided into two rectangular
fields of color. One of them is black. Flooded by the milky light from the
horizontal ceiling lamps, this black color fills the hall with a cool repose. At the
edges of an architectonic section the surfaces are equal. Everywhere the taste
for the flattest wall possible. No cabinets; everything is in the walls. Even the
bookshelf in front of me arouses the ire of the man of the house, who is already
thinking of ways to hide this piece of furniture.
Peiper’s observations express both admiration for the new and an almost comical
critique of the bleak modernity of the privileged Bauhaus director’s state-of-the-
art, high-tech style, as characteristic of modernity in the Germany of 1927. Later,
however, not without malice, Peiper describes the less impressive part of the
house: “The guestroom is on the second floor. Hidden away: two old beds.”
Enter Malevich 193
But first, his initial surprise increases when they are seated on Marcel Breuer’s
“Vasily chairs”:
We sit comfortably in armchairs that really ought to be called machines for sitting.
Their form differs vastly from that of traditional furniture of this sort. They
recall medical instruments. That fact suggests that the physiology of the human
body was the source of their inspiration. On a skeleton of nickel steel tubes,
supports and rests have been arranged according to the needs of the seated
human body, dispensing with any high-flying invention. We sit comfortably,
very comfortably.
Gropius called whoever was available for the evening, so Moholy-Nagy and
Hannes Meyer showed up because “everyone was very interested in Malevich,”
whose reputation was due to his exhibits at the 1922 Russian exhibition and had
been spread by Lissitzky, who had disseminated Malevich’s ideas so that “At the
mention of Malevich at the Bauhaus, hats are removed in profound respect.”
Kandinsky also arrived eventually, but there was no hearty meeting between
the two Russians. “Kandinsky greeted Malevich with a vague gesture and soon
disappeared without a trace.”
Malevich did not speak either German or French, which contributed to the
distance between him and the Bauhaus professors—distance manifested itself as
a profound conceptual difference as soon as concrete topics were touched upon.
Peiper writes, “Malevich distinguishes between architecture and ‘architectonics’;
the first has use value, the second only artistic value. ‘Architectonics’ produces
forms that are concerned solely with the artistic combination of spatial forms:
the resulting works are not supposed to be inhabited”—so they do not need
architectural details. This distinction did not make sense to the functionalist
architects who were present, especially Gropius, who had to fight accusations
of not being functionalist enough. On top of these theories, Malevich told an
anecdote at lunch the next day to demonstrate how pure formal concerns may
lead to unexpected uses of an object:
Once for fun he broke a cup into two pieces along its vertical axis. It was a time
when his money stretched neither forward nor backward; his wife made a scene.
But he liked one half of the cup so much that he kept it. One day he discovered
[that] his wife was using it to transfer flour or sugar between containers. This
anecdote was intended to demonstrate that something that was not made with a
utilitarian purpose in mind, could still become a useful utilitarian object.
This story may have hit a nerve with Malevich’s audience in the wrong way:
“Gropius heard the anecdote and said nothing.”65 This brought to Peiper’s mind
an encounter and discussion with Mies van der Rohe a few days earlier in Berlin
that was even more clearly confrontational:
Malevich was making the point that architecture, like the applied arts and
art in general, developed exclusively under the influence of aesthetic ideas,
independent of historical (social, economic, and other) factors. He described how
he had built architectonic models constructed from new architectural elements,
but according to the Gothic system. Mies remarked that these Gothic buildings
weren’t suited for anything today. “Who knows!” Malevich replied, and his reply
was considered “extraordinarily interesting” by those present. Then he said that
the form of furniture would never have changed if not for a transformation in
aesthetic perspectives. Mies replied with the assertion that, for example, today’s
armchair had changed because today’s athletic people sit differently than their
predecessors. [ . . . ] The conversation, which was meant to serve to get to know
one another, bubbled over. There was an excess of controversial questions, and
one by one they slipped into silence.
The silences and polite nods to Malevich’s thoughts which were not acceptable
to Gropius or Mies distanced the parties. Professional pragmatism on behalf of
Mies and Gropius collided with Malevich’s ideas, which in turn were fed mostly
by imagination. Malevich was clearly unaware of what was going on in Germany,
and specifically in the Bauhaus, where Gropius was at the point of silently
preparing to withdraw. Besides political polarization, streamlined functionalism,
pragmatism in an industrial framework, and service to the consumer and the
public were, as a matter of ethical standards, put before aesthetic considerations
at the Bauhaus, especially by the recently hired professor of architecture and
director-to-be, Hannes Meyer. Tension between the artists of the faculty and
their architect and designer colleagues was growing; and now that the battle
fought against Itten and his expressionism a few years earlier seemed to have
been settled, Malevich’s views, drawn purely from aesthetic and spiritual
considerations, could not but resonate with them as foreign and outdated,
reminding them of a conflict that, as far as Gropius was concerned, was already
a closed chapter. Conversely to Malevich, who first and foremost was a painter,
Gropius and Mies designed, aside from buildings, armchairs, and other pieces of
furniture, and so had firsthand acquaintance with every pragmatic aspect of that
job, from the elements of structure and form through material and production to
marketing. Talking to these practicing architects and designers about “Gothic”
and pure aesthetics likely made Gropius and Mies think that Malevich’s ideas
were remote and irrelevant.
Enter Malevich 195
“Malevich’s standpoint of timelessness leads to errors,” comments Peiper.

In Peiper’s account, Malevich gives a description of the Bauhaus buildings by
comparing the level of German industrial development using iron, reinforced
concrete, and glass to that of the “more modest level” of architecture in Poland and
Russia, and asks, in conversation with Peiper, the piercing question concerning
the priority of art or technology at the Bauhaus. From the technological point of
view, Peiper saw that aesthetics were contingent on the given level of technical
and social development, and so “Malevich's standpoint of timelessness” in this
sense appeared inadequate. Modernity in the Germany of 1927 was not a matter
of courageous vision, but rather of a matter-of-fact daily work and industrial
production.
Malevich’s imagination could be unlimited as it had not crashed with brick-
and-mortar reality other than that of the Soviet bureaucracy, but his timeless
visionary aesthetics could not engage the Bauhaus’ architects and designers, who
carried on work in real time and space, with a very real price tag on the finished
products. The theoretical charts that Malevich carried to Germany in order
to demonstrate his views on art were constructed to prove that artistic styles
throughout history have always been determined by the dominant social and
cultural change that an era featured compared with the previous one—while he
saw, as he wrote in a letter to Lev Yudin, that “Germans do everything differently,
they define everything more precisely.”66
Reception of the Berlin Exhibition
While the widely read art journal Der Cicerone (The Chaperone) failed to mention
Malevich’s exhibition in its account of the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung of
the year, Kállai reviewed it in Das Kunstblatt, stating the obvious: “Like much
else that reached us from Russia in the early post-war years, this legend about
Malevich seemed extremely dubious. It was impossible to establish what was
true and what was invention.” Seeing the exhibition, however, was an eye-
opening experience for him: “Malevich’s work has strong individual singularity
that organically connects Western European repercussions with deeply Russian
traits.”67 Kállai surveys Malevich’s career from postimpressionism through
cubism and through cubo-futurism to suprematism, considering the latter to
be “intensely personal and unique ( . . . ) fusing West-European elements with
original and ancient Russian ones.”68 Kállai, whose wife was Russian, was more
sensitive to the Russian context and tradition than many other art critics in
Berlin and could identify continuity between the religiosity of Malevich’s early
primitivist works and the visionary, cosmic “enthusiasm” of his suprematist
imagery, which he found a revelation. He attributed the change in Malevich’s
work to the new perspectives that emerged in the aftermath of the First World
War and the October Revolution of 1917. Kállai described Malevich’s trajectory
from contemplating the mystery of nature to the “trans-natural world of
dynamism and unimpeded freedom.”69
While working in the German and international art world, Kállai’s
understanding and interpretation of Malevich was also influenced by his
familiarity with the Hungarian and Eastern European art of the late 1920s.
Unlike Szczuka in Warsaw, Kállai did not condemn Malevich for his abstract
idiom but was much less enthusiastic about it than about another painterly
achievement of Malevich’s: the creation of a new, non-perspectival space on the
canvas. Although sensitive to the religious, confessional, and utopian dimensions
of Malevich’s art, Kállai came to appreciate suprematism primarily for opening
up a new pictorial space on the canvas that offered the sensation of flying into
the bottomless, endless void by purely painterly means: contrasting flat shapes
and non-perspectival white space. Kállai’s emphasis on Malevich’s professional
painterly achievements rather than on his visionary power also reflects the
post-utopian moment of the late 1920s when, as opposed to the beginning of
the decade, ingenuity and the inventive use of painterly methods carried more
weight than the universal anticipation of an emerging new world. Appreciation
of professional work gained priority over fascination with visions in art criticism
as well. Long gone was the time when Paul Westheim wrote, regarding Malevich’s
White on White painting, that “there is much to be learned from an intellectual
situation [in Russia].”70
The 1927 exhibition was the first shift in the critical interpretation of Malevich’s
work which was to be a sign of the changing times. Malevich’s original major
asset that distinguished him as a radical innovator, whether as an object of cultic
worship or of animosity, was his visionary capability that propelled the viewer
into the imagery of a never-before-experienced cosmic void free of gravity.
His power to anticipate a future cosmic reality that eliminated boundaries was
now, in 1927, more objectively analyzed than enthusiastically or uncritically
welcomed. Kállai describes the phenomenon in coolly objective terms:
This fervor, which sublimates technicism to a vision of some new sensation

of the world, comes from the abnegation of the soul, which even so must be
called religious. Neither in his post-impressionist nor his suprematist paintings
Enter Malevich 197
is Malevich just an artist. His painting is for him a vehicle for a confession of
faith. These confessions in former times, before the war, held an almost monkish
attitude towards existence. War and revolution shifted this mentality on to
another course entirely. From a mysterious stasis of a soul bound to nature,
it moved to a certain unfettered dynamic immensity on the other side of any
sort of nature. ( . . . ) In Malevich’s suprematist painting, a few lingering points,
intersecting or diverging lines, are enough to open the entire breadth of the
world’s space.71
In the changed historical context of the late 1920s the reception of Malevich’s
art was far from the ecstatic enthusiasm with which Lissitzky, the UNOVIS
collective, and van Doesburg had received suprematism upon first encountering
it. The magic power of the square was gone. The utopias attached to it had faded.72
Malevich received a warmer but still critical reception from none other than
Lunacharsky, who reviewed his exhibition in Ogonek, before his already cited
derogatory lines about Malevich’s writings:
Here, perhaps, Malevich showed himself in full ( . . . ) Severe and zealous,

like his models—the icon and the lubok—“classicist” deep down ( . . . ) It is a
visual music of pure tones, very strict, even severe. Doric, so to speak. And yet
saturated with the joy of love for color. ( . . . ) [such canvases] as a decorative
device can have a rich future.73
Downgrading suprematist work as decorative and seeing its future along this
direction were no less scathing coming from Lunacharsky than had been from
anyone else before.
Volume 11 of the Bauhaus Books Series: Malevich’s

The Non-Objective World and Suprematism
It was Malevich’s perceived position as a living classic, rather than a frequently

visible personality in the living art scene, that made the publication of the
truncated German translation74 of his Objectless World and Suprematism under
the title Die gegenstandslose Welt (The World of Non-Objectivity) by the Bauhaus
possible in 1927, albeit with reservations. His Berlin host Gustav von Riesen’s
son, Hans von Riesen, translated the two texts into German. He confided the
editor, Moholy-Nagy in a letter in June 1927, that he “will try to convince
Mr. Malevich that many things that are important and relevant in Russia are
superfluous or, at least, lack interest in Germany.”75 Malevich had no control over
the German edition, which was considerably streamlined to be more palatable

for the German readership, and did not agree with a number of modifications
that the translator asked him to accept. Thus, von Riesen ended up reporting to
Moholy-Nagy:
we have to take the work as is, in its entirety. A great part of what Malevich
has to say could be expressed in a more efficient and cleaner form, and a few
changes adapting it to the conditions here would do a world of good to it. Still,
my opinion is—in spite of disagreeing with Malevich on many points—that the
work is, in the condition it is in, significant and, as a whole, interesting.76
However, the translation ultimately shortened the original text. Still, when
finally published, the editors of the Bauhaus Books series inserted a note before
the text of the book:
We are pleased to have the chance to publish this book by Malevich, the
significant Russian painter, albeit it represents, in fundamental points, views
that are different from ours. At the same time, however, we can encounter the
concepts of art and the lives of its representatives of modern Russian painting in
a light that has been, until now, unknown.
Dessau, November 1927.
The Editors.77
The translator’s and the editors’ reservations echo van Doesburg’s reader’s report
on the planned volume from two years earlier and, similarly to Malevich’s
conversations with Bauhaus architects, shine a light on the disconnect between
some of his ideas and those of the West European avant-garde discourse in
1927. In the wake of the avant-garde’s unlimited social and aesthetic projects
that morphed into the charting out of what they considered to be realistically
achievable by the late 1920s, Malevich appeared as a representative of the
previous years. This was, in effect, a time lag, a historical disconnect between the
Soviet Union and the West. In Soviet Russia, the increasing censorship invested
the avant-garde with a sense of persistence and heroism, as the state deprived
artists and architects of independently realizing their projects; while in Western
Europe, the idealism of the early 1920s was downgraded, and a surrealist or realist
critique of society and culture, coupled with an adjustment to social needs and
business, constituted the new reality in the visual arts. The aesthetic standards of
the avant-garde were not forgotten or discarded, but social satire or the already
mentioned new realism—termed ironically, with regard to Malevich’s non-
objectivity, “New Objectivity”—and pragmatism prevailed: housing projects,
utilitarian objects, and a new aesthetic in painting, photography, and even film.
Enter Malevich 199
Malevich observed a pattern in The World of Non-Objectivity: existing systems

are disrupted by “additional elements” that are organized and developed into a
new system of visual communication, establishing a new rule and thus creating
a new tradition. Over time, however, a new “additional element” emerges in the
new system and disrupts it to establish its own, even newer system. Malevich,
in other words, was the first to talk about obsolescence cycles as an inherent
law of the visual arts, providing a blueprint of the process. This observation was
interspersed with lofty theorizing and summary statements about art history
and art criticism in general that did not stand up to generally recognized facts. In
the midst of the rich and multifaceted German art discourse, for example, it was
not correct to announce that “until now, critics viewed the painterly art from the
emotional side, independent of the circumstances in which it was found,”78 as art
criticism in Germany—and, for that matter, also in Russia—had the tradition of
considering the historic context of artworks and had standards of formal analysis
in place. Many of Malevich’s statements concerning the state and the relation of
the individual to a system met with disapproval by the editors as relevant in the
Russian context only, while, as von Wiese was recorded to have said, Malevich’s
description of the dynamics of system-forming and system-disruption as a
pattern of emerging new systems was nonetheless met with significant interest.
Reservations with regard to Malevich manifested also in the “Painting and
Photography” debate, published in the Amsterdam-based international revue i
10, also in 1927. The debate was generated by Kállai’s article of the same title
and was moderated by Moholy-Nagy, who invited Malevich to participate along
with Kandinsky, Mondrian, Behne, Will Grohmann, and other luminaries.
Malevich’s contribution was, however, not published, most likely because it
was perceived as counterproductive or confusing.79 At a time of fascination
with the new medium of photography in art, an analysis of its aesthetics, and
a discussion of its pros and cons with regard to painting, Malevich wrote: “I
have never supported or approved the dead mechanical glazed photographic
objective.”80 Here, “objective” does not only mean the camera lens but also
figurative representation. “Non-objective” in Malevich’s vocabulary still means
“free of object,” “free of figuration,” rather than using “objective” as the synonym
of the camera lens or the antonym of “subjective,” which, however, is the word’s
primary meaning and use in the German context. Malevich’s further statement,
“the contents of art embrace various non-objective sensations and through
them I keep in complete contact with the world,”81 is certainly less than clear.
Ultimately, Malevich rejected photography as a possible new art, categorizing it
as “a technical new media ( . . . ) like graphite and paint”82 that cannot replace,
or even compete with, painting. The moderator of the debate, in turn, was
interested in having more progressive voices in favor of affirming photography
as being a token of the future, one with possibilities that may surpass manual
painting or open up new alternatives to it.
By the time Malevich had his solo exhibition in Berlin and his Bauhaus book
was published in 1927, both his art and ideas belonged to the already left-behind
avant-garde of the first years of the decade, which they had, in fact, pioneered
from 1915 onwards. However, it was the body of work shown in Berlin that
became the basis of his postmortem recognition when most of it was retrieved
after the Second World War.
11
The Postwar Scene and the Stedelijk Museum,

Amsterdam’s Malevich Exhibition, 1957
The post–Second World War recovery of the interwar avant-gardes was fueled
by elementary antifascism in museums, galleries, and writing. Curators, artists,
and critics as well as art historians set to reestablishing cultural continuity with
the prewar era. After the years of brutal cultural regression, concerted efforts
were made to restore the tradition of the Enlightenment and modernism. The
daunting moral and professional task that curators and art historians now faced
and were determined to accomplish was no less than that of recovering what had
been lost to nazism, Italian fascism, Stalinism, and the war itself. The challenge
of restoring the modernist narrative in the wake of the war was part of the effort
to revive a traumatized European culture. This effort was enhanced in the United
States, as well. Many European refugees had brought over a number of modernist
artworks, and they were also active in shaping the art world of their new country.
A number of American art historians took interest in the modernist project, too,
historically as well as aesthetically, and morally.
The conservative ideology-driven, figurative, nationalist, and religious
neoclassicism of the interwar period was a much larger and longer-lasting trend
than that of the avant-gardes. However, this conservative trend by and large
went ignored in the art history of the postwar decades, as the artistic legacy of
a past that offered meagre intellectual and aesthetic animation. Instead, efforts
were focused on retrieving the progressive art of the interwar years that went
almost into oblivion across the board—at which point in time, in the early Cold
War period, the Russian avant-garde and Eastern European modernism were
virtually unknown. A number of trends and styles and many modernist artists
had disappeared from the public eye: many artists either relocated somewhere
over the five continents or perished in the war. Among others, the modernist
architecture of Shanghai; the modernist graphic design in Hong Kong and
Japan; the importation of modern architecture and design into Australia; the
many modernist directions grafted into the art of Mexico and South America as
well as South Africa, many of which activities shared the legacy of the Bauhaus,
deserve detailed studies in their own right.
Three Decades after the Berlin Exhibition
Malevich’s rediscovery happened as a part of the effort to retrieve the progressive

artistic culture of interwar Europe. As Peter Weibel points out, “In 1945, after
World War II ended, not only the cities of Europe were in ruins, but after
60 million dead, seven years of war, the Holocaust, the Gulag, and nuclear
annihilation, also the belief in humanity, humanism, and culture was destroyed.
Europe was at ground zero of meaning and existence.”1 Postwar imagination,
however, vigorously anticipated progress and was enthralled with the vision of a
new Europe and a new world. Progressives wanted to graft the marginal avant-
gardes of the interwar era into the mainstream art of the present, bringing the
unfulfilled project of interwar modernism and the avant-gardes to fruition, and
eagerly seeking out their new, postwar chapters in the making.
Malevich had vanished from the European art scene after his return to Russia
in June 1927. He had his last exhibitions in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow
in 1929 and the Kiev Art Gallery in 1930. He died of cancer in Leningrad in
1935, and the subsequent dark chapter of Russian and European history was not
favorable for keeping his and other modernists’ artistic legacy alive. His works
were, according to various accounts, in the vaults of the Russian Museum, the
Tretyakov Gallery, and the Kiev Art Gallery; and some were evacuated during
the war to various museums in the Eastern provinces of Russia, not revisited
until the 1970s and not widely exhibited until the 1990s. The Cold War division
of Europe into East and West, enforced since 1948, had put the Russian avant-
garde entirely out of sight for at least a decade in postwar Western Europe as
well as the United States. Malevich’s exceptional return to the art scene was made
possible in no small part by the body of work he had left in Berlin and, to a great
extent, by the team of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
At the closing of the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung in Berlin on September
30, 1927, Malevich’s paintings, along with the drawings and the “theoretical
charts,” were crated and put into storage by the transportation firm Gustav Knauer
at the expense of architect Hugo Häring, while Malevich’s manuscripts remained
with his Berlin hosts, the von Riesen family.2 An idiosyncratic modernist and
November Group member, known for his writings on organic architecture,
Postwar Scene and the Stedelijk Museum 203
Häring had belonged to architectural modernism and the international style

along with Gropius, Bruno Taut, Mies van der Rohe, and Ludwig Hilberseimer.
He had contributed to Hans Richter’s avant-garde journal G,3 originally coedited
with Lissitzky, which publicized, among other things, the launching of a Society of
the Friends of the New Russia in 1923.4 Having had such left-leaning connections
and career, Häring was often harassed by the nazis.
By about 1930, Häring had to save on the storage fee and had the crate of
Malevich’s works transferred to the Provinzialmuseum Hanover, where the
director, Alexander Dorner, former manager of the Hanover-based Kestner
Gesellschaft, had ties to the new Russian art through his friends, including
Sophie Küppers, widow of the Gesellschaft’s former director Paul Küppers and
future wife of El Lissitzky. Lissitzky’s graphic portfolio was published by the
Kestner Gesellschaft, and his 1926 Cabinet of Abstract Art, commissioned by
Dorner, has been restored and is still on view in the museum now renamed
Landesmuseum.
After the nazi takeover in January 1933, it became dangerous for Dorner to
keep abstract works by a Russian artist, so he hid them in the vaults of the museum.
Alfred J. Barr, Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in
New York, visited the Provinzialmuseum in 1935 during his European tour to
collect artworks for his upcoming exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art in the
following year. He recalled that he purchased two suprematist paintings and two
architectural drawings by Malevich from the Landesmuseum, and borrowed six
further paintings, a gouache, and five out of the twenty-two theoretical charts. In
order to avoid nazi questioning, Barr, now famously, smuggled out some of his
new acquisitions rolled around his umbrella and mailed the borrowed pieces to
America as “technical study material.”5 Dorner sent the remaining works back to
Berlin to Häring, who hid them in his home. As the private school of architecture
and design where Häring worked6 burned down in a bomb attack in 1943, he
returned to his native town Biberach an der Riss in Baden-Württemberg, taking
the crate of Malevich works with him. According to Joop M. Joosten, some of the
Malevich works may have been given as gifts or compensation for safekeeping to
others, so that finally “fifteen pictures have indeed vanished.”7 The rest remained
with Häring in Biberach.
As of 1957, the Malevich works to be found in the United States included
the paintings, drawings, and instructional panels on “extended loan” at MoMA
in New York; the 1915 cubist painting Knifegrinder, which Katherine Dreier
purchased for the Société Anonyme in 1922 at the First Russian Exhibition,
and which is today at the Yale University Art Gallery; and the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum’s 1912 painting Morning in the Village after Snowstorm,

which a German collector purchased at Malevich’s 1927 Berlin exhibition. Yve-
Alain Bois states8 that aside from the 1936 Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition
in MoMA, which was a landmark survey show charting out the tendencies of
modernism and drafting its canon, these were the only works of Malevich to be
seen in public until the Stedelijk Museum’s December 1957 Malevich exhibition.
Although exhibited in the United States, these works did not inspire lively critical
or art historical discourse, nor did they generate extended research of Malevich
at the time. Inclusion of Malevich in the 1936 MoMA show was a pioneering act,
but the show did not single him out. It is telling how low of a price Barr had paid
for the Malevich works (orthography unchanged):
the museum, acting in complete good faith, bought two paintings and two drawings
through dr. dorner from a large collection of malevich material concealed in the
basement of the hannover museum in 1935. it also made arrangements to borrow
a number of other paintings and drawings for inclusion in the exhibition cubism
and abstract art which opened during the following season. the price paid for the
four works, about $200, was not large, but at the same time it must be recognized
that malevich’s reputation at that time was very low.9
Naum Gabo mediated between Barr, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’s director
Willem Sandberg, and Dorner, who had moved to America at the end of the
1930s. In a letter to Sandberg, Gabo highlighted the sensitive legal status of the
Malevich works that Barr had borrowed from Dorner:
My impression and conviction is that Barr is acting in good faith when he tells
me that two paintings and two drawings were purchased by him from Dorner in
Hanover; although Dorner vigorously denied this, insisting that he did not have
the right to sell them and that there must be some mistake or misunderstanding
on Barr’s part. I have the impression that the misunderstanding is on Dorner’s
side.
( . . . ) Barr is willing to lend you these works [and those on extended loan]
provided you will guarantee the return of the works to the Museum of Modern
Art after the exhibition.10
However, in Barr’s letter attached to Gabo’s we read (orthography unchanged):

“I have been asked recently to lend Malevich works to two exhibitions in
Europe and do not feel that I should do so until the above [legal] questions are
answered”11—in reference to the rule that as soon as artworks leave the country
in which they are being held, international law or the host country’s laws come
into force with regard to their legal ownership.
Bringing Malevich’s artworks and manuscripts back to sight and to public

awareness were operations on two separate, parallel tracks. Exhibiting the
artworks was initiated by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Director Willem
Sandberg and his deputy Hans L. C. Jaffe’s visit to Häring as early as spring of
1951 was the beginning of a long journey that, after the 1957 exhibition and the
subsequent Malevich shows, was followed by the publication of the manuscripts
and led to the rediscovery of Malevich west of Russia.
The Stedelijk Museum’s Tour de Force
Willem Sandberg (1897–1984), director of the Stedelijk (Municipal) Museum of

Amsterdam between 1945 and 1962, played a decisive role in bringing Malevich
back to the art world. Sandberg got acquainted with modern art during his travels
across Europe in the 1920s. He had met expressionist painter, Mazdaznan priest,
and later Bauhaus master Johannes Itten in Switzerland; had seen new, kinetic art
experiments in Vienna; and had visited the Bauhaus.12 He studied graphic design
in Amsterdam and got in contact with the Stedelijk Museum in 1928, first as a
designer; then, starting in 1937, as a curator of modern art (see Figure 11.1).
Figure 11.1 Willem Sandberg, director of the Stedelijk Museum, 1945–1962. Photo
courtesy of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
During the Second World War and the nazi occupation of Holland,
Sandberg was an activist of the Dutch Resistance movement. He was one of
those antifascist resistance members who forged documents for Jews and other
persecuted people and participated in setting fire to the Amsterdam Registry
Office so that the holders of the forged documents could not be identified.
Narrowly escaping the fate of the group’s other members who were executed by a
German firing squad, Sandberg was guarding the bunker he had started to build
for rescuing the artworks of the Stedelijk and, eventually, other Dutch museums.
After the war, he became director of the museum in 1945 and remained in that
position until he retired in 1962. Throughout his tenure, he curated exhibitions
of modern art, for which he designed the accompanying posters and other
printed matter himself. As early as 1946, Sandberg curated an exhibition of Piet
Mondrian in celebration of modern art’s triumph over nazism. Sandberg not
only showed Mondrian’s unfinished 1944 Victory Boogie Woogie, painted in
New York, anticipating the victorious end of the war, but had a copy made of it
and hanged it in his office as a symbol of freedom and victory—also the victory
of modern art.13
Chief curator Hans. L. C. Jaffe (1915–1984) also played a key role in making
the Malevich exhibition reality. Jaffe, born in Frankfurt to a Jewish family,
immigrated to the Netherlands in 1933, studied art history at the University of
Amsterdam, and started to work at the Stedelijk in 1935. Having worked on
restitution of looted goods in Holland after the war, he returned to the Stedelijk
in 1947 and served as deputy director from 1953 to 1961. He researched the
history of the De Stijl movement and widely published on the group.
In September 1952 Jaffe wrote a letter to Häring reminding him of the visit
that he and Sandberg had paid to him the previous year to take a look at the
Malevich paintings, gouaches, and instruction boards. Jaffe also reminded
Häring that the reason why he and Sandberg had been interested in the works
was to explore the “Russian abstracts”14 as the wider context of the De Stijl
group in the wake of the successful exhibition of their works in the Stedelijk
in 1951, which was curated by Jaffe and traveled to the MoMA, New York, the
following year.15 Jaffe, who was working on his De Stijl monograph16 and may
have been interested in De Stijl’s Russian counterparts and connections also on
that account, made it clear that the Stedelijk intended to organize a Malevich
exhibition in this framework. He wrote to Häring in 1952: “Now, after our De
Stijl Group exhibition, the catalog of which I am enclosing to you, we have
an opportunity to give more attention to the Russian abstracts, who naturally
interest us as their contemporaries.”17
In the reconstruction of the pre–Second World War progressive movements,

Jaffe and Sandberg considered the Malevich works of very high importance.
They saw the paintings as being of exceptionally high quality. While Barr was
cut off from further Russian acquisitions during the Cold War years, the leaders
of the Stedelijk found a unique treasure trove in Häring’s house and were intent
to tap it.
In September 1952 Jaffe explicitly and somewhat urgently asked Häring
if he was willing to lend the works for the purposes of an exhibition at the
Stedelijk, and assured him that the museum would pay for the loan, take care of
all transportation costs, and would guarantee the safe return of all the pieces.18
Before a long-awaited reply from Häring arrived, in March 1954 an American
living in Munich who was apparently part of the group visiting Häring in
1951 turned to Sandberg on behalf of a friend he did not want to name, who
would be interested in buying “any paintings by Malewitsch [sic!] that might be
available.”19 Responding on behalf of Sandberg, Jaffe deferentially answered that
the museum had not heard back from Häring ever since their repeated earlier
communications with him and confirmed that the Stedelijk Museum would like
to be the first to have access to the Malevich works. He added that “Mr. Alfred
Barr was very much interested in the plan to organize the show together with the
Stedelijk”20—maybe signaling his intuition that the unnamed friend mentioned
in the letter might have acted on behalf of Barr, who was thought to be interested
in purchasing works by Malevich and other Russian avant-garde artists in order
to develop MoMA’s permanent collection.
In 1955 Sandberg started a correspondence with Naum Gabo whom he had
known since the 1920s.21 A retrospective of Gabo at the Stedelijk was considered
and discussed. The Russian-born artist, now living in Connecticut, knew some
of Häring’s old friends who, both himself and Sandberg thought, could weigh
in to persuade Häring to go along with the exhibition project. On April 3, 1955,
Gabo informed Sandberg that he had got in touch with Mies van der Rohe,
former colleague of Häring and his fellow November Group member, as well as
MoMA curator James Johnson Sweeney “to talk to them about our project re.
the Malevich exhibition. ( . . . ) I definitely got the promise from Mies van der
Rohe to write to Häring in his own name and in the names of Sweeney, Herbert
Read, yourself and myself about the proposition to lend the Malevich works for
a traveling exhibition.”22
An undated carbon copy of a letter indicates that the communication
Sandberg refers to in his November 7, 1955, letter had been addressed and
sent to Häring, apparently drafted by Sandberg, who signed it at the bottom.
It persuaded and assured the recipient that Mies, former Bauhaus professor of
urban design and Häring’s friend Ludwig Hilberseimer, as well as Gabo, fully
agree with the Stedelijk’s planned arrangements for the Malevich exhibition and
its future travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Art
Institute of Chicago, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London.23 The draft
includes the first arguments of the nascent narrative of the Malevich revival:
Many of our mutual friends and I have suffered for many years to see that
Malevich’s work is entirely and fully unknown here in spite of the great interest
that the youth and many leading personalities in our field take in it.
Now I am writing you not only in my own name but also in the name of all the
undersigned to make it clear to you how very desirable it would be to organize a
Malevich exhibition here as well as elsewhere. We are all profoundly convinced of
your uniquely great service in preserving this collection for posterity and it is very
far from us to decrease or diminish your authority concerning the collection.24
In his letter to Gabo, Sandberg gives an account of his and his staff ’s25 recent visit
with Häring, whom they found in very weak health, indeed near to death, as
Häring himself had expressed it to his visitors, so that Sandberg felt it urgent to
come to an agreement with him regarding the Malevich exhibition before it would
be too late. As Sandberg informs Gabo, “[Häring] immediately mentioned our
letter and confided that he has already responded to Hilberseimer.”26 With one
painting being on loan to a friend which, after the exhibition, would be returned
directly to Häring, Sandberg says that altogether “there are 66 items including the
theoretical charts etc. The whole could be put into one or two crates because the
paintings are not framed.”27 Häring had also informed Sandberg that he had been
in correspondence with persons in America and England28 who were interested
in the Malevich works but was unable to convey more exact information due to
his physical weakness. Some of these letters are indicative of the gradual building
up of international interest in Malevich. French art critic Jean-Pierre Wilhelm
wrote in September 1954: “In France there is enormous interest in Malevich that
continues to increase, especially after last winter’s Yavlensky exhibition in Paris
and the exhibitions featuring works by Larionov and Goncharova. ( . . . ) Such
few pictures are known by Malevich that an exhibition of his works would be of
the greatest importance here.”29
The New York–based Rose Fried Gallery’s inquiry, also in 1954, is an early
sign of American interest:
Recently I have learned that there are quite a number of Malevich and
Lissitzky works in Germany, and more, especially the Malevich works which,
I understand, are in your possession. I am most eager to get together enough

of these works to put on an exhibition at this gallery which would give scope to
the entire movement in the “avant-garde” of that period—an exhibition which
would do much to clarify the present scene here and elsewhere among young
painters, and at the same time give opportunity to the collectors and museums
here in the United States to acquire such works, as much for aesthetics as for
documentation of an era.30
Sandberg, aware of the flurry of requests and offers addressed to Häring, eagerly
asked Gabo “if Häring had contacted MoMA? I would be very glad if you could
get information—maybe Hilberseimer knows something about it?”31 Sandberg
was clearly competing with Barr for having the first major Malevich exhibition.
“It was two years ago that I talked to Barr about this Malevich collection—he
very much wanted to exhibit it in his museum. [But] Häring told me that it
was impossible for him to travel as we had suggested to him.”32 Furthermore,
Sandberg suggested at this point that three or four museums could cooperate
on this project and put on the exhibition alternately before other museums, and
then, after these initial shows, allow it to travel. This plan, however, was not
accomplished.
A few months later Sandberg had the good luck of finding Häring in a well-
enough condition to communicate and received a good deal of information
from him. He visited Häring at the hospital in the company of Häring’s secretary
Margot Aschenbrenner and gave an account of his visit to Gabo in a letter
dated March 7, 1956.33 Häring’s indecision and his severe illness kept things in
suspense. He told Sandberg about the increasing interest in the Malevich works
and later in March 1956 Gabo reported to Sandberg:
I have been told from many sources that a whole pack of wolves of art dealers
and speculators are attempting to get this collection out of Häring’s hands and
by any means to get possession of Malevich’s work. ( . . . ) We need to make clear
that this collection is not up for sale and that we are prepared to put up a fight
against them in case they should take advantage of a weak man and come into
possession of a property which does not belong either to Häring nor to anybody
else but the lawful heirs of Malevich.34
Indeed, Häring was flooded with letters from artists, art dealers, and collectors
who had heard about the body of Malevich’s work which Häring was safekeeping
in his home, as many of them wanted to purchase select pieces from it. From
early 1952 till his death in 1958, Häring rebutted several dozen such requests.
The response he gave to New York art dealer Hans Curjel sums up his replies:
Every art dealer would like to cherry pick from the Malevich collection and leave
me the unsellable rest of it. Therefore, I am not interested in either lending or
selling pieces of the collection. I am interested in keeping it all together, along
with the study charts that belong to the paintings, so that they constitute a basis
for teaching Malevich.35
At the end of March 1956 Häring wrote to his friend Hilberseimer, now in
Chicago, explaining to him that Sandberg wanted the Malevich paintings, but
because of difficult issues regarding ownership (“schwierige eigentumsfrage”
(sic!)) that have finally cleared up, he considered to offer the paintings as a loan
to the Stedelijk.36 Häring disclosed that he had accepted Sandberg’s offer and that
the Malevich exhibition would travel to the United States for several exhibitions
after its Amsterdam debut. However, he requested a statement from those whom
Hilberseimer mentioned in his last letter to him, including Gabo (and, most
likely, Sweeney, Herbert Read, and Mies), declaring that they were in agreement
with this arrangement. Häring estimated that the loan will cost the Stedelijk
Museum only a small fragment of the probable income the exhibition was
expected to generate and went on to discuss the estimates of the total possible
income—as though he owed it to Hilberseimer to come clean with the numbers.
In June 1956 Häring notified director Sandberg that according to German
law he had, as of 1955, acquired legal ownership of the Malevich works and was
now entitled to lend or even sell them.37 Häring’s awareness of the imminence
of his passing is expressed in most of his letters until his death on May 17, 1958.
A draft of a loan contract between Häring and the Stedelijk Museum dated
May 8, 1956, lists: “1 Karton; 7 Gouaches; 28 paintings on canvas; 7 color studies;
21 study boards, and 16 drawings (‘Zeichenstudien’).”38 In an undated letter
probably written late in 1957,39 Sandberg discloses:
Häring allows us to rent the entire collection for +,-, $3,000. a year with the
clause that we have the option to buy it if we decide so before December 31,
1958, for $ 30,000. Häring is not entitled to withdraw if we execute the contract.
Häring has notarized that according to German law he is the owner of the works
since 1955. ( . . . ) It is not our intention to do anything against MoMA. It would
not be convenient, and I do not think that there is any possibility to doubt Barr’s
good faith.
What is important is not the ownership question but to honor Malevich’s genius
and to integrate him in the development of the art of our time.40
While the ownership question was of undeniably high importance, the deeper
motivation and wider art historic significance of making the Malevich exhibition
reality was, indeed, “to integrate him in the development of the art of our time.”
This was consistent with the Stedelijk leadership’s project to retrieve interwar
modernism, and that project had, after initial steps, yet to be realized.
During the run-up to the exhibition, the Stedelijk started an intense
correspondence with other museums that were eager to take over the exhibition,
as well as with individuals—primarily Russian expat artists dispersed in different
countries—who were thought to have personally known Malevich and to be
able to provide information on the un-annotated artworks. Sandberg was also
seeking early twentieth-century Russian catalogs that could provide original
photos and information on the artworks included in the Häring material, with
respect to their earlier exhibition history. He was also interested in further works
that could be added to the list.
The First Building Blocks of a New Narrative
In February 1957, the director of the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Dr. Peter Lufft,
wrote a letter to Sandberg asking for an update about the Malevich material. He
learned from the Braunschweig lawyer Ernst Böhme that the legal process of
the Malevich estate had been closed and expressed that he too was interested
in taking over the exhibition in cooperation with the museums of Bremen and
Cologne, which were also keen to put it on. Contributing to the nascent narrative,
Dr. Lufft wrote that “To Malevich, I think, the injustice that had been done by
forgetting has to be made good by broadening awareness of his significance
(which can happen only through an exhibition).”41
The museum and gallery directors who were eager to house the Malevich
exhibition were, indeed, pioneers, as information and knowledge about Malevich
was still scarce at the time. A letter written by Gary Schmidt, director of the
Kunstmuseum Basel, sent to Sandberg in May 1957 in answer to his question
concerning adequate documentation of the Malevich works is indicative of this
lack of available information about Malevich at the time. Schmidt wrote that he
was not familiar with any literature on Malevich aside from a few mentions in
some publications as of 1957, of which he gave precise reference.42 In July 1957,
half a year before the opening of the Malevich exhibition in Amsterdam, Jaffe
asked Barr if he could provide any data of the Malevich works to be shown,
“with a view to the possibilities of taking over ( . . . ) the exhibition to America,”43
but no cooperation from Barr is documented. On November 4, 1957, Sandberg
addressed the director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, asking for information
to help with dating and identifying some Malevich works by photocopies of old
exhibition catalogs that included Malevich’s early works, primarily pre-1911 and
post-1915. In an undated letter, lacking polite addressing—putting in “Dear
Colleague” only—which was received on January 3, 1958, P(avel) Lebedev,
director of the Tretyakov Gallery, answered that he and his staff were, regrettably,
too busy to fulfill this request, “as the Malevich works are stored in the cellars of
the Tretyakov,”44 that is, they were inaccessible or hard to access.
The Malevich exhibition opened in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam
on December 20, 1957. The Press Release gave a detailed biography and career
history of Malevich, clearly presenting him as an unknown master and calling
attention to similarities between him and Mondrian, who was a point of reference
for the Dutch as well as international audiences.45
Upon receiving of the announcement of the exhibition, a letter on behalf of
Dr. Werner Schmalenbach, director of the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, was
sent to Sandberg, dated December 28, 1957, expressing bitter disappointment
for not being considered the first venue to take over the Malevich exhibition
from the Stedelijk, in spite of an earlier promise.46 The Kestner Gesellschaft,
on account of its role in safekeeping the Malevich works as well as publishing,
commissioning, and exhibiting Malevich’s disciple Lissitzky, had expected to be
ranked first in the process of Malevich’s rediscovery but had to be disappointed.
The apparently first written response to the Stedelijk’s Malevich exhibition
after its opening was dated January 14, 1958. It came from Karl Gunnar Vougt
Pontus Hulten, then director of the Nationalmuseum Stockholm. Besides trying
to secure the Malevich exhibition for the first show of the soon-to-open Moderna
Museet in Stockholm, he assessed Malevich’s significance, declaring him “one of
the most advanced artists of our time. When Mondrian speaks about constants,
Malevitch [sic!] speaks already about dynamism and relativity.”47 However, the
general obscurity of Malevich at the time is still reflected in Hulten’s question:
“Did Malevitch [sic!] . . . show some interest in Gabo, Pevsner, and Tatlin’s works
and theories?”48 The map of the Russian avant-garde was still very far from being
drawn up by scholarship.
Throughout the fall of 1957 and the winter of 1958, the leaders of the Stedelijk
set out to gather more information on Malevich for the catalog that was still
in the making. They engaged in correspondence with Xenia Boguslavskaia
Pougny (Puni); Rob Lipchitz, brother of sculptor Jacques Lipchitz; Henryk
Stażewski; and English ballet dancer and author of the first comprehensive
Western book on the Russian avant-garde, Camilla Gray. Each of them provided
bits of information that Sandberg acknowledged. However, in December
1957 Sandberg was still in need of more clarification and data, so he wrote to
Barr who, in turn, had “through our mutual friend Gabo”49 also heard about the
need for more information concerning the items of the Malevich exhibition.
Sandberg explained in this letter that although he thought “it will be good just to
show the collection as it is now in our Museum from December 20th—February
2nd” and publish a “first catalog,” he planned to improve both efforts and hoped
to get Barr’s “critique and advice” so that “a revised and corrected edition can be
printed later on along with a more complete show in Amsterdam,” for which he
would be happy to collaborate with Barr and include the Malevich works from
MoMA, too—also hinting at the possibility of traveling the entire exhibition to
New York, as well.50 That is, having secured the Stedelijk’s priority in exhibiting
Malevich, Sandberg offered a later cooperation to MoMA in return for much-
needed help with correctly identifying the Malevich works and the inclusion of
additional ones. This cooperation, however, did not materialize.
Further celebratory responses arrived from Dr. Lufft, Braunschweig, who had
read the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s account of the Malevich exhibition
in Amsterdam and reproachfully reminded Sandberg that he had been among
the first to want to take it over. In January 1958 Sandberg received a letter from
the State Russian Museum, Leningrad, signed by a secretary, providing photos
and the list of eighteen Malevich paintings in the collection of the State Russian
Museum—an important reference for Sandberg regarding the Malevich oeuvre.51
Schmalenbach wrote again from Hanover in the same month, explaining that he
was in disbelief when he had heard about the exhibition’s traveling to nearby
Braunschweig—a move that was contrary to a verbal agreement between him
and Sandberg and which hurt the framework of his larger project of consecutive
exhibitions of Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky,52 and Malevich, among other
modernists of that generation. However, in a letter to Häring written at the time of
the Stedelijk’s exhibition’s closing, Sandberg confirmed that the exhibition would
travel to Braunschweig, while Hanover was included only in the waiting list of
museums that were interested—along with Baden-Baden, Bern, Stockholm,
Brussels, and London.53 In February 1958 Palma Bucarelli, legendary director of
the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, joined those who were eager to
have the Malevich exhibition over in their respective institutions.
On February 19, 1958, Dr. Lufft could already give an account of the successful
opening of the Malevich exhibition in Braunschweig, with a catalog published by
the local Kunstverein (Art union). The catalog essay, authored by Lufft, surveyed
Malevich’s career, also providing a brief history of the Russian avant-garde of the
early 1910s, thus shaping the somewhat erroneous narrative the Western public
was just becoming familiar with. For example, Gabo and his brother Antoine
Pevsner are described as being followers of “Tatlin’s constructivism”; Rodchenko
as “Malevich’s pupil”; and Malevich’s only visit in Germany in 1927 is mentioned
as his “last visit in 1926.”54 Lufft informed Sandberg about the Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart’s intention to take over the show, adding that if its next location was
within Germany, savings could be made on costs of transportation and insurance.
However, a month later, on March 19, 1958, a letter came to Amsterdam from
the Düsseldorf Kunstverein declaring that it was ready to step in instead of the
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, which had cancelled. The organizing process accelerated:
only a week later, on March 26, Dr. Curt Schweicher, director of the Städtischen
Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich, wrote to Sandberg informing him
that a casual encounter between him and Dr. Lufft led to the latter expressing
willingness to send the Malevich exhibition over to Leverkusen rather than to
Düsseldorf—and so, Dr. Schweicher expected only a brief yes or no answer.
In point of fact, the exhibition traveled to the Palais des Beaux Arts in
Brussels, was shown there in May and June 1958, and then to the Kunsthalle
Bern in February and March 1959. On January 27, 1958, Düsseldorf art dealer
Alex Vömel wrote to Sandberg saying that the Malevich exhibition had greatly
impressed him and he wondered if some of the paintings were for sale, and if so,
for what price.55 On February 28, 1959, Franz Meyer, director of the Kunsthalle
Bern, wrote to Sandberg that “The Malewitsch [sic!] exhibition has been so
extraordinary that I cannot but thank you once again for having the possibility
to put the pictures on show. This is an artistic force and uniqueness that I have
rarely seen in these rooms.”56 He also informed Sandberg that the artworks will
be on their way to Rome to safely arrive there by April. The exhibition at the
Galleria Nazionale dell’Arte Moderna was open until July 1959. Bucarelli wrote
the catalog essay herself, discussing Malevich in the context of the Russian
avant-garde.57
Sandberg also actively worked on developing awareness of Malevich. Prior
to the opening of the Malevich exhibition at the Stedelijk, he wrote a letter to
the general secretary of the Venice Biennale informing him about the upcoming
“important exhibition of the founder of the suprematist movement in Russia:
the painter Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935),” pointing out, once again, that
“[Malevich] had a significance that was analogous to that of ( . . . ) Mondrian.”58
The exhibition’s following station was the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in
the fall of 1959 and then the Louisiana Foundation in Humlebaek, Denmark, in
the spring of 1960. In an unprecedented posthumous career, Malevich was now
center stage as hero of the pre–Second World War avant-garde.59
The Manuscripts Left in Berlin
On May 30, 1927, a few days before his sudden departure from Berlin as his
Soviet exit visa could not be extended, Malevich gave his host Gustav von Riesen
a bulky, well tied-up package wrapped in brown paper. In an otherwise unusual

ceremoniousness, he beseeched my father to safekeep that package until his
return. He said he hoped to come back in the summer of 1928. Should he not be
able to make it and send no news about himself for the next twenty-five years,
the package may be opened and dealt with at the family’s discretion.60
According to Gustav’s son Hans von Riesen’s account in 1934, the package was
taken to the cellar of the house and carefully hidden. In the last days of the
war in 1945, the house was hit by a grenade attack, which blocked the cellar.
The cleanup efforts started only eight years later, in 1953, at which point it
became clear that the cellar’s roof held up, and so the objects underneath it did
not suffer any significant damage. The long-forgotten package could be taken
out from under the debris in 1954, and since the twenty-five-year period that
Malevich had requested was thus over, the von Riesen family felt entitled to
open it. It contained two folders filled with manuscripts; four notebooks with
dense writing typical of Malevich, from the years 1923 to 1927; a big folder filled
with press coverage cutouts from the years 1910 to 1927; as well as a number of
smaller essays, writings, letters, loose sheets of paper, drawings, and photos. On
the top lay a sheet of paper, only half of which was covered with writing. On the
lower part of that sheet the following last will arrangement was hand-written by
Malevich (in Russian):
In case of my death or hopelessly long loss of freedom, and in case the holder
of these manuscripts has the will to make them public, he has to carefully
study them and then transfer them to another language, because, being under
revolutionary influence at the time of their writing, there may be considerable
contradictions in the form of defending the art that I now, in the year 1927,
represent.
Only the above are valid for consideration.
May 30, 1927. Kaz. Malevich, Berlin61
Hans von Riesen set to studying Malevich’s hard-to-decipher handwriting,

idiosyncratic Russian, and worked his way through the notebooks and
manuscripts. He received considerable help from the DuMont Schauberg
Verlag in Cologne, which published his translation of a selection of Malevich
texts in the volume Suprematismus—Die gegenstandslose Welt (Suprematism—

The Non-Objective World), edited by Werner Haftmann, in 1962. Von Riesen
acknowledged further help from Dr. Franz Meyer, Bern, who put him in contact
with Malevich’s former colleague, painter Pavel A. Mansurov in Paris, Ida
Meyer-Chagall, Camilla Gray, and Peter Lufft, all of whom delivered valuable
documents to him, as well as art historian Troels Andersen from Copenhagen.
Andersen did research in Moscow and worked closely together with the
Stedelijk Museum as author and editor of Malevich: Catalogue Raisonné of the
1927 Berlin Exhibition, which was published by the Stedelijk Museum in 1970 as
the long-delayed catalog of the 1957 Malevich exhibition. As he came close to
finishing this work, Andersen contacted MoMA in the hope of furthering his
knowledge of Malevich and suggested a joint publication, upon which Wilder
Green of MoMA and then director de Wilde of the Stedelijk exchanged letters,
illuminating the state of Malevich scholarship as of 1967–1968. In the letter,
Green wrote:
We have for some time been considering doing a definitive book on Malevich,
which might include a substantial text, chronology, bibliography, with perhaps
a catalogue raisonné, and a partial, if not complete appendix of his writings. For
financial reasons, this may prove to be too ambitious, but I think our interest
would be, at the least, to publish a volume, which would include a catalogue of
our two collections plus the very few other Malevich works in the West.62
Once again, the Stedelijk pinned down its own pioneering role in the Malevich
saga. As to Andersen’s work-in-progress, de Wilde declared: “We intend using
it as a catalog when our selection will be exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum and
abroad,”63 and he added:
Regarding the paintings from Russian collections, part of them will be used as
illustration in our publication. However, as long as the Russian collections are not
fully accessible, it will be impossible, for the time being, to issue a scientifically
justified publication on this part of Malevich’s oeuvre. Photographs are partly
available, but a good deal of the paintings (notably the important collection in
Leningrad) cannot be viewed and sufficient documentation cannot be obtained
either—not even by Troels Andersen who has excellent introductions and
besides speaks the Russian language fluently.
For the time being it is also impossible to borrow works from Russian
collections.64
Andersen translated Malevich’s texts, which had already been known from early
Russian publications, into Danish; then edited their English translation by Xenia
Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillen. These groundbreaking publications

came out in two volumes in 1968. The manuscripts of the von Riesen archive
were purchased by the Stedelijk Museum in 1971.65 They were translated and
published by Andersen in two more volumes in 1976 and 1978, respectively.
These publications, in a total of four volumes, constituted the starting point of
all later Malevich scholarship in the English-speaking world.66
12
The New Left’s Role in Retrieving the Interwar

Avant-Gardes and Reclaiming the Russian
Avant-Garde in the 1960s
The rediscovery of the Russian, and, eventually, the entire avant-garde art of the
early 1920s played an outstanding role in the revisionist and rebellious culture
of the political and theoretical movements referred to with the umbrella term as
the “New Left,” and vice versa: it was the alternative leftist revival of the West,
starting in the late 1950s, that invested the art and culture of the Russian and the
international avant-garde with a new significance in Western Europe. Seeking
predecessors and historical antecedents, various New Left directions found a
tradition of left-wing modernism in postrevolutionary Russia as well as in post–
First World War Europe.
Throughout the Cold War period of 1948–1975, the Soviet Union, along
with its artistic culture, was cut off from the Western world. It was an enemy
that was fascinating and formidable at the same time, particularly in the eyes
of the Western left wing that was haunted by the specter of various utopias
and incarnations of communism. Adherents of the New Left, a political-
intellectual current that arose in the wake of the Soviet military’s crushing of
the 1956 Hungarian uprising, sought a new, valid leftist political and cultural
paradigm outside the Soviet model. Awareness of the terror in the Soviet Union
could not be erased, thus one of the possible models was postrevolutionary, pre-
Stalin Russia, 1917–c. 1928, but interest was expanded to the prerevolutionary
Russian avant-gardes as well, the survival of which after the October Revolution
seemed to demonstrate the intriguing intellectual modernity of revolutionary
Soviet Russia. Various branches of the New Left worked out their respective
political programs in a way that had great emphasis on art and culture. They
sought a visual face of their respective agendas and visual epitomes of their
concepts. Throughout the 1960s the New Left movements positioned the early
Soviet-Russian art more in the context of the present than the historical past. In
this way, this art came much more alive and relevant than in any other historic
era since its actual existence.
Reconquering Everyday Life
Left-wing cultural and political movements, critical of both the existing Soviet and
post-1948 East European communism as well as Western capitalism, abounded
since the end of the war. Growing out of the Trotskyist Fourth International,
the Paris-based Socialisme ou barbarie group, led by Cornelius Castoriadis,
was formed in 1948, opposing, first and foremost, the bureaucratization of the
state, capitalist or communist. The international Abstraction-Création artistic
group in Paris, originally founded by, among others, van Doesburg in 1931 as
successor of the 1930 Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) group, was revived
in 1946 as the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (Salon of New Realities), a telling
name for reckoning with the new, post–Second World War reality. These groups
that organized exhibitions of abstract art in Paris, bringing them together from
international sources, may have revived the progressive spirit of the interwar
avant-garde; however, hardly any Russian artist’s work was on their radar. The
Soviet Union was off limits.
In 1948 the radical artists’ group CoBrA (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam)
was launched in Paris, organized by, among others, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn,
Constant (Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys), and Christian Dotremont, with
a program of unbridled spontaneous expression, childlike directness, and
unrestricted use of colors.1 In 1948 Constant wrote, envisioning a new beginning
and the desire to change the culture and the society recalling the anti-individual
utopias of the 1920s avant-gardes: “In the unprecedented cultural emptiness that
has followed the war (...) We find established a culture of individualism, which
is condemned by the very culture that has produced it.(…) There cannot be
a popular art, even if concessions such as active participation are made to the
public, while art forms are historically imposed. (…) A new freedom is about to
be born.”2 Willem Sandberg strongly—even financially—supported the group
as one that was representative of that new freedom of artistic expression and
organized a CoBrA exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in 1949.
Political protest against the consolidating consumer culture of post–Second
World War Western Europe received increasingly more emphasis in artistic
movements as well. Splitting from CoBrA, Asger Jorn launched the International
Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (IMIB) with Enrico Baj in1955, in protest
The New Left’s Role in Retrieving the Interwar Avant-Gardes 221
of the Bauhaus’ successor institution, the Hochschule für Gestaltung (College of

Design), in Ulm. From an exchange of letters with rector Max Bill, Jorn learned
that the Hochshcule prioritized pragmatic technical training over a strong and
imaginative artistic and aesthetic program.3 Unlike the sense of modernity that
dominated the late 1920s in the West, now it was the power of imagination and
spirituality that was the token of freedom for Jorn, in order to curb the power
of modern technologies tied to big business. While before the Second World
War the avant-garde artists attached great hopes to the liberating effect of new
technologies, after the war they experienced those same technologies put into
the service of mass production and mass manipulation, suppressing individual
human creativity and the freedom of artistic expression.
Aesthetic anarchism, with a stance of political dissent, was also on the rise.
Such a stance characterized the Internationale Letteriste (sic!) group, organized
by Guy Debord (1931–1994) in Paris in 1952, splitting from Isidore Isou’s (1925–
2007) Letteriste movement, which in turn was based on a radical renewal of
the language and literature—similarly to the Russian cubo-futurists of the
1910s—that Isou launched as early as 1946. Preceded by the 1953 essay of Ivan
Chtcheglov (1933-1998), “Formula for a New City” (published only in 1958), that
dreamed up new cities that would help people break away from consumerism,4
Debord introduced the concept of Unitary Urbanism, experimenting with
sustainable new ways of life in city.5 In 1955 Debord invented the term
“psychogeography”—that is, the study of the personal and subjective ways in
which the city environment affects the individual “drifting around” in the city.
Wandering around in Paris playfully and casually, “drifting,” that is, not doing
anything but experiencing the city, was an attitude reminiscent of Baudelaire’s
nineteenth-century flâneur, or drifter, re-invoked by Walter Benjamin6 as early
as 1935. Forecasting Debord’s later critique, Benjamin also connected the act
of “drifting” or “flâner” in a city to consumerism, referring to the institution of
the department store as the flâneur’s ultimate pleasure “that puts even flânerie
to use for commodity circulation.”7
Consumerism was identified and recognized as both a symptom and a
rationale of the capitalist production system and was declared toxic for both
society and the individual. Philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901–
1991) voiced a critique of consumerism as early as 1947.8 In his 1968 book
Right to the City, he argued, not unlike the urbanists of the early 1920s, but
with the experiences of the postwar decades, that the urban space is, and must
be, a collective one. Lefebvre strongly influenced Debord, who launched the
Situationist International (SI) in 1957, merging with Jorn’s IMIB, the Letterist
(sic!) International, and the London Psychogeographical Association. The name

Internationale Situationniste (Situationist International) originated from the
program that set out to actively create real-life situations in order to conquer the
physical space of the city instead of passively contemplating and consuming the
spectacle offered by the apparatus of industrial and commercial establishments
via advertisements and commercials as a simulation of actual life.
Debord intensely examined the interwar avant-gardes, primarily as early
attempts to terminate the culture of the bourgeoisie, which he held in contempt.
In his analysis, the interwar avant-gardes did not even really exist; it was his
own historic time that projected desirable content back to the interwar era. “The
very notion of a collective avant-garde, with the militant aspect that it entails, is
a recent product of historical conditions [because of their] need for a consistent
revolutionary program.”9 However, he draws attention to some of the early
avant-garde movements, judging the futurists, for instance, as being “childish
[for their] technological optimism”;10 acknowledging dada for the “refusal of
all the values of bourgeois society,”11 but deriding it for being too negative; and
praising the surrealists in France, who “defined the grounds for a constructive
action starting from dada’s emphasis on moral revolt.”12 Reflecting on these past
movements from the vantage point of his own time and the point of view of
his own SI, Debord recognized the era of the present as a cultural void. The
worst choice for filling that cultural void would be, he argues, that of Soviet
culture, which he identified with petit bourgeois values. Modern Catholicism
fares just a little better inasmuch as, according to Debord, it attempted to accept
such a modernist form of painting as informel, however: “everything since
1956 indicates that we are entering into a new phase of the struggle. [ . . . ]
The avant-garde minority can recover its positive import. The ebbing of the
worldwide revolutionary movement, which became obvious a few years after
1920 [ . . . ] had tried to advance a liberatory new attitude in culture and everyday
life.”13 With all his skepticism about the culture of his day, Debord still expressed
hope that “It is only within this avant-garde that a new revolutionary conception
of culture is imperceptibly being formed.”14 He remained, however, profoundly
critical.
Debord’s radical extended essay The Society of the Spectacle, first published in
1967, was a reckoning with the central feature of the post–Second World War
capitalist societies’ commodity fetishism which he identified as the “spectacle.”
A philosopher by training, Debord put a Feuerbach quote dating from 1845 at
the head of Part I of his book: “But certainly for the present age, which prefers
the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality,
the appearance to the essence . . . illusion is only sacred, truth profane.”15 This
was strikingly valid in the era of the new, lulling and entertaining visual culture
of television, commercials, and ubiquitous ads that all had strong political
potential and power to demobilize and deactivate masses of people, turning
them from being masters of their life into spectators of a second-hand, mediated
reality which thus represented the interests of big industries. Alienation through
the “spectacle,” as Debord put it, separated individuals from each other while
the “triumph of an economic system founded on separation leads to the
proletarianization of the world.”16 Debord described the modern spectacle as
the replacement of religion, echoing Malevich’s 1924 dismay, described in his
Lenin essay, at an emerging new cult that will replace religion with a version of
socialism and the church with the factory.
Drifting in the city is also described by Debord as “a total dissolution of
boundaries between art and life.”17 Very much like the avant-gardes of the 1920s,
such as the Russian constructivists and the Bauhaus that worked on ending the
duality of “art” and “life,” all the previously mentioned movements’ fundamental
programs were directed primarily against alienation. “Merging of art and life”18
had been a central aspiration of the Russian constructivists as a way of turning
the society into an actual community. As Lodder remarks,
This utopianism infected such a stalwart of traditional culture as Lunacharsky.

At the opening of the State Free Art Studios in October 1918 he expressed the
dreams that inspired artists of the time: “A brotherhood of artists and architects
will be born and will create not only temples and monuments to human ideals
but also complete artistic towns. To link art with life (emphasis added) this is the
task of the new art.”19
Less skeptical than Debord, the theoreticians and activists of the New Left groups
were particularly concerned about the uncanny process of the morphing of
socialist ideals into bureaucratic power practices in the Soviet Union and within
its satellite countries’ totalitarian state powers. They were eager and hopeful to
find possibilities of preempting such deterioration in a future state. In a better
world, the state would redeem the French Revolution’s ideals of “liberty, equality,
fraternity,” the enlightened reality of which was, once again, envisioned.
In the 1950s and 1960s the mirage of a radical improvement of the world
appeared, similarly to the early 1920s, on the horizon of the leftist movements.
Several events of the year 1956 prompted the activists of these movements to
think that a new world revolution was in the making, which they had already
anticipated. A battle for the new imagination was, once again, underway,
similarly to the one fueled by the utopian expectations of the early 1920s. One
of the documents of these views is the account published on November 2, 1956,
in the Letterist International’s information bulletin about a congress which was
co-organized two months earlier by the Letterist International and the IMIB in
Alba, Italy. The last paragraph sums up the congress as one of the stages in
the struggle for a new sensibility and a new culture, a struggle which is itself
part of the general revolutionary resurgence characterizing the year 1956, visible
in the upsurge of the masses in the USSR, Poland, and Hungary ( . . . ), in the
successes of the Algerian insurrection and in the major strikes in Spain. These
developments allow us the greatest hopes for the near future.20
As in the case of the avant-garde of the 1920s, historical reality and idealist
expectations diverged. Two days after these lines were printed, the Hungarian
uprising was crushed by the military force of the Soviet Union. The dramatic
disappointment on the part of Western communists as well as leftists in the
Soviet Union and proponents of Soviet-type communism—for which the
new term “state-capitalism” was coined—drove thousands of members out
of Western communist Parties and engendered the new varieties of leftist
and communist movements which came to be referred to as the New Left.21
Although every uprising mentioned in the Alba document was defeated, the
energy that its authors witnessed in “the general revolutionary resurgences”
also beyond the above mentioned countries, would incessantly fuel the New
Left for almost two decades to come. The disillusionment caused by the moral
and economic bankruptcy of Bolshevism—not entirely novel since the spread
of news about the Soviet and East European show trials of the late 1930s to the
early 1950s22—reached a tipping point after the brutal intervention in Hungary
and opened up new perspectives for left-wing currents in the West, inspiring
ideas of new, revised varieties of the communist model. Disappointment in
Bolshevism engendered alternative socialist and communist ideas in the West,
reformed by new philosophies as newly relevant social models. The critical,
anticapitalist intelligentsia, from the New Left Review in London, founded in
1960, through the SI and Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s March 22 Movement in Paris,
to the German radical Rudi Dutschke, as well as a number of other groups,
saw a great future in various reformed and revised concepts of socialism or
communism. They envisioned a non-bureaucratized, non-oppressive society,
modeled on either an imaginary pre-Stalinist Russia, or Trotsky’s unrealized
concept of a permanent revolution, or self-management without state power,
that is: direct democracy. Some groups, however, had quite a contrary, extreme
concept, idealizing Mao’s China. In other words, in the West something new
and future-bound—culminating in 1968—grew out of the crushed Hungarian
uprising, while for Hungary—and, to a different degree, for the other Eastern
European countries—1956 marked not a beginning but an end.
A further similarity between the outcomes of the 1920s and the 1960s,
respectively, was, as Debord’s monographer Anselm Jappe points out, that in
1968 “For several weeks ( . . . ) a feeling that ‘everything is possible’ prevailed
[but after that] the upside-down world was set back on its feet.”23 Utopian ideas
about the future world and the future city abounded in postrevolutionary Russia
from poems and novels to VKhUTEMAS architecture student Georgii Krutikov’s
(1899–1958) radical “Flying city” project.24 The reforming of the immediate
human environment, that of the home and the city as well as of the globe itself, was
a program that the proponents of the New Left shared with the interior designers
of the De Stijl and the Bauhaus and the imaginative architects of the interwar years.
According to Jappe, the main reason for the SI’s failure was that in spite of the
many working-class actions and strikes in 1968, the SI’s “theory never spread
significantly beyond the much disparaged milieu of the students and intellectuals
[as] no proletariat existed which as a class stood opposed to the totality of the
society of the spectacle.”25 This was certainly the case in the 1920s, too, when the
Russian constructivists had believed that they were part of the actual working
class, if acting provisionally on their behalf only in a symbolically induced
“laboratory phase” but with the perspective to efficiently shape the incipient new
reality, which, in the end, they did not. In Western Europe the social role and
the relationship of high art and industrial design were the subject matters of a
discourse that, as the history of the Bauhaus attests to it, remained unresolved.
Creatively reconquering everyday life, taking its venues and means from those
who had political and economic control over it, was the incentive of artists and
thinkers both in the 1920s and the 1960s.
The Russian Avant-Garde in Galleries and Museums
Interest in revolutionary Russian avant-garde art throughout the 1960s in the

West was a collateral development of social movements, with increasingly
political overtones and, socialist ideas aside, in no small part a contribution
of market prosperity. This art was gradually posited center stage as the visible
example of a possible, radically new culture. Its energy and radicalism resonated,
once again, as the relevant voice of dissent in the present.
Gallery shows of the interwar avant-gardes, including works by Russian

artists, started to mushroom in Europe in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The first
Russian exhibitions were indiscriminately inclusive of artists of different styles,
pursuits, and careers, émigré or otherwise: works by Kandinsky, Yavlensky,
Chagall, Puni, Gabo, Pevsner, Serge Poliakoff, Georges Annenkov, Nicolas de
Staël, El Lissitzky, Pavel Mansuroff, Chaim Soutine, and others were thrown
together simply because they were related, one way or another, and at one time
or another, with Russia or the Soviet Union. The availability of Russian works in
the West set a limit on these shows, and the fact that “Official Russia would not
show this art”26 also weighed in.
The first systematic survey exhibition of Russian avant-garde works
was organized in 1962 at London’s Grosvenor Gallery, titled Two Decades
of Experiment in Russian Art 1902–1922, accompanied by Camilla Gray’s
groundbreaking book The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863–1922. Gray
first visited the Soviet Union as a ballet student and, fascinated by modern
Russian art, returned there to study Russian modernism. As her book’s back
cover proudly states, “This is the first book to examine the vitally significant
Russian contribution to the modern movement in art and architecture.” The
book was, indeed, a landmark; the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition, however, was
still eclectic. It included works by émigré artists such as the cubist Archipenko,
the expressive Chagall, the expat rayonists Goncharova and Larionov, and
the expressionist Kandinsky who had been detached from Soviet Russia, as
well as artists who were, at some point of their respective lives, part of the
Soviet scene, such as El Lissitzky, Tatlin, and Malevich. The catalog essay
underlined that “for [these artists] art was an active force in society, and not
an amusement of the richer classes”; and that as a result of the revolution,
“from 1917-1921 [they] controlled artistic life and thought in Russia.”27 The
concept that the artists of the avant-garde had any actual power in early Soviet
culture—one that eventually proved erroneous—appeared to be an exciting
component of their inceptive myth in the West in the early 1960s nonetheless,
where many movements and charismatic leaders competed for controlling a
segment of the cultural scene. It appears that what Thomas Crow called the
“ambivalent fascination felt by audiences for the work of dissident artists” in
the West in the 1960s, missing neither the “aggression of the work” nor “its
setting”28—that is, the excitement by both the dissenting voice of the work and
the market hype—was also true for the revival of the Soviet-Russian art of the
1910s and 1920s, which occupied a unique position between mainstream and
dissident.29
The innovative geometric idiom of the Russian avant-garde exuded authority

as well as idiosyncratic dynamism. During the 1960s, emphasis markedly
shifted from the esthetic to the political-ideological factors in exhibiting the
Soviet-Russian avant-garde. In 1964 the Galleria Levante in Milan organized
an eclectic show including thirty-four diverse Russian artists, from symbolists
to constructivists, but the main message of its catalog essay was addressed to
the present, warning that “the new Russian culture before and immediately after
the revolution could teach the communists that progressive politics and cultural
conservatism are irreconcilable.”30 This remark set the tone for the more sharply
political reception of this art at the end of the decade.
The student movements and anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations gave weight
and currency to thoughts urging social and cultural change in both Western
Europe and the United States; and dissent was manifest in art exhibitions, too. In
1967 the Frankfurter Kunstverein organized Konstruktive Malerei (Constructive
Painting) 1915-1930, a survey of the avant-garde’s geometric art with
revolutionary connotations. A survey show, Avantgarde Osteuropa 1910-1930,
organized by the West Berlin Kunstverein in the Fall of 1967, commemorated the
fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution and reminded of the fact that this
was the first such exhibition since 1922—although this time not only Russians
were included but Czech, Hungarian, and Polish artists’ works, as well. The
works were loaned, as it was emphasized, exclusively from Western collections.
In the catalog, former dada-abstract filmmaker and editor Hans Richter recalled
his original fascination with Soviet-Russian art as he had seen it and had been
informed of it in 1922. His description of this memory resonated, at the same
time, as a desire in the present:
All of a sudden, we, who had been familiar with Western art, and looked at Paris,
encountered a whole generation of new artists from the East who had the same
ideas as we had. ( . . . ) The most extreme, abstract forms of modern art could
contribute to the public life of a people. ( . . . ) [Lissitzky’s] decorations on the
Red Square ( . . . ) were more than decoration. They expressed an optimism,
which pervaded the entirety of public life and promised to the artists, through
free, abstract language, a new function in society. It is a rare moment in the
history of a people when government and people, patron and artist want one
and the same thing.31
Styling memory, and mixing it with imagination and hearsay, and adjusting all
that to the present moment, Richter spoke for a large group of the intelligentsia
who hoped to find a way out of capitalism’s discontents by espousing early,
“uncorrupted” socialism as a golden age of sorts. Imagining a moment when

alienation was suspended was the most energizing and inspiring idea on the eve
of 1968. Faith in the social and transformative power of art was also palpable in
the 1960s, as it had been in the early 1920s.
Architect and urban designer Anatole Kopp (1915–1990) published Ville
et Révolution (City and Revolution),32 his first survey of early Soviet-Russian
architecture and urban design, a book widely read amidst the events of May
1968 in Paris. According to one of his reviewers, Kopp’s motivation seems to
rhyme with Lisstzky’s postrevolutionary hopes, as Kopp apparently projected
them back from 1968 to 1917: “For the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who
was raised between cultural boundaries, ( . . . ) and faced the chauvinistic and
xenophobic France of his youth, the October Revolution signified [to Kopp] a
new universality, a society free of social as well as national differences, suggesting
affinities between Jewish messianic aspiration and a social utopia interpreted as
an ethical enterprise.”33
The year 1967, which was marked by the first signs of the “Prague Spring,”
the Czechoslovakian attempt to humanize the Soviet-type communist system,
exuded a sense of freedom in Eastern Europe as well as in the West—a freedom
which may not have been really there, but at least was no longer impossible
to imagine. Publications and Western exhibitions of the Soviet-Russian avant-
garde symbolically charted out the direction of political and intellectual
aspirations. Books that could not have been published before in Eastern Europe,
like Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers’s substantial volume on Lissitzky, complete with
original documents; a smaller book of Lissitzky’s writings; and Larisa Zhadova’s
book on Malevich with the VEB Verlag in Dresden; or the Soviet author German
Karginov’s monograph on Rodchenko with the Corvina Publishing House in
Budapest, now came out; and a new, somewhat liberated, post-Stalinist tone of
discourse was introduced.
The events of the following year 1968 affected, among many other things,
the assessment of the historic, particularly Russian, avant-garde. While Daniel
Cohn-Bendit, along with several anarchist-leaning movements, discarded the
idea of a political party and that of organized leadership altogether, Trotskyist
groups in Paris, particularly La Ligue communiste Révolutionnaire, who
identified themselves as the French section of the Fourth International, led by
Alain Krivine, put “original” and “uncorrupted” communism into focus. These
groups were rereading and revising the history of the October Revolution
and the early years of Soviet power and were inspired by Trotsky’s idea of a
permanent revolution. They believed that incessant revolutionary dynamism is
the key element that would preempt bureaucratization—the factor that, most
leftist movements believed, skewed the original ideas of the October Revolution.
The original purity of the revolution, they thought, was demonstrated and
popularized by the freshness and the freedom of pre-Stalinist Soviet-Russian art,
architecture, literature, theater, and film, all of which was experimental, abstract,
and anti-bourgeois.
What was perceived as “the Russian avant-garde” at this point was a broad and
all-inclusive idea, still similar to what was understood by the term during most
of the interwar era. The spring 1968 issue of the Paris-based art journal Cimaise,
the entirety of which was dedicated to the Soviet-Russian avant-garde, had the
photo negative of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International on its cover as an
iconic image of the revolution, calling for a parallel between 1917 and 1968, as
if announcing that the revolution—or, as per the photo negative, the shadow of
it—was, once again, “in” (see Figure 12.1).
In Cologne, the Gmurzynska Gallery opened a Russian art show.34 Kenneth
Frampton published his essay “Notes on a Lost Avant-Garde,”35 a survey of
Soviet-Russian art with Tatlin’s Tower as its starting point. In Copenhagen, Troels
Andersen organized a Tatlin exhibition and published the first two volumes of
the English translation of Malevich’s writings.
One of the features of the Soviet avant-garde that fascinated the Trotskyist
groups in Paris was that it was apparently state-sponsored art. Although
everything was nationalized and state-controlled in postrevolutionary Russia,
and art was no exception, this belief proved to these particular groups of the New
Left that the concepts of a communist state and artistic freedom were compatible,
which in turn justified their concept of the necessity and benevolent potential
of a leading leftist political party. Looking back from 1968 when abstract art
was, with the exception of Poland, banned east of the iron curtain, the once-
dominant public presence of abstract art in a communist state appeared to be
the clear proof of the once existing unlimited freedom of expression in that state.
Scholarship had not yet revealed at that point the boundaries and conditions
that the bolshevik Party imposed on that art from as early as 1918 and 1919
(as already mentioned in previous chapters), when several avant-garde journals
were already banned. The newfound evidence of such imagined freedom,
however, flew in the face of everything that this generation had learned about
communism in school. A treasure trove was discovered that had been hidden by
the joint efforts of mainstream politics, both in the East and in the West. Since the
Trotskyist groups had many activists and members who immigrated to France
from Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union—some directly from the Warsaw or
Figure 12.1 Cover page of Cimaise, spring issue 1968.
Prague student movements—or were descendants of former émigrés, it is no

surprise that they had particular interest in the art of the “original” revolution.
These activists’ interest in early Soviet culture also coincided with the
commercial success of the Soviet avant-garde in the art market and with
widespread intellectual and political curiosity in alternatives to the present
conditions in the West. It is hard to fathom which of these components had
more influence on putting the Russian avant-garde center stage. Cold War
fascination with the other side of the iron curtain, coupled with the widely
known fact that this art was still hidden and discarded in its place of origin,
must have played a role. As previously mentioned, abstract art as well as the
various iterations of American minimalism—which ultimately traced their
origins back to Russian constructivism—also resonated as dissident art in
the West in the 1960s, since at that time they were not yet supported by the
market.36
The rediscovery of the Soviet-Russian avant-garde was a complex experience
in the West, which included a sense of repaying a debt and restoring the
moral order and continuity of an important tradition of the culture. In his
Preface to Anatole Kopp’s book, Romanian-born French architect Ionel Schein
underscored that Kopp’s book “did not merely rehabilitate Soviet architects,
but, beyond all politics, it had restored historic truth, which is the condition of
further development.”37
“It’s Only a Beginning!”
After De Gaulle reinstated his power in France in June 1968 and the Warsaw Pact
troops invaded Czechoslovakia to terminate the “Prague Spring” in August 1968,
the appreciation of early Soviet art was invested with yet another meaning. Now,
for several New Left groups, it symbolized sustained hope in a future revolution.
They hammered out a new strategy after the defeat. Activists—in the spirit of the
summer ’68 slogan “Ce n’est qu’un début, continuons le combat!” (It’s only the
beginning, let’s continue the fight!)—set out to East European countries to
escalate the movement, clandestinely recruiting future allies from among those
who were likely to respond and willing to actively engage in anti-Soviet leftism.
The counterculture of 1960s Europe, from its ecstatic quest of a fundamental
improvement of the world to the loss of such illusions was, in many ways, the
reincarnation of the equally leftist counterculture avant la lettre of the 1920s,
which wasn’t lost on the supporters of this art. “It doesn’t need to be proved that
understanding the art of the 1920s is indispensable for the understanding of our
present world,” art critic Tomas Straus wrote in the Introduction to the catalog of
Lajos Kassák’s exhibition in 1973.38 “[The avant-garde movements of the 1920s]
cooperated beyond national borders. ( . . . ) It is extremely important for us today
to understand the trends of our own time through their activity, and, learning
from them, to try to overcome our national isolations,” Peter Spielmann wrote in
another Kassák catalog at the same time.39
A new initiative, mail art, was growing into a widespread global movement
in the 1970s.40 It resembled the beginnings of the internationalism of the avant-
gardes of the early 1920s, when supranational networking was achieved by the
circulation over the national borders of the “little journals,” the avant-garde
publications, in the wake of the First World War. Mail art used the existing
international mail service for the purposes of creating a global network of those
who opposed the establishments that operated, among other things, the mail
services.
The 1970s was the decade during which the canon and interpretation of the
Russian avant-garde was being shaped in the West. In the spring of 1971, the
Arts Council of Great Britain organized “Art in Revolution: Soviet Art and Design
since 1917” in the Hayward Gallery in London, originally proposed by Camilla
Gray and curated, due to her efforts and connections, with the participation of
the Soviet Ministry of Culture. Gray was married to the son of Soviet composer
Sergei Prokofiev; thus it was, at that point, a one-time contribution on behalf
of the Soviet officialdom to a Soviet (rather than Russian) avant-garde show in
the West. This exhibition was different from previous, all-inclusive shows. As
Gray explained in her preface to the catalog, the exhibition was meant to clearly
define constructivism, particularly because Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner,
who at that point lived in the West, had claimed to have been the founders of the
trend, when in fact they left Russia before the movement was actually launched.
Gabo and Pevsner, however, authored The Realist Manifesto in 1920 that had
similarities to later constructivist concepts.41 The Hayward Gallery show was
starkly distanced from previous ones, which had featured painters only. Here
no émigré artists were included, and constructivism ruled as Rodchenko,
Stepanova, the Stenberg brothers—that is, as INKhUK and OBMOKhU defined
it in Moscow in 1921—but also as official Soviet lenders agreed to show it as of
1971. This was probably the first Russian show which did not include any works
by Malevich. Tatlin, Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Dziga Vertov, Eisenstein, and the
theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold were its protagonists. Exhibits included
architecture, design, film, theater, and graphic design, dating mostly from the
late 1920s.
In spite of the many excellent artists included in it, this exhibition was so
controversial—partly because it was officially Soviet and partly because it ran
against the image of the Russian avant-garde that the galleries had already built
up for about a decade by that time—that when the show traveled to Germany,
the authors of the German catalog essay felt obliged to explain that “artists like
Chagall and Kandinsky are absent from this exhibition, because, although at first
they had been employed by the revolution, they considered their artistic activity
apolitical, and eventually left Russia.”42 In a further response to this exhibition,
the gallery Fischer Fine Arts in London organized a show titled “Tatlin’s Dream”
in 1973. “In the confines of a private gallery,” the dealer Wolfgang Fischer wrote
in his introductory Notes to the catalog, “[we hope] to present a postscript to
the official Arts Council exhibition of 1971, ‘Art in Revolution’, without the
ideological and practical restrictions of a state cultural exchange-program.”43 A
review in The Observer went as far as praising Fischer’s selection that opposed
“Art in Revolution’s [ . . . ] self-mutilating Soviet censorship.”44 The author of
the “Tatlin’s Dream” catalog essay, André Nakov, once again pointed out the
connection between the Russian avant-garde and the American abstraction
of the 1960s. “The work of Dan Flavin and Carl André reveals its sources,” he
wrote, “the writings of Robert Morris discuss them; together they bring to light a
conceptual notion of two artistic evolutions which have so much in common.”45
The horizon widened and opened up beyond what Hans L. C. Jaffe found when
discovering Malevich as part of the De Stijl’s international context. Now, the
newly discovered Soviet avant-garde directed the commercial galleries’ attention
to the whole progressive art of the 1910s and 1920s. The fiftieth anniversary of
the opening of the Bauhaus was celebrated by a large traveling exhibition. The
1970 winter issue of Cimaise was dedicated to De Stijl, which was now seen in
more revolutionary light as well, as part of the broad avant-garde movements of
the interwar period. Kurt Schwitters’s works were exhibited in several venues in
Germany throughout the 1970s. The Gmurzynska Gallery in Cologne, which
pioneered in showing early Soviet art, now interspersed it with a great many
Polish, German, Czech, Hungarian, Dutch, and French avant-garde artworks.
The Paris-based Galleries Jean Chauvelin, Denise René, as well as German,
Swiss, and French dealers expanded their efforts to familiarize the Western
audience with Soviet, East European, as well as West European avant-gardes of
the 1920s. The merit of these exhibitions was, among other things, that they
contextualized those works which had already been on show in various private
and public collections worldwide. The Gmurzynska Gallery in Cologne had a
particularly consistent program over the years, organizing Konstruktivismus
(Constructivism) in 1972, Progressive Russische Kunst (Progressive Russian Art)
in 1973, and From Surface to Space, Russia 1916-1924 in 1974; Die Zwanzige
Jahre in Osteuropa (The 1920s in Eastern Europe) in 1975, El Lissitzky in 1976,
Die Kunstismen in Russland (The Art isms) 1907-1930 in 1977, and “Malewitsch”
in 1978. It also pioneered in showing works by the artist and composer
Mikhail Matyushin and Pavel Miturich, although many aspects of Malevich’s
prerevolutionary work and the spiritual approach of Matyushin, Guro, and the
Ender siblings were brought to the fore only in the 1980s.
The revolutionary anticapitalism of the New Left, paradoxically, added a
sense of approval to the marketing of Soviet and East European art. This art,
which had denied commerce and capitalism forthwith, needed the intellectual-
political engagement of the New Left to give legitimacy for its trade, which—in
turn—greatly helped the art market to gain momentum in showing and selling
revolutionary art. Dealers got hold of an amazing number of artworks and they
mobilized scholars to research the history of this art and its original documents.
Galleries cooperated with one another and with collectors to stage large survey
shows. To retrieve this art and keep it under the public eye against the efforts
of the Soviet and East European communist parties’ policies of culture that
tried to conceal it, as well as against the efforts of mainstream Western cultural
agents who scorned its leftism, was invested with an aura of moral commitment.
Many art dealers supported systematic art historical research of the Russian and
East European avant-gardes, thus espousing a cause rather than mere business.
Moreover, after 1974–1975, when even the aftermath of the social and political
movements of the 1960s had faded, the myth of the Russian avant-garde, its
narrative having been established, still increasingly resonated—and keeps on
resonating—among collectors, intellectuals, and art institutions.
Its reception and marketing had to tackle a few particular circumstances. This
art originated from a country which, by definition, lacked an infrastructure of
art trade. The works belonged to an art historical context that was, for many
decades, hardly, or not at all, known in the West. Since many of the works made
their way to the West illegally, provenance was blurred. Geometric abstraction
was eminently easy to fake. In the midst of high demand for Soviet-Russian
avant-garde works, even paintings attributed to invented artists were offered for
sale. For example, John Bowlt mentions that works by a certain Ulia Aranova
were sold at Sotheby’s July 4, 1974, Russian and East European auction, whereas
“Not only did such an artist never exist, but a work dated 1911 was in fact painted
in 1971.”46 The presence of a number of fake works on the market did not make
the historical surveying of the Russian avant-garde easy.
The 1975 Helsinki Accords, which aimed to improve East–West relations, and
introduced the politics of détente, or thaw, decreasing Cold War tensions, enabled
in the field of culture great survey exhibitions of the classic avant-garde. These
shows, accompanied by extensive catalogs, were dedicated to the Soviet and
East European avant-garde—and, increasingly, to the contemporary art of the
region47—and were organized by leading French and German institutions. They
also indicated a sort of territorial debate over which of the two countries had
had a greater part in fostering Russian and East European art in the 1920s and in
the present. The Paris-Berlin show in the Pompidou Center in 1978, sandwiched
between the 1977 Paris-New York and the 1979 Paris-Moscow exhibitions, was
probably meant, as if in response to a number of recent German exhibitions, to
restore Paris’ historic status as the art capital of the world, something that had
been challenged by Berlin during the interwar period and by New York from the
1940s onward.48
The Paris-Moscow exhibition, which showed Soviet-Russian avant-garde
works from Soviet state collections (some of them in deplorable state), was also
the result of high-level diplomatic cooperation. It would not have happened
without the commercial activities of the galleries that had created awareness
of this art in the West or without the New Left’s strong political emphasis on
this art; nor would it have happened without the Helsinki Accords that made it
uncomfortable for the Soviet Union to continue hiding this art now that it had
become internationally better known than in the USSR. News of the very fact that
this art had been in the vaults for half a century was in and of itself an accusation
of Soviet politics of culture; and, also for this reason, this event reverberated in
post-Helsinki Europe as an example of the Soviet Union’s “coming out” with the
country’s historic avant-garde.
New publications such as the Paris-based journal Macula, launched in
1976 by Yves-Alain Bois and others, contributed to a more detailed and more
well-rounded picture of art in the early Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The
first issue included the French translation of Władisław Strzemiński’s Unism
in Painting; Bois’s essay on Malevich, articles on De Stijl; and John Bowlt’s
previously cited account of the Soviet art business; as well as essays on the
1920s Dutch and German avant-gardes. Also in 1976, the journal October was
launched in America by Rosalind Krauss and Anette Michaelson, its title chosen
“in celebration of that moment in our century when revolutionary practice,
theoretical inquiry and artistic innovation were joined in a manner exemplary
and unique.”49 Its first issues discussed, among other things, the Soviet film
director Sergei Eisenstein’s unrealized project of making a film of Marx’s Capital;
his exchange with Malevich on the nature of cinematic expression; other writings
included references to works of Vladimir Markov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Viktor
Shklovsky, thus bringing the Soviet avant-garde’s artists, historians, writers, and
theorists center stage in the international critical-theoretical discourse.50
The rediscovery and art historical restoration of the Soviet-Russian avant-
garde resulted in the creation and acknowledgment of a narrative parallel
to that of Western modernism. Cubo-futurism, rayonism, suprematism,

constructivism, proun, productivism, and their prominent representatives
now arose as full-fledged chapters and agents of the Russian avant-garde, with
their impact on their Western counterparts fully recognized. The initiative of
the 1960s that originated in, and was akin to, motivations that had inspired the
progressive artists of the early 1920s, gave way to the extensive scholarly work on
the Russian avant-garde, starting in the 1980s and intensifying when the Soviet
archives opened up after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Notes
Introduction
1 See Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Gardes and Other Modernist
Myths, Cambridge, MA; London: The MIT Press, 1986.
2 Besides Camilla Gray’s groundbreaking The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-
1922, London: Thames and Hudson, 1962, see, among others, Louise Hardiman,
Nicola Kozicharow, eds., Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New
Perspectives, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017; Anatolii Strigaljov: “Die
Bedeutung der altrussischen und der volkstümlichen Kunst in Tatlins Werk”, in
Jürgen Harten, ed., Tatlin, Cologne: DuMont, 1993; Mark Steinberg, Heather
J. Coleman, eds., Sacred Stories. Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007; Alexei Kurbanovsky: “Malevich’s
Mystic Signs: From Iconoclasm to New Theology,” in Steinberg, Coleman,
op.cit.; Maria Taroutina, The Icon and the Square. Russian Modernism and the
Russo-Byzantine Revival, Penn State University Press, 2018, Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige
Propheten, Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag, 1983.
3 Inverting the word Hausbau, or house building, Gropius let the word Bauhütte,
or building huts serving for the medieval cathedrals’ builders and building
communities, hear through the neologism Bauhaus.
4 For detailed analysis, see Nina Tumarkin, “Religion, Bolshevism, and the Origins of
the Lenin Cult,” Slavic Review, vol. 40, January 1980, 35–46.
5 Quoted by Tumarkin, ibid., 43. Originally in Lunacharsky: Velikii Perevorot,
Petrograd, 1919, 31. Lunacharsky’s brother-in-law Alexander Bogdanov had shared
Krasin’s and Fodorov’s ideas on perpetuated eternal living and caused his own death
by conducting blood transfusions on himself (Tumarkin, ibid., 43). See also Sheila
Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of Education
and the Arts under Lunacharsky, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Chapter 1, “Lunacharsky.”
6 Oleg Tarasov: “Spirituality and the Semiotics of Russian Culture: From the Icon to
Avant-Garde Art,” in Louise Hardiman, Nicola Kozicharow, eds., Modernism and
the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers,
2017, 115–28.
7 Nina Gourianova: “Re-imagining the Old Faith: Larionov, Goncharova, and the
Spiritual Traditions of Old Believers,” in Hardiman, Kozicharov, op. cit., 129–48.
238 Notes
8 Louise Hardiman, Nicola Kozicharov, “Introduction,” op.cit., 26.

9 Tarasov, op.cit., 121.
10 Strigaljov, op.cit., 128.
11 M. N. Yablonskaya, Women Artists of Russia, London: Thames & Hudson, 1990, 63.
12 Larionov: Rayonnist Manifesto, quoted and translated by Camilla Gray, in Gray
op. cit., 137–8.
13 Krauss, op.cit.
14 Florensky, 1920, reprinted in Nicoletta Misler, ed. Pavel Florensky, Essays on the
Perception of Art, London: Reaktion Books, 2002, 201–72.
15 This book was based on Florensky’s lectures at the Theological Academy in Moscow,
1918, so his views were likely to be known earlier than the publication of his book.
(Clemena Antonova, Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon. Seeing the World with
the Eyes of God, Burlington: Ashgate, 2010, 15.)
16 Boris Vipper, “Problema vremeni v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve”, in 50 let
gosudarstvennomu muzeiu izobrazitel’nylh iskusstv imeni A.S. Puskina, Moscow
1962, 134–50, quoted by Antonova, op. cit., 15.
17 For a detailed discussion, see Verena Krieger, Kunst als Neuschöpfung der
Wirklichkeit. Die Anti-Ästhetik der russischen Moderne, Cologne, Weimar, Wien:
Böhlau Verlag, 2006, 9–14.
18 Erich Buchholz in reference to El Lissitzky, Berlin, Archives of the Berlinische
Galerie, and El Lissitzky, Architect, Painter, Photographer, Typographer, Eindhoven:
Municipal Van Abbe Museum, 1990, 64.
19 Pervy vserossuski s’yezd professionalnykh soyuzov, 7–14 yanvarya 1918, Moscow:
1918, 212. www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/1918.html accessed June
12, 2013.
20 For detailed discussion, see Krieger, op. cit., 18; Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The
Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1983.
21 Henderson, op. cit., 241–5.
22 For example, see Count Saint-Simon in correspondence with Olinde Rodrigues,
quoted and translated by Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, Durham: Duke
University Press, 1987, 102–4; see also Irina Gutkin, The Cultural Origins of the Socialist
Realist Aesthetic 1890-1934, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999, 10–11.
23 For a more detailed discussion, see Éva Forgács, “Concepts of Art and State,”
Arcadia, Bd. 41, Heft 2, 2006, 260–74.
24 Olinde Rodrigues: “L’Artiste, le Savant et l’Industriel. Dialogue,” originally
published in Opinions littéraires, philosophiques et industrielles, Paris: Galérie de
Bossange Père, 1825, translated and quoted by Calinescu, op.cit., 103.
25 Emil Ludwig: Talks with Mussolini, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, London,
Allen & Unwin 1932, 128, quoted by Eric Michaud, The Cult of Art in Nazi
Germany, translated by Janet Lloyd, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 3.
Notes 239
26 Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism. Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and
Beyond, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
27 Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, New York:
Dover Publications, 159–62.
28 On the significance of the motif of flying in Russian and Soviet art, see Maria
Tsantsanoglou: “The Soviet Icarus: From the Dream of Free Flight to the Nightmare
of Free Fall,” in Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori, Maria Mileeva, eds., Utopian
Reality. Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond, Leiden, Boston:
Brill, 2013, 43–56.
29 Klaus von Beyme, Das Zeitalter der Avantgarden. Kunst und Gesellschaft 1905-1955,
Munich: C.H. Beck, 2005, 223–4.
30 Theo van Doesburg, Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst (Principles of Neo-
Plastic Art), Munich: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925, Translated by Janet Seligman,
reprint London: Lund Humphries, 1969, 6.
31 Ibid., 9.
32 von Beyme, 225.
Chapter 1
1 Malevich’s birth date has been corrected from 1878 to 1879. See Andrei Nakov,
Black and White. A Suprematist Composition of 1915 by Kazimir Malevich,
Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 2009, 97, n. 4.
2 He was born to a family of noble lineage, with the double surname Dorotich-
Malevich. VM, Vol. I., 392.
3 On Malevich’s formative years in Kiev including the influence of the abstract
folk-art motifs on his later work, see Miroslava M. Mudrak, “Malevich and His
Ukrainian Contemporaries,” in Charlotte Douglas and Christina Lodder, eds.
Rethinking Malevich, London: The Pindar Press, 2007, 82–120.
4 See Jane Ashton Sharp, Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ja
Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006, 121, and 309, n. 104: “Several paintings of religious subject matter
were confiscated in addition to Goncharova’s.‘Moskovskaia Khronika’” Rech,
January 11, 1911, 3.
5 See Savva Mamontov’s review in Russkoie Slovo, December 15, 1910, 6, quoted by
Sharp, op. cit., 310, n. 110.
6 The origin of the group’s name goes back to a prank of the French artist Roland
Dorgelès, who “tied a paintbrush to a donkey’s tail, enticed the animal to swish a
few paint-loaded strokes across a piece of canvas and exhibited the result at that
year’s Salon des Indépendants, under the title Et le soleil se coucha sur l’Adriatique,
240 Notes
and over the pseudonym Joachim-Raphael Boronali. Few critics seem to have
thought the work interesting enough to mention [until] two weeks into the
exhibition Dorgelès published a full account of his spoof in the Parisian humorist
periodical Fantasio. The press reaction was extensive ( . . . ) guaranteeing the affair
instant notoriety that spread as far as Russia.” David Cottington, Cubism in the
Shadow of War: The Avant-Garde and Politics in Paris, 1905-1914, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998, 9.
7 For Russian futurism and cubo-futurism, see Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism:
A History, Washington DC: New Academia Publishing, 2006; Anna Lawton, ed.,
Russian Futurism through Its Manifestoes 1912-1928, Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1988; Gerald Janecek, Zaum. The Transrational Poetry of Russian
Futurism, San Diego: San Diego University Press, 1996.
8 Kruchenikh: “The Word as Such” (Slovo kak takovoe), in Collected Works,
Leningrad 1933. See Lawton, 57.
9 Khlebnikov, Kruchenikh: “The Letter as Such,” Lawton, 55.
10 D. Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenikh, V. Mayakovsky, Victor (sic!) Khlebnikov,
(A slap in the face of public taste) Moscow, 1912; English translation Anna
Lawton, Herbert Eagle; Lawton, 51–52.
11 Lawton, 51.
12 Ibid., 52.
13 Ibid., 60.
14 Ibid., 63.
15 This translation by Paul Schmidt in Charlotte Douglas, ed. The King of Time.
Selected Writings of the Russian Futurian, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1985. “Futurian” is creative translation of budetljanie, “the one who will be”:
the Russified term for “futurist.”
16 David Burliuk, Elena Guro, Nikolai Burliuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Katherine
Nizen, Victor (sic!) Khlebnikov, Benedikt Lifshitz A. Kruchenikh, A Trap for
Judges, 1913, Lawton, 54.
17 “Color masses,” painterly masses,” or, in other translation, “pictorial masses” are
part of the description of Malevich’s suprematist paintings in the catalog of the
0.10 The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings, Petrograd, December 1915–January
1916.
18 Quoted by Charlotte Douglas, Swans of Other Worlds, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press1976, 36.
19 Ibid.
20 Alexandra Shatskikh, Black Square. Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, 1–33.
21 Malevich: “From Secret Vices of Academicians,” in Kruchenikh: Secret Vices of
the Academicians, Moscow, 1916, that included this pamphlet and other short
texts by Malevich along with some by Ivan Kliun, who was also the illustrator
Notes 241
of the booklet. In Troels Andersen, ed., K.S. Malevich Essays on Art 1915-1928,
Vol. 1, Transl. Xenia Glowacki-Prus, Arnold McMillan, Copenhagen: Borgen,
1968, 17.
22 Shatskikh, Black Square, 5.
23 Elena Basner, “Malevich’s Paintings in the Collection of the Russian Museum,” in
Yevgenia Petrova, ed., Kazimir Malevich in State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg:
Palace Editions, 2000, 18. Basner relates that Malevich’s student Konstantin
Rozhdestvensky confirmed that Malevich called the painting Cow on a Violin and
predated it 1911. According to Shatskikh he predated it to 1913.
24 Malevich: “The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism,” 1926; trans.
Howard Dearstyne, Chicago: Theobald Books, 19, 67.
25 Malevich 1916, in Andersen 1968, 38.
26 Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment,” 1784, translated by Mary C. Smith, http:
//www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html, accessed December 12,
2012.
27 Sharp, op.cit., 121.
28 (Untitled) A Trap for Judges, 1910. Lawton, 53.
29 Piotr Damianovich Uspensky, Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought,
a Key to the Enigmas of the World. Translated from the Russian by Nicholas
Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon. Rochester and New York: Manas Press, 1920;
New York: Knopf, 1922; London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1923, 1934; 3rd
American edition, New York: Knopf, 1945.
30 See Henderson, op.cit.
31 For detailed discussion of the Russian futurist books, see Nancy Perloff, Explodity,
Los Angeles: Getty Publishers, 2017, especially 113–44.
32 Douglas, op.cit., 28.
33 S. Patraskin, “Bayachi budetliane” (“The Futurist Bards”), Den, December 8, 1913,
quoted and translated by Nina Gurianova, The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and
Ideology in the Early Russian Avant-Garde, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2012, 125.
34 See R. W. Flint, ed., Let’s Murder the Moonshine: Selected Writings of F.T. Marinetti,
trans. R. W. Flint and Arthur A. Coppotelli, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1991.
Khardzhiev, in Petrova, op. cit., 132, also references Marinetti’s Uccidiamo il chiaro
di luna, translating it as “We shall kill the moonlight.”
35 Nikolai Khardzhiev, “Alexei Kruchenikh,” in Petrova, 132.
36 Victory over the Sun, libretto Alexei Kruchenikh, music Mikhail Matyushin,
prologue Velimir Khlebnikov, sets K. Malevich. Translation by Ewa Bartos and
Victoria Nes Kirby, The Drama Review XV (Autumn 1971), 107–24.
37 K. Malevich, “On the Museum,” Iskusstvo Kommuny No. 12, February 23, 1919. In
Andersen, 1968., 72. On Russian Cosmism, see Boris Groys, ed., Russian Cosmism,
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018.
242 Notes
38 For a more detailed discussion, see Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, New
Haven: Yale University Press,1983, 208 and 298, notes 17–26.
39 For discussion of this motif, see Maria Tsantsanoglou: “The Soviet Icarus: From
the Dream of Free Flight to the Nightmare of Free Fall,” in Christina Lodder,
Maria Kokkori, Maria Mileeva, eds., Utopian Reality. Reconstructing Culture in
Revolutionary Russia and Beyond, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013, 43–56; and
Hubertus Gassner, “Alexander Rodtschenko. Auf der Suche nach Leichtigkeit”
in Alla Chilova, Ortrud Westheider, eds., Rodtschenko. Eine neue Zeit, Munich:
Hirmer, 2013, 44–53.
40 Malevich, “Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism” printed in the
Catalog of the Tenth State Exhibition, Moscow, 1919, transl. in Andersen,
1968, 122.
41 Arnie Glimcher and Bernice Rose, on the exhibition Picasso, Braque, and Early
Film in Cubism, New York: Pace Wildenstein, April 20–June 23, 2007.
42 Benedikt Lifshitz, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, translated by John Bowlt,
Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1977, 163–64.
43 “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. The New Realism in Painting,” 1916.
In Andersen 1968, 19.
44 Shatskikh, op.cit., 48.
45 “fiery lightning bolts were constantly crossing the canvas in front of him,” Kljun
remembers to have heard from Malevich; while Malevich’s pupil Anna Leporskaia
recalls that Malevich “considered Black Square an event of such tremendous
significance in his art that he could not eat, drink, or sleep for a full week,” quoted
by Shatskikh, op.cit., 45.
46 Painter Ivan Puni, 1892–1956.
47 Postcard of Malevich to Matyushin dated September 25, 1915, quoted in Shatskikh,
op. cit., 55; VM. Vol. I., 68.
49 ibid., 85 and passim.
50 Patricia Railing, ed. and intr. Malevich on Suprematism. Six Essays 1915-1926, Iowa
City: Iowa, The Museum of Art of the University of Iowa, 1999, 99, 37.
51 Alexander Benois: “The Last Futurist Exhibition,” Rech, St. Petersburg, January 9,
1916, VM, Vol. II, 514–17; this and subsequent quotes 517.
52 Nakov, op.cit., 103, n. 54.
54 Alexander Rostislavov: “On the Futurists’ Exhibition,” Rech, St. Petersburg,
December 25, 1915. VM, Vol. II, 513.
55 Christina Lodder: “Malevich as Exhibition Maker,” in Malevich, exh. cat., London:
Tate Modern, 2014, 94–9, this quote 95.
56 Maria Taroutina, The Icon and the Square. Russian Modernism and the Russo-
Byzantine Revival, University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2018, 18, 180.
Notes 243
57 Irina Vakar: “New Information Concerning the Black Square,” in Christina Lodder,
ed., Celebrating Suprematism. New Approaches to the Art of Kazimir Malevich,
Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019, 11–28.
59 Gray notes “Malevich was a brilliant speaker and a man of great charm and
humour.” Gray, 143.
60 Alexandra Shatskikh, Kazimir Malevich and Supremus, Tri Kvadrata, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2009, 118.
61 Kliun in Malevich 2004, 71, quoted by Tatiana Mikhienko, “Kasimir Malewitsch in
den Augen seiner Schüler und Nachfolger,” in Malsch, Friedemann, ed., Malewitsch
und sein Einfluss, Vaduz: Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein, 2008, 19–29, 21.
62 Alexandra Shatskikh, Kazimir Malevich and Supremus, op.cit., New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 2009, 118–19.
63 See Dmitrii Sarabianov and Alexandra Shatskikh, Kazimir Malevich: zhivopis,
teoria Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1993; Taroutina 2018.
64 Gray, op.cit., 206.
65 Shatskikh, The Black Square, 127.
66 ibid., 128–9.
67 Matyushin, “On the Exhibition of the Last Futurists,” 1916, in VM, Vol. 2, 122,
quoted by Mikhienko in Malsch, 20–1.
68 Mikhienko, op.cit., 21.
69 Ibid., 20–8.
70 Troels Andersen, “Malevich on New Art,” in Andersen, 1968, 9.
71 Kazimir Malevich: The World of Objectlessness. With essays and new translation
of the Bauhaus Book 1927. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Anna Brailkovsky,
Meredith Dale, Bronwen Saunders. Basel: Kunstmuseum and Ostfildern: Hetje
Cantz Verlag, 2014, 187; Malevich: “The Non-Objective World,” ibid., 67 as “pure
feeling.”
72 Railing, op. cit., 19.
73 Malevich, letter to Matyushin, May 1915, quoted in Douglas 64; VM, Vol. I., 66.
74 Isabel Wünsche, Kunst un Leben. Mikhail Matyushin und die Russische Avantgarde
in St. Petersburg, Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2012, 54.
75 quoted by Mikhienko, op.cit., 19.
76 Ibid., 19–20.
77 A. Lunacharsky in Ogoniok, 1927, quoted by von Beyme, op.cit., 5, 335. As briefly
mentioned in the Introduction as well as Chapter 10, Lunacharsky was also
working on the compatibility of the revolution and religion. His concept of “God-
building” (bogostroitelstvo), however, was based on faith in the enthusiasm he
thought was moving people in constructing a socialist state.
78 A. Gan, “Kazimir Malewitsch,” Moskauer Rundschau, 24, 11, 1929, Nr. 29,
in Hubertus Gassner, Echart Gillen, eds., Zwischen Revolutionskunst und
244 Notes
Sozialistischen Realismus. Dokumente und Kommentare Kunstdebatten in der

Sowietunion von 1917 bis 1934. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 19, 205–6.
79 Gurianova, op.cit., 196.
80 Ibid., 197.
81 Malevich, “From Cubism to Suprematism. The New Realism of Painting,”
November 1916, in Railing, op. cit., 26.
82 Kazimir Malevich: From Cubism to Suprematism, Petrograd, 1915, English
translation in T. Andersen, 1968, 19–41, this quote 19.
83 Soloviev, Sochinenia v dvukh tomakh (Works in two volumes), Moscow, Mysl,
1988, 2, 294 and 1: 742–3, quoted and translated by Irina Gutkin, The Cultural
Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic 1890-1934, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 19, 1999, 11.
84 Douglas, op.cit., 68.
85 This text was dated “Moscow 1915” but published in November 1916. See Railing,
27.
86 Andersen 1968, 19.
87 Malevich 1915 in Railing, 29.
88 Ibid., 31.
89 Ibid., 37.
90 Ibid., 46.
91 Felix Philipp Ingold, “Welt und Bild. Zur Begründung der suprematistischen
Ästhetik bei Kazimir Malevič,” in Gottfried Boehm, ed., Was ist ein Bild? Munich:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006, 367–407.
92 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819.
93 Douglas, op.cit.
94 Quoted by Krieger, 191.
95 Shatskikh, The Black Square, 130, 131.
96 Igor Terentiev, “Materials from the Investigation File,” excerpt in VM, Vol. 2, 333–
9, this quote 334. The reader is also referred to a piece of memoir of Fedor Petrov
who asked Malevich about the meaning of his paintings in 1926, whereupon the
painter answered: “the task of art lies in visual irritation, while defining the essence
is the tour guide’s job.” According to Petrov, “It was clear that the artist himself
had no concept of who such ‘canvases’ were for and why they were needed. But
Malevich was a talented man.” VM, Vol. 2, 344.
97 Konstantin Rozhdestvensky, “GINKhUK,” written in the 1970s–1980s years, VM,
Vol. 2, 288.
98 Malevich used typewriters mostly, if not exclusively, in his official correspondence.
Many typewritten pages are, for example, in the Khardzhiev-Chaga foundation in
the archives of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
99 Kazimir Malevich, From Cubism to Suprematism. New Painterly Realism,
Petrograd: Zhuravl, June 1915. Transl. Charlotte Douglas, in Railing, 18–24;
Notes 245
Malevich, From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. The New Realism in

Painting, November 1916, Petrograd, Zhuravl, 1916. Transl. Xenia Glowacki-Prus
and Arnold McMillin, in Andersen 1968, 19; reprinted in Railing, 28–42.
100 Minutes of the Meeting of the Moscow Military-Revolutionary Committee,
November 13, 1917, 17:00 p.m. VM, Vol. I, 407. “The fact that Malevich was
chairman of the Soviet’s Department of Arts and Education beginning in
September 1917 was evidently instrumental in his appointment,” the editors’
footnote adds on the same page.
101 For a detailed discussion, see Pamela Kachurin, “Malevich as Soviet Bureaucrat:
Ginkhuk and the Survival of the Avant-Garde, 1924-1926,” in Douglas, Lodder,
op.cit., 124.
102 Alexandra Shatskikh, “UNOVIS: Epicenter of a New World,” The Great Utopia:
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde 1915-1932, New York: The Salomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, 1992, 107–24.
103 Gurianova, 223.
104 Bengt Jangfeldt, Majakovskij and Futurism 1917-1921, Stockholm, Uppsala:
Almquist & Wiksell, 1976,
6, 17.
105 Boris Kushner, “Rukopozhatie”, in Nash Put, May 2, 1918, 186, quoted by
Jangfeldt, 28.
106 Quoted by Gurianova, 224.
107 Alexander Rodchenko, “To ‘Original’ Politics and the Newspaper Ponedelnik,”
Anarkhiia, No. 81, June 15, 1918. translated Jamey Gambrell, in Alexander
Rodchenko. Experiments for the Future. Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings,
New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2005, 83.
108 Alexander Rodchenko, “Note Dec. 25, 1918,” ibid., 88.
109 Jangfeldt, 20.
110 Ibid., 11.
111 Ibid., 30.
112 Ibid., 36.
113 On July 10, 1918, the Russian Constitution renamed the country the RSFSR
(Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic). This changed on December 30,
1922, when the country was renamed the Soviet Union (SSSR: Soviet Alliance of
Socialist Republics).
114 Malevich, “On the Museum,” orig. “O muzeye,” Iskusstvo kommuny, no. 12,
February 23, 1919, in Andersen, 1968, 69, 72.
115 Yehuda (Yurii) Pen, 1854–1937, teacher and painter active in Vitebsk. He worked
in the realist style and played a role in the Jewish Renaissance of the early twentieth
century in the Belarus. For detailed discussion of Yehuda Pen, who Russified his
name to Yuri Moiseevich, see Alexandra Shatskikh, Vitebsk. The Life of Art, New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007, 9–11.
246 Notes
116 Peter Nisbet, El Lissitzky in the Proun Years: A Study of His Work and Thought
1919-1927 diss., Yale, 1978, 13, 44.
117 Shatskikh, Vitebsk, 22.
118 Ibid., 28. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered on January 15,
1919.
119 Ibid.
120 Boguslavskaja 1921, quoted by Shatskikh, Vitebsk, 2, 37.
121 Ibid., 38–40.
122 ibid., 66.
123 The letter dated October 29, 1919, said: “In spite of my desire to continue working
here I have been compelled, in the absence of an apartment (I’m living in a cold
dacha), firewood, or electricity, to accept the offer made by the Vitebsk studios,
which will provide me with the necessary working and living conditions, and to
leave Moscow.” Willem Jan Renders, “Malevich in Vitebsk”; To Mihail Gershenzon,
November 7, 1919, Malevich wrote: “I had to pack my things very quickly
and leave for Vitebsk; ( . . . ) out of the blue people from Vitebsk arrived and
dragged me out from under the wings of impending cold and darkness.” In VM,
Vol. 1, 111.
124 Shatskikh, Vitebsk, 66–7.
125 Ibid., 68.
126 Nikolai Punin, “Kvartira 5”, 1930-1932, in Tatiana N. Mikhienko, Irina A. Vakar,
eds. Malevich o Sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche. Pisma, Dokumenty, Vospominania,
Kritika, Moscow: 2004, 149, quoted by Mikhienko in Malsch, op.cit., 21.
127 Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism,” translated by Xenia
Hoffmann, in Railing, 100.
128 Malevich: “Suprematism,” 1924–6, in Railing, 97.
129 UNOVIS group, UNOVIS—the Champions of New Art, Vitebsk, probably 1920.
Signed by “The Creative Committee of UNOVIS,” probably worded by Malevich.
Larisa Zhadova, Suche und Experiment. Russische und Sowietische Kunst 1910-
1930, Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1978, 297.
130 Shatskikh, The Black Square, 110.
131 Shatskikh Vitebsk, 73.
132 Malevich, in Andersen 1976, Vol. III, 83.
133 Ibid.
134 Ibid., 104.
135 “How UNOVIS Emerged,” originally published in the Russian journal Ermitazh
No. 10, 1922; 3–4. Republished and transl. by Nisbet, op.cit., 43.
136 Shatskikh, Vitebsk, 11, 53.
137 Malevich 1915, in Railing, ed., Malevich and Suprematism, 20.
138 Ibid.
Notes 247
139 Ibid.
140 Ibid., 22.
141 See Anna C. Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine, vol.
64, no. 5, January 1990, 44–63.
142 Shatskikh The Black Square, 127.
143 Malevich 1915, in Railing, 20.
Chapter 2
1 His name is often cited as Lazar Markovich Lissitzky. This original name is given
in Peter Nisbet, El Lissitzky 1890-1941, Retrospektive, Hanover: Sprengel Museum,
1988, 36, n. 4, as Lissitzky’s name appeared in the Diploma given by the Riga
Polytechnic Institute in 1918. Nisbet notes that several versions of Lissitzky’s name
are used in the literature.
2 Alan C. Birnholz, “El Lissitzky and the Jewish Tradition,” Studio International,
October 1973, 130–6, 4, and 51, n. 3, suggests either or both reasons possible.
3 Peter Nisbet, El Lissitzky 1890-1941, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art
Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1987, 47, n. 10.
4 E. Basner, “Malevich’s Paintings in the Collection of the Russian Museum,”
in Yevgenia Petrova, ed., Kazimir Malevich in the State Russian Museum, St.
Petersburg: State Russian Museum, 2000, 18.
5 Friedmann Malsch, ed., Malewitsch und sein Einfluss, Vaduz: Kunstmuseum
Lichtenstein, 2008, 127.
6 Rodchenko wrote on Profsojuz in Opyty dlia budushchego Moscow: Grant, 1966;
quoted by Dabrowski, in Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, Peter Galassi,
Aleksandr Rodchenko, New York: MoMA, 1998, 24.
7 Nisbet, 1987, 47, n. 12.
8 Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History, Washington DC: New Academia
Publishing, 2006, 110.
9 Issackar Ber Ryback, 1897–1935, was a Ukrainian-born Jewish artist who emigrated
to France in 1926.
10 El Lissitzky, “The Mohilev Synagogue Reminiscences,” Milgroim, 1923, translated by
Louis Lozowick, in Nisbet 1987, 55.
11 Peter Nisbet, El Lissitzky 1890-1941, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art
Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1987, 17, relates that Lissitzky signed a
contract on April 22, 1919, “to provide illustrations for 11 children’s books in a
series called ‘Kindergarten,’” which were to be written by Ben-Zion Raskin, but only
three of these were published.
12 The General Jewish Labor Bund was founded in 1897.
248 Notes
13 Avram Kampf, Jewish Experience in the Art of the Twentieth Century, South
Headley, Mass.: Begin and Harvey, 1984, 16, 29.
14 Ibid., 17.
15 Ibid., 35.
16 J. V. Stalin: “Marxism and the National Question,” orig. Prosveshcheniye, Nos.
3–5, March–May 1913, in particular Chapter V. The Bund, Its Nationalism, Its
Separatism, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm
#s5, last accessed June 11, 2019.
17 Kampf, ibid., 35.
18 El Lissitzky, “Autobiography,” in El Lissitzky, Architect, Painter, Photographer,
Typographer, Eindhoven: Municipal van Abbemuseum, 1990, 8.
19 “The February Revolution of 1917 transformed Russian Jewish life. Just days
after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the formation of the Provisional
Government, all legal restrictions on Russian Jewry were lifted.” However,
whether Lissitzky experienced it or not, “Running alongside these revolutionary
transformations was the re-emergence of anti-Jewish violence and the returning
specter of pogroms.” Brendan McGeever, “Revolution and Antisemitism: The
Bolsheviks in 1917,” in Patterns of Prejudice, 2017, Vol. 51, Nos. 3–4, 235–52, These
quotes, p. 235. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2017.1351798. Last accessed
March 2, 2019.
20 Cf. Issachar Ber Ryback’s recalling “I saw so much horror after the revolution of
1917—the frightful pogroms in the Ukraine, my father murdered, my birthplace
destroyed,” quoted by Serge Aliosha Stommels and Albert Lemmens, “The Graphic
Work of Issachar Ber Ryback,” in Jörg Schulte, Olga Tabachnikova, Peter Wagstaff,
eds., The Russian Jewish Diaspora and European Culture 1917-1937, Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 12, 284.
21 Zvi Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics. The Jewish Sections of the
CPSU, 1917-1930, Princetion NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, 72, 267.
22 El Lissitzky: “The Film of El’s Life,” 1926, in Sophie Lissitky-Küppers, Jen Lissitzky,
eds., Proun und Wolkenbügel. Schriften, Briefe, Dokumente. translated from Russian
by Lena Schöche und Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst,
1977, 329.
23 Bengt Jangfeldt, Majakovskij and Futurism 1917-1921, Stockholm and Uppsala:
Almquist & Wiksell, 1976,
51–71.
24 Malevich, Essays on Art 1915-1928, ed. Troels Andersen, 1968, 21, 25.
25 Alexander Rodchenko, “To Artist-Proletarians,” Anarkhiia, April 11, 1918, quoted
and translated by Nina Gourianova, The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in
the Early Russian Avant-Garde, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2012, 224.
Notes 249
26 Brendan McGeever, “Red Antisemitism: Anti-Jewish Violence and Revolutionary

Politics in Ukraine, 1919,” http://www.quest–cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id=413. Last
accessed March 3, 2019.
27 Ibid.
28 Alexander Rodchenko, “Be Creators!,” Anarkhiia, no, 61, May 17, 1918, translated
Jamey Gambrell, in Alexander Rodchenko. Experiments for the Future. Diaries,
Essays, Letters, and Other Writings, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2005,
82.
29 Nancy Perloff, “Introduction,” Arnold J. Band, ed., Had Gadya (The Only Kid),
Facsimile of El Lissitzky’s Edition of 1919, Los Angeles: The Getty Research
Institute, 2004, III.
30 Haia Friedberg: “Lissitzky’s Had Gadia,” in Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, ed.: Jewish Art,
Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art of the Hebrew University, 1987, 294. See also
Alan C. Birnholz. “On the Meaning of Kazimir Malevich’s ’White on White’” Art
International, 21, January 1977, 28–9.
31 The same letters appear on the palm of a hand in Lissitzky’s illustration to Ilya
Ehrenburg’s short story “Schiffskarta”, in his volume Six Stories with Light Ending,
Berlin: Skifi Verlag, 1922, where the letters appear to refer to the end of the “old
world.”
32 Friedberg, ibid., 302. Both Birnholz and Friedberg underline that in the 1917 sketch
made during the uncertain times of the victory over the Tsarist regime, the Angel of
Death is only dying, whereas in the 1919 version it is definitely defeated and dead
(Birnholz, 28–9, Friedberg, 301).
33 Friedberg, http://jhom.com/topics/goats/lissitzky.htm. Last accessed September 21,
2018.
34 The year of the making of this poster is 1919 in Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers’s book
(as in Note 18); in Birnholz, ibid.; 1919/1920 in El Lissitzky, Eindhoven: Municipal
van Abbemuseum, catalog, 1990; and 1920 in the 1988 Hanover; Sprengel Museum,
exhibition catalog. The latter date is taken over by many other authors.
35 Boris Aronson’s letter to Avram Kampf, in Kampf, op.cit., 46, n. 16.
36 Vasilii Rakitin, “The Optimism of a Nonobjectivist,” in Matthew Drutt, ed., Kazimir
Malevich. Suprematism, New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003, 62.
37 Gitelman, ibid., 269.
38 Vladimir I. Lenin, “Two Cultures in Every National Culture,” originally in the
exile journal Prosveshchenie, quoted in Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia.
Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917-1946, Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1997, 26.
39 For excerpts of the resolutions of the Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party,
held March 18–23, 1919, see Robert V. Daniels, ed., A Documentary History of
Communism in Russia. From Lenin to Gorbachev, Hanover and London: University
of Vermont, University Press of New England, 1993, 87.
250 Notes
40 https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x02.htm. Accessed April

4, 2019.
41 Kampf, op. cit., 36.
42 Gitelman, op.cit., 272.
43 Ruth Apter-Gabriel, The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art 1912-1928,
Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1987; and Margolin, op. cit., 26.
44 Kummunistische fon, July 10, 1919, quoted in Gitelman, op.cit., 272.
45 See also Alexandra Shatskikh, “Unovis: Epicenter of a New World,” in The Great
Utopia. The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932, New York: Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, 1992, 55: “Almost in a matter of days, Lissitzky, an architect
by training and until recently under the influence of Chagall, brushed aside
figuration and the intricate decorativeness of his earlier work ( . . . ) and plunged (
. . . ) into non-objective art.”
46 Alan C. Birnholz, “El Lissitzky and the Jewish Tradition,” Studio International,
October 1973, 130–6; and Alan C. Birnholz: “El Lissitzky 1890-1941,” PhD
dissertation, New Haven: Yale University, 1974 (written in 1973, published in 1974)
esp.16, 36 and passim, argues that as a Jew Lissitzky was particularly attracted to
abstraction because of the Second Commandment (“Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image”), the abstract graphic quality of Hebrew lettering, similarity
of Jewish cabbalistic-mystical beliefs, and also the messianic and elitist concept of
the avant-garde, similar to the concept of the “chosen people.” However, Lissitzky’s
Jewish book illustrations were figurative, so he did not act according to this
commandment.
47 Shatskikh, “Malevich i Lisitskii—lidery UNOVISa,” in “V kruge Malevicha.
Soratniki, ucheniki, posledovateli v Rossii 1920-1950-kh godov”, Moscow: Tretyakov
Gallery, 2007, 45–51; Christina Lodder, “Ideology and Identity: El Lissitzky in
Berlin,” in Schulte, Tabachnikova, Wagstaff, op.cit., 339–64, 351. Judith Glatzer
Wechsler, “El Lissitzky’s Interchange Stations: The Letter and the Spirit,” in Linda
Nochlin and Tamar Garb, eds., The Jew in the Text, London: Thames and Hudson,
1995, 321. n.m14.
48 Lissitzky, “suprematism of world reconstruction” [sic!], UNOVIS, 1, 1920; Lissitzky-
Küppers, op.cit., 334. Lissitzky wrote this to Pavel Ettinger in a letter of April 4,
1920, in VM, Vol. 2, 212; and Malevich also wrote in the UNOVIS Alamanc, No.
1, 15: “The Suprematist gospel is coming to replace Communism” also in VM, Vol.
2, 159, Malevich is remembered by Evgeny Katsman to have said “So, now we have
Socialist order, then there will be Communist order, and after that there will be
[Suprematist] abstract order.” Katsman added: “I looked at him—his fanatic eyes—
what was the point of arguing with him? He knew nothing about Marxism, never
read anything.” VM, Vol. 2, 159. What is certain is that stakes for him were different
than for Lissitzky, whose deep conviction was based on hope.
Notes 251
49 Shatskikh, Unovis, 55: “A vestige of his stormy ‘romance’ with Suprematism and
its creator would remain with Lissitzky for the rest of his life: the ‘transrational’
phrase from the opening of On New Systems in Art—‘U-el-el’-ul-el-te-ka,’ which
became a sort of anthem for UNOVIS—was the inspiration for Lissitzky’s adopted
name, first El and later El’.”. See also ibid., 63, n. 4: “The first instance of Lazar”
Lissitzky’s use of the ‘article’ El, and then El’, is to be found in the UNOVIS Almanac
No. 1. With the switch to German and the Latin alphabet, he signed his name “El
Lissitzky.” There are no grounds for the belief that Lissitzky chose El’ because that is
the pronunciation in the Russian alphabet for the letter l, his first initial; at the time,
the word liudi (people) was the guide to pronunciation. There is no question that
Lissitzky’s unusual name, hardly a pseudonym, was inspired by Malevich’s highly
musical “transrational” line, which had deep meaning for the members of UNOVIS;
Malevich cited it repeatedly, and Chashnik’s 1924 inscription in his fiancée’s album
called on her to “remember this madman . . . whose way of life is U-El-El.” See Ilya
Grigroevch Chashnik, Lyucite/1902-Leningrad/1929; Watercolors, Drawings, Reliefs,
catalog for the exhibition at Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York: Leonard Hutton
Galleries, 1979, 11.
50 Birnholz in Studio International, op.cit., 136, n. 47a, notes that “whereas Eliezer
meant ‘the Lord hath helped’, ‘El’ was one of the names, according to the Jewish
Kabbalists, of God himself (Gershom Scholem, ‘Der Name Gottes und die
Sprachtheorie der Kabbala, Neue Rundschau, Vol. 83, No. 3, 1972, p. 490). If
nothing else, ‘El’ reflected the hubris of the avant-garde and the continuation of the
centuries-old concept of the artist as divine.” This appears far-fetched, and rather
the proof of Lissitzky having not been quite familiar with Kabbalist studies. I would
argue that had he known the Kabbalist meaning of his chosen name, he would
not have called himself “EL,” as throughout his career he gave no sign of thinking
himself as god.
51 The fact that Lissitzky made a few more Jewish book illustrations after this decisive
encounter does not affect the radicalism of his 1919 decision and turn. Peter Nisbet
presents Lissitzky’s previously unknown article “The New Culture,” written prior
to Malevich’s arrival to Vitebsk, in which he—through concepts remarkably close
to some of Walter Gropius’s ideas expressed in the Bauhaus Manifesto earlier in
the same year —shifts focus from Jewish culture to architecture and book design,
and to a racially and religiously not identified—indeed, neutralized—“new man.”
This article shows that Lissitzky was ready to transcend Jewish culture before he (as
Nisbet rightly points out) had any plans to embrace suprematism.
52 Lissitzky, “Der Suprematismus des Weltaufbaus” transl. from Russian to German
Helmut Barth, Lisstzky-Küppers, 331.
53 Fabian Ziegler, El LIssitzky—PROUN. Zur Logik der Form, Diss. (Diplomarbeit),
Universität Wien, 2010.
252 Notes
54 Alexandra Shatskikh, Vitebsk. The Life of Art, New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2007, 60–1; Christina Lodder, “Ideology and Identity: El Lissitzky
in Berlin,” op.cit., 351; Fabian Ziegler, 2012.
55 El Lissitzky, Abstract Composition 1919, oil on canvas, 71 × 58 centimeters, Museum
of Ukrainian Art, Kiev. Cf. Alexander Kanzendikas, “Ein unbekanntes Bild von
Lissitzky,” in Die grosse Utopie. Die Russische Avantgarde 1915-1932, Frankfurt a.
M.: Schirn Kunsthalle 1992, 71. There is no consensus among scholars regarding the
painting’s being painted by Lissitzky’s hand.
56 Birnholz in Studio International, 133, 134.
57 Henryk Berlewi, El Lissitzky in Warschau, in Jan Leering, ed., El Lissitzky.
Eindhoven; Exhibition Catalog, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, 1965, 61–3.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid, 62.
60 Ibid, 63.
61 Ibid.
62 It has to be made clear that the concept of the “collective” by the feverish dreamers
of the 1920s had not much to do with the actual social democracies of the post–
Second World War period that, as Tony Judt writes, operated in free countries,
and, “in contrast to the revolutionary socialists of the early 20th century and their
communist successors accepted the rules of the democratic game ( . . . ) [that was]
a distributive concept. It was a moral concept, too, prioritizing ‘public education,
the public provision of health services and medical insurance, public parks and
playgrounds, collective provision for the aged, infirm and unemployed.’ ( . . . )
Universalists, influential in Britain, favoured high across-the-board taxation to pay
for services and resources to which all would have equal access [by leaving] the
economy to the private sector.” Judt, Ill Fares the Land, London: Penguin Books,
2010, 72–5.
63 For Malevich’s exercises in poetry and with sounds, see Masha Chlenova,
“Abstraction,” October 143, 20.
64 Malevich, 1915-1928, Andersen, Vol. III, 117.
65 Ernst Kállai, “Lissitzky,” Das Kunstblatt, Vol. 6, No. 7, 1922, 296–8.
66 The term is introduced by Stephen Bann, in Bann, The Tradition of Constructivism,
London: Thames and Hudson 1974, XXVII.
67 Ernő Kállai, Új magyar piktúra, Budapest: Amicus, 1926,184.
68 Rakitin, op.cit., 63.
69 State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, reproduced in El Lissitzky. Architect, Painter,
Photographer, Typographer, op.cit., 146, 147.
70 Some of his early Proun compositions like Proun I A, Bridge I, or Proun 23, Nr. 6,
are dated 1919. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers: Lissitzky-Küppers 1967, plates 22, 23; the
latter also by the 1965 Eindhoven exhibition catalog.
Notes 253
71 S. Eisenstein, Notes on V.V. Mayakovsky, quoted by Selim Khan-Magomedov,

“Three-Dimensional Suprematism and Prouns,” El Lissitzky, Architect, Painter,
Photographer, Typographer, op.cit., 41.
Chapter 3
1 Evert van Straaten, Theo van Doesburg: Constructor of the New Life, Otterlo: Kröller-
Müller Museum, 1994, 7.
2 Carel Blotkamp, ed., De Stijl. The Formative Years, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press, 1982, 4.
3 Ibid.
4 Malevich: The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism, 1926; trans.
Howard Dearstyne Chicago: Theobald Books, 1959, 67.
5 Blotkamp, op.cit., 8.
6 Van Straaten, op.cit., 11.
7 Hans L. C. Jaffe, De Stijl, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970, 17.
8 For detailed descriptions, see Boris Groys, ed. Russian Cosmism, Cambridge, Mass.:
The MIT Press, 2018.
9 Manuscript, The Hague, RKD, quoted by Van Straaten, 11.
10 Blotkamp, 8.
11 Saint Bavo is a medieval cathedral in Haarlem.
12 Quoted in Van Straaten, 11.
13 Theo van Doesburg: De Priester-Kunstenaar, dated Utrecht, 7-1-16, Eenheid,
January 22, 1916.np. RKD, No. 621.
14 Mondrian: “Neoplasticism in Painting,” De Stijl, Vol. 1, No. 5, 49–54, English
translation in Hans L. C. Jaffe, De Stijl, London, Thames and Hudson, 1970, 64.
15 Balázs wrote: “The great Hungarian culture that we have to create [ . . . ] would
be a unified Sturm und Drang movement, a spiritual rebirth which would cleanse
the present of its journalistic art and clownish science and would build in its place
a fresh new art, a new science, a great new culture. I spoke to [Kodály] of the
rehabilitation of art, of the religion of art, which would form the basis of the future
culture. Its temple would be the concert hall, the art gallery, and the theater. I spoke
to him of the redeeming power of art that people will improve, and society will once
again become healthy” (Béla Balázs: entry in his diary on August 22, 1905, in his
Napló [Diary] 1903-1924, Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1982, p. 220).
16 Theo van Doesburg, “Van ‘natur’ tot ‘kompositie’” De Hollandsche Revue, 24 (1919),
470–6. Referred to by van Straaten, 17.
17 Ibid.
254 Notes
18 Malevich: “From Cubism to Futurism to Suprematism. The New Realism in

Painting”, in Troels Andersen 1968, 23, 27.
19 On van Doesburg’s artistic development, see, among others, Blotkamp, 3–37.
20 Blotkamp, 25.
21 Ibid.
22 Hannah L. Hedrick, Theo van Doesburg. Porpagandist and Practitioner
of the Avant-Garde, 1909-1923, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press,
1980, 59.
23 Ibid., 60. An example (out of many) is a 1914 poem Set Table: “Half a chair / there
in the haze / with more to the left / and more in back.”
24 Van Straaten, 7.
25 Van Doesburg: “Elementarism,” De Stijl, ol. 7. No., April 7–8, 1925, 82–7. Translated
from Dutch by Hans L. C. Jaffe, in Jaffe, De Stijl, New York: Abrams, 1971.
26 Ibid.
27 As in Note 15.
28 Ibid.
29 Van Straaten, 23.
30 Theo van Doesburg, “Der Kampf um den neuen Stil”, in Neue Schweizer Rundschau,
22, 1929, 628; quoted by van Straaten, 23.
31 Rosalind E. Krauss: “The Originality of the Avant-Garde,” in idem, The Originality
of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,
1986, 157.
32 László Moholy-Nagy to Erich Buchholz, April 3, 1928, published in Mo Buchholz-
Eberhard Roters, eds., Erich Buchholz, Berlin: Ars Nicolai, 1993,110–2.
33 Letter of El Lissitzky to Sophie Küppers, Locarno, January 4, 1925. GRI, access no.
950076 (box 1, folder 3). Similar letters were written on May 16, 1924, October 16,
1924, and September 15, 1925.
34 See Peter Brooker, Sascha Bru, Andrew Thacker and Christian Weikop, eds., The
Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Vol. III, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013.
35 See correspondence of van Doesburg with Moholy-Nagy, Kállai, Péri, Kassák,
and others in the RKD; for more details, see Éva Forgács, “Internationalism and
Its Technicalities,” in Karel Srp, ed., Years of Disarray 1908-1928. Avant-Gardes in
Central Europe, exhibition catalogue, Olomouc: Arbor Vitae Societas, Museum
Umeni, 2018, 476–83.
36 For a full list, see Peter Brooker, Sacha Bru, Andrew Thacker, Christian Weikop,
eds., The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Vol. 1–III,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
37 Kassák, Moholy-Nagy 1922; Arp, Lissitzky, 1925.
38 See Chapter 8.
Notes 255
39 Theo van Doesburg: Letter to J. J. P. Oud, September 12, 1921, quoted in Nancy
Troy, The De Stijl Environment (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983), 70.
40 On the generational issue in the Bauhaus, see Éva Forgács, “Between the Town and
the Gown. Hannes Meyer’s Dismissal from the Bauhaus” Journal of Design History,
August 2010, 265–74.
41 See Chapter 10, “Visit to the Dessau Bauhaus.”
42 Chris Beekman, Robert van t’Hoff, Peter Alma, and other Dutch artists turned to
the Dutch Second Chamber of Parliament in 1919 “asking for assistance to establish
contact with foreign, especially Soviet artists.” Malevich allegedly heard about
this effort and sent a letter in response to his Dutch colleagues dated February 12,
1922. See T. Andersen 1968, 254; Van Doesburg, letter to Anthony Kok, June 6,
1922, RKD, The Hague, referred to by Linda S. Boersma: “Malevich, Lissitzky, Van
Doesburg: Suprematism and De Stijl,” in Charlotte Douglas and Christina Lodder,
eds. Rethinking Malevich. London: The Pindar Press, 2007, 226.
43 Malevich: “A letter to the Dutch Artists,” 12.2.1922, in T. Andersen 1968,
183–7; also as “To the Dutch artists” in VM, Vol. 1,152; a draft to the letter dated
September 7, 1922, Vitebsk, is translated with comments by Vasily Rakitin,
op. cit.,151–6.
44 Malevich, op.cit., Andersen 1968, 185.
45 Ibid., 186.
46 See Chapter 4 in this book.
47 Malevich, op.cit., Andersen 1968, 187.
48 Lissitzky attended a lecture of van Doesburg in Berlin, in the Theleman bookshop,
April 9, 1922; Correspondance of van Doesburg and Antony Kok‚ De Stijl ovaral
absolute leiding’, De briefwisseling tussen Theo van Doesburg en Antony Kok, The
Hague: RKD-Bronnenreeks, 2008, 353, n. 7.
49 Van Doesburg, letter to Antony Kok, Ober Weimar, June 6, 1922, Correspondence
of van Doesburg, 390.
50 El Lissitzky, also on behalf of Ilya Ehrenburg, “Statement of the Editors of Veshch,
Gegenstand, Objet, De Stijl, Vol. 5, No. 4, April 1922, 56–7.
51 Das junge Rheinland was a moderately progressive literary and artistic platform
founded on February 24, 1919, in Düsseldorf.
52 For van Doesburg’s Bauhaus episode, see Éva Forgács, The Bauhaus Idea and
Bauhaus Politics, Budapest, London, Oxford: Central European University Press,
1995, 65–70, and 209–10.
53 Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Hans Richter, “Erklärung,” De Stijl, Vol. 5, No. 4,
“Kongres-Nummer,” 1922, 61–4. Translation by Nicholas Bullock, BW 393–4.
54 Ibid.
55 De Stijl, 1922, Vol. 5, No. 10/11.
56 Ibid.
256 Notes
57 Van Straaten, 11.

58 Theo van Doesburg, “Der Wille zum Stil,” De Stijl, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 1922, 23.
59 Theo van Doesburg, letter to Evert Rinsema, August 20, 1922, quoted by van
Straaten, 23–4.
60 Theo van Doesburg, letter to Van Eesteren, undated [likely July 1922], quoted by
van Straaten, 24.
61 Van Doesburg: “Balans van het nieuwe. Beeldend Russland.” De Stijl, Vol. 5, No. 5,
September 1922, 130–5.
62 Ibid., 235.
Chapter 4
1 Peter Noever, ed., Alexander M. Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, The Future Is Our
Only Goal, Munich: Prestel, 1991, 122.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 124.
5 Ibid., 137:
“The museum should comprise the following departments”:
The icon
The signboard
The popular print
“The World of Art” (Saryan, Sapunov, Kuznetsov, Yakulov, Lentulov), etc.
“The Donkey’s Tail” and “Target” (Larionov, Goncharova, Zdanevich,
Le-Dantyu, Bart)
Primitivism (Shevchenko)
Color Dynamism (Grishchenko)
Expressionism (Kandinsky)
“The Jack of Diamonds” (Mashkov, Konchalovsky, Rozhdestvensky, Kuprin,
Falk)
Suprematism (Popova, Malevich, Kljun, Minkov, Udaltsova, Drevin)
Nonobjective art (Rozanova, Rodchenko, Tatlin).
6 Ibid., 138.
7 Khan-Magomedov: Rodchenko 1891-1956. The Complete Work, London: Thames
and Hudson 1986, 61.
8 A series of debates took place late in 1920 and in spring 1921. Khan-Magomedov,
83–133; Lodder; Russian Constructivism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983,
83. Dates of the transcripts of the debates are not given, but Khan-Magomedov
follows a chronology grouping the debates prior to the formation of the First
Working Group of Constructivists (March 18, 1921) and after that date.
Notes 257
9 Khan-Magomedov, op. cit., 59.

10 Ernő Kállai, “Új Művészet” I., II., Ma, Vol. VI, No. 7, June 1, 1921, 99; and Ma,
Vol. VI, No. 8, August 1, 1921, 114–15, respectively.
11 Nikolai Alexandrovich Ladovsky, 1881–1941, architect, rector of VKhUTEMAS
1920–30.
12 Khan-Magomedov, op. cit., 83.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 84.
15 Nikolai Tarabukin, “Polozhenie o gruppe ob’ektivnaia analiza,” Manuscript in
private archive, Moscow, quoted by Lodder, op. cit., 82.
16 See, for example, Lodder 1983, Khan-Magomedov 1986, Maria Gough, The Artists
as Producer. Russian Constructivism in Revolution, Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2005.
17 Lodder, 88–9, Rodchenko quote from the INKhUK Archives, Lodder’s
translation.
18 Lodder, 89. n. 84: the volume’s title was Ot izobrazitel'nosti k konstruktsii, but it was
not completed and remained unpublished for lack of money.
19 Khan-Magomedov, 85.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 87.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Quoted by Lodder, 160. The meetings of the General Working Group of
Objective Analysis were held: January 1, 21, 28, February 11 and 18, and
March 25, 1921.
27 Varvara Stepanova: Lecture at INKhUK, December 22, 1921, in John Bowlt, ed.,
and Alexander Lavrentiev, Stepanova. The Complete Work. Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press, 1988, 175.
28 This was said at a meeting on December 26, 1921, quoted by V. Rakitin: “Malevich
and Inkhuk,” in: Malewitsch zum 100. Geburtstag, Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska,
1978, 298. The OBMOKhU included, among others, the Stenberg brothers Georgii
and Vladimir, Karl Ioganson and Konstantin Medunetzkii. For the full list of the
members, see Lodder, 67.
29 For more on the “Composition-Construction debate,” see Lodder, 83–94, and
Rakitin: “Malevich and Inkhuk,” 294–6.
30 Quoted by Lodder, 88.
31 Quoted by John Milner, in his Introduction to the reprint of the catalog 5x5=25,
Budapest: Helikon, 1992, 18.
32 Lodder, 85.
258 Notes
33 John Milner, Kazimir Malevich and the Tradition of Geometry, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1996, 94.
34 “Protokol zasedaniya INKhUKA,” 4 March 1921, MS, Private archive, Moscow,
quoted by Lodder, 88.
35 Noever, 171.
36 Rodtschenko: Aufsätze, Autobiographische Notizen, Briefe, Erinnerungen Dresden:
Verlag der Kunst, 1993, 119.
37 Boris Arvatov, “Malevich: ‘Bog ne skinut (Iskusstvo, Tserkov, Fabrika)’” (Malevich:
God is not cast down. Art, Church, Factory), Pechat I revoliucia No.7, 1922,
343–4. Quoted by Yevgenia Petrova, “Malevich’s Suprematism and Religion,” in
Matthew Drutt, ed., Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, New York: The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, 2003, 92.
38 It is, as John Bowlt also confirms, agreed that Lissitzky’s INKhUK lecture was
corresponding to his text “Proun,” written in 1920–1, translated by John Bowlt, in:
El Lissitzky, exh. Cat. Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska 1976, 60–72. See references to
mathematics, 60–5.
39 Lodder 1983, 93.
40 Concerning the origins of the Black Square and the first sketches for it related to the
sets of Victory over the Sun in 1913, and thus the lingering incertitude and possible
early ideas of it, see Alexandra Shatskikh, Black Square. Malevich and the Origin of
Suprematism, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2012, 34.
41 El Lissitzky: Proun, 64.
42 Ibid.
43 Malevich: “Suprematism,” originally published in the catalog of the Tenth State
Exhibition: Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism, Moscow, 1919; this
translation in Patricia Railing, ed., Malevich on Suprematism, op. cit., 46, slightly
different from T. Andersen 1968, op.cit., Vol. 1, 121, where it reads; “The blue color
of the sky has been defeated.”
45 Ibid.
46 See detailed analysis in Yve-Alain Bois, “El Lissitzky: Radical Reversibility,” Art
in America, April 1988, 160–81; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh: “From Faktura to
Factography,” October No. 30, Fall 1984, 83–119.
47 Buchloh 1984, Proun, 66.
48 Buchloh 1984.
49 Lodder, 83.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 67.
53 Ibid., 69.
54 Lodder 1983, 90.
Notes 259
Chapter 5
1 For the rich literature on “Center and Periphery” see, for example, Immanuel
Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins
of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York: Academic
Press, 1974; Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997; Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The
Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1994; Anna Klobucka, “Theorizing the European Periphery,” Symploke
5.1, 1997.
2 Hirschfeld-Mack 1963, 2–3, quoted by Ann Stephen, Bauhaus Diaspora and
Beyond, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2019, 167. To this state
of affairs attests the 1932 novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de
la nuit.
3 Vasily Kandinsky 1920; in Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky:
Complete Writings on Art, New York: DaCapo Press, 1994, 448.
4 Ibid., 448.
5 Ibid., 449.
6 Ibid., 454.
7 Roland Nachtigäller and Hubertus Gassner observe that “thanks to galloping
inflation, even modest savings brought into Berlin made it possible to start a small
business,” and by 1922 forty Russian publishers operated in the city. See Hubertus
Gassner, Roland Nachtigäller, Preface to “3x1=1. Vešč' Objet Gegenstand,” Reprint
edition of Vešč' Objet Gegenstand, Baden: Verlag Lars Müller, 1994, 29.
8 Peter Gay, Weimar Culture. The Outsider as Insider, New York and London: W.W.
Norton, 1968, 129.
9 Quoted by Peter Fritzsche, “Cities Forget, Nations Remember,” in Paul Betts, Greg
Eghigian, eds., Pain and Prosperity. Reconsidering Twentieth Century German
History, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, 35.
10 Harry Kessler, Berlin Lights. The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler 1918-1937, Transl.
Charles Kessler, New York: Grove Press, 1999, diary note of Tuesday, November 12,
1918, Berlin, 10–11.
11 István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals. A Political History of the
Weltbühne and Its Circle, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1968, 1.
12 For Lenin’s “weakest link” theory, see Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1964, Vol. 24, 519–20.
13 Stéphane Courtois, ed., The Black Book of Communism, transl. from French by
Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kromes, Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006,
282.
260 Notes
14 P. Broue, The German Revolution: 1917-1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006,

516.
15 About the complexities of this “idealism” though, and the role of the centrally
important Der Sturm Gallery’s Herwarth Walden, see Hubert van den Berg, “The
Autonomous Arts as Black Propaganda. On a Secretive Chapter of German ‘Foreign
Cultural Politics’ in the Netherlands and Other Neighbouring Neutral Countries
during the First World War,” in: Dorleijn, G. J., Grüttemeyer, R., Korthals-Altes,
L., eds, The Autonomy and Engagement in Literature at the Two Fins de Siècles,
1900 and 2000, Leuven: 2008, 71–120.
16 György Lukács, “A Tanácsköztársaság kultúrpolitikájáról” in Lukács, Magyar
irodalom, magyar kultúra, Budapest: Magvető, 1970, 626.
17 “Das Kunstprogramm des Kommissariat für Volksaufklärung in Russland,” Das
Kunstblatt, Vol. 3, No. 3, March 1919, 91–3.
18 Ibid., 91.
19 English translation: http://libcom.org/library/third-international-congress-report
-ruhle, last accessed May 11, 2011.
20 Ibid.
21 Kessler, op. cit., 179 (May 12, 1922). It needs to be added that on May 17, 1922,
Kessler slightly modified his assessment: “The Conference ends in failure. It was
a small step forward instead of the stride [British Prime Minister] Lloyd George
anticipated. But it was progress all the same,” 181.
22 Van Doesburg, Lissitzky, Richter 1922, “Statement by the International Faction of
Constructivists,” De Stijl Vol. 4, No. 4, April 1922 (Kongreß-Nummer), 59.
23 Karl-Heinz Hüter, Das Bauhaus in Weimar, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1976, 20;
Barbara Miller-Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918-1945, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968, 69–86.
24 Hüter, 21.
25 Robert C. Williams, Russian Emigrés in Germany 1881-1941, Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1972, 304.
26 Franz Jung, Der Torpedokäfer, Berlin: Luchterhand, 1972, 190.
27 Ibid., 110.
28 Ibid., 111.
29 The term was coined by Stephen Bann, in “Introduction,” in Bann, ed., The
Tradition of Constructivism, New York, Da Capo, 1974, XXVII.
30 Or Herzfeld; original name: Held.
31 Kessler, 109.
32 Ibid., 108.
33 George Grosz, An Autobiography, Transl. Nora Hodges, Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London:
University of California Press, 1998, 150.
Notes 261
34 See, among many others, Erich Eyck, A History of the Weimar Republic, Vol.
1 and 2, New York: Atheneum 1970; Betts, Eghigian, op.cit.; Fritzsche op. cit.,
35–60; Sebastian Haffner, Die deutsche Revolution 1918/19, Berlin: Kindler Verlag
GmbH, 1979; Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige Propheten, Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler
Verlag, 1983.
35 Haffner, Die deutsche Revolution 1918/19, Berlin, Kindler Verlag GmbH,
1979.
36 Nina Gourianova, The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in the Early
Russian Avant-Garde, Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press:
2012. 171.
37 Fritzsche, 56.
38 Ibid.
39 Victor Shklovsky, A Sentimental Journey, Memoirs 1917-1922, translated by Richard
Sheldon, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984, 137.
40 Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological History of the German
Film, Princeton NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1974; Siegfried Kracauer, The
Salaried Classes: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, transl. Quintin Hoare,
Inka Mülder-Bach, London: Verso, 1998. Originally Die Angestellte, published
in 1930.
41 Kracauer 1974, 19.
42 Ibid., 53.
43 Ibid., 65.
44 For detailed discussion of these movements, see Sandra Neugärtner, “Utopias
of a New Society: Lucia Moholy, László Moholy-Nagy, and the Loheland and
Schwarzerden Women’s Coomunies,” in Elizabeth Otto, Patrick Rössler, eds.
Bauhaus Bodies. Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art
School, New York, London, Oxford, Sydney: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018, 9, esp.
76–7.
45 For a detailed discussion, see Mark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism, Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 2007, 6.
46 See, for example, Hannes Meyer, “bauhaus und gesellschaft” [sic], 1929, using the
terms “Volksseele,” “Volksinteresse,” and other “Volks”—words, preferred items of
the Nazi vocabulary; in art historical literature, see Anna C. Chave, “Minimalism
and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine, Vol. 64, No. 5, January 1990, 44–63;
Winfried Nerdinger, Bauhausmoderne im Nationalsozialismus, Munich: Prestel,
1993, 3; Brandon Taylor, Wilfried van der Will, eds., The Nazification of Art,
Winchester: The Winchester Press, 1990.
47 Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of
Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970, XVI.
262 Notes
48 Bengt Jangfeldt, Majakovskij and Futurism 1917-1921, Stockholm, Uppsala:

Almquist & Wiksell, 1976, 35.
49 For detailed description, see Jangfeldt, 42–3.
50 Lodder, 184.
51 Robert Service, A History of Twentieth Century Russia, Cambridge, MA, Harvard
52 The November 9, 1917, Decree on the Press, signed by Lenin, forbade every
publication that was “bourgeois,” that is, could be seen as adversarial to the
Bolshevik rule.
53 Service, 94.
54 Sidney Monas, Jennifer Green Krupala, eds., The Diaries of Nikolay Punin
1904-1953, translated by Jennifer Greene Krupala, Austin: University of
Texas Press 1999, 57.
55 Ibid., 62. Diary entry of January 11, 1920.
56 Williams, 111.
57 Wipert von Blücher, Deutschlands Weg nach Rapallo: Erinnerungen eines Mannes
aus dem zweiten Gliede, Wiesbaden, 1951, quoted by Williams, 112.
58 Ibid., 116.
59 Ibid., 113.
60 See Fritz Mierau, ed., Russen in Berlin. Literatur Malerei Theater Film 1918-1933,
Leipzig: Reclam, 1987, 7.
61 Williams, 132.
62 Vasilyevich Ivanov-Razumnik, 1878–1946, Russian writer and critic.
63 Williams, 253.
64 See Chapters 8 and 9.
65 Izvestia 1922, Nr. 273, quoted after the Italian translation in Rassegna Sovietica,
No. 1, 1965, “L'esposizione russa a Berlino,” 110–16, quoted by Winfried Nerdinger,
Rudolf Belling und die Kunstströmungen in Berlin 1918–1923, Berlin: Deutscher
Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft 1980, 146.
66 Leo Popper, letter to György Lukács, Berlin, February 28, 1910, in Lukács György
levelezése, Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1981,178.
67 Mátyás Péter (pen name of Kállai), “Új művészet” Part I, Ma, Vol. VI, No.7, June 1,
1921, 99.
68 Vladimir Tatlin, T. Shapiro, I. Meyerzon, “Pavel Vinogradov: The Work Ahead of
Us,” in Vladimir Tatlin, Stockholm: Catalog of the Moderna Museet Stockholm
1968, quoted by Bann, 110.
69 Kállai, op. cit., 115.
70 Cf. “We declare: the genius of our days to be: trousers, jackets, shoes, tramways,
buses, airplanes, railways, magnificent ships—what a great epoch unrivalled in
world history.” Quoted and translated by Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in
Art 1863-1922 London: Thames and Hudson, 1962, 136.
Notes 263
71 Mátyás Péter (pen name of Kállai), “Új művészet” Part II, Ma, Vol. VI, No. 8,
August 1, 1921, 114.
72 Ibid., 116.
73 Mátyás Péter (pen name of Kállai), “Moholy-Nagy,” Ma, Vol. VI, No. 9, September
15, 1921, transl. Eva Grosz, Judy Szőllőssy, László Baránszky, BW 425. The Fall
1921 publication date of this article interpreting Moholy-Nagy’s abstract paintings
contradicts Naum Gabo’s remembering Moholy-Nagy as a painter who switched
from traditional works to the abstract style under his eyes, at the time of the
First Soviet Exhibition in fall of 1922 as in Martin Hammer, Christina Lodder,
Constructing Modernity. The Art & Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven, London: Yale
University Press, 2000,105.
74 Mátyás Péter (pen name of Kállai), “Moholy-Nagy,” ibid., 119.
75 Ibid.
76 Mátyás Péter (pen name of Kállai), “Kassák Lajos,” Ma, Vol. VII, No. 1, November
21, 1921, 139. Translation John Bátki, BW 426.
Chapter 6
1 Alexander Bogdanov, Die Kunst und das Proletariat, Leipzig: “Der Kentaur,”
September 1919; Anatoly Lunacharsky, Die Kulturaufgaben der Arbeiter Klasse,
Berlin: Die Aktion, 1919; See also Dennis Crockett, German Post-Expressionism: The
Art of the Great Disorder 1918-1924, Universal Park: Penn State University Press,
1999, 16.
2 Konstantin Umansky (1902–45), who joined the Communist Party in 1919, later
became a diplomat.
3 Béla Uitz, “Jegyzetek a Ma orosz estélyéhez”, Ma, Vol. VI, No. 4, February 15,
1921, 52.
4 See Umansky, Neue Kunst in Russland 1914-1919, Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer
Verlag, 1920; Wulf Herzogenrath, “Die holländische und russische Avantgarde in
Deutschland,” in Malewitsch, Mondrian und ihre Kreise. Aus der Sammlung Wilhelm
Hack, Cologne: Kölnischer Kunstverein 1976, 42.
5 Umansky, 19.
6 Ibid., 20.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 22, Note 1.
9 Éva Bajkay, Uitz Béla, Budapest: Corvina, 1974, 108–9. See also Oliver Botar:
“Constructivism, International Constructivism, and the Hungarian Emigration,”
The Hungarian Avant-Garde 1914-1933, Storrs: University of Connecticut/The
William Benton Museum of Art, 1987, 95.
264 Notes
10 Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, New Haven, London: Yale University

Press, 1983, 282, n. 116. Lodder also notes that the manifesto “Dynamisches-
konstruktives Kraftsystem” that Kemény published with Moholy-Nagy upon his
return in the March issue of Der Sturm “relied very heavily on Russian ideas.”
11 Alfréd Kemény, “Vorträge und Diskussionen am INKhUK, Moskau, 1921,” Nach
dem Protokollen zusammengefasst von Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, in Hubertus
Gassner, ed., Wechsel Wirkungen. Ungarische Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik,
Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1986, Dok. 49, 226–30. Subsequent quotes are from this
same source.
12 See, for example, Henk Puts, “El Lissitzky (1890-1941) His Life and Work,” El
Lissitzky, Architect, Painter, Photographer, Typographer, Eindhoven: Municipal Van
Abbemuseum, 1990, 14.
13 Quoted in Martin Hammer, Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity. The Art
& Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2000, 123;
Christina Lodder, “Ideology and Identity: El Lissitzky in Berlin,” in Jörg Schulte,
Olga Tabachnikova, Peter Wagstaff, eds., The Russian Jewish Diaspora and European
Culture, 1917-1937, London: Institute of Jewish Studies, 2012, 346; Christina
Lodder, “El Lissitzky and the Export of Constructivism,” in Nancy Perloff and
Brian Reed, eds., Situating El Lissitzky: The Current Debate, Los Angeles: The Getty
Research Institute, 2003, 33. Also to be noted is that Lissitzky had to return to the
Soviet Union in 1925 because his Swiss visa, in spite of his repeated applications
for extension, was not extended. According to his frantic correspondence
(GRI, Lissitzky papers) he made efforts to stay as he needed treatment in Swiss
sanatoriums and did not want to be far from Sophie Küppers, but to no avail.
14 Hammer, Lodder, op.cit., 53 and passim. See also Benjamin D. Buchloh, “Cold-War
Constructivism,” in Serge Gilbaut, ed., Reconstructing Modernism: Art in New York,
Paris, and Montreal 1945-1964, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990, 85.
15 Hammer and Lodder note (op.cit. 482, n. 179) that Lissitzky did a lot of state
propaganda after his return to the Soviet Union in 1925. It needs to be considered,
though, that besides the denial of extension of his Swiss visa, after 1925 the avant-
garde artists did not have much of a choice politically. Gustav Klucis, later executed,
and Rodchenko worked for the same propaganda journal USSR in Construction as
Lissitzky, and their activity has not raised such suspicion against them.
16 Reproductions of both designs in Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, ed., El Lissitzky, Maler
Architekt Typograf Fotograf Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1967, figs. 64, 65.
17 Lissitzky’s notebook, Getty Research Institute, Special Collections.
18 El Lissitzky, Ilya Ehrenburg, “The Blockade of Russia Is Coming to an End,” Veshch,
Gegenstand, Objet, No. 1–2, Berlin, 1922, translated by Stephen Bann, in Stephen
Bann, ed., The Tradition of Constructivism, London: Thames and Hudson 1974,
53–7, this quote, 57.
19 Lodder 1983, op.cit., 227.
Notes 265
20 “The Blockade of Russia . . .,” Bann, op.cit., 56.

21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 54–5.
23 “The Statement by the Editors of Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet,” English translation
Nichols Bullock, in Bann, op.cit., 63.
24 Varvara Stepanova wrote in her diary on March 27, 1919: “Asiatic, spiritual painting
has always been regarded religiously with no overtones of enjoyment. They
considered the artist’s work to be something great and spiritual. The west relates
superficially and materially to works of art: the east idolizes art and puts it above
everything else and keeps it from becoming utilitarian.” Notably, this statement
comes from a future constructivist advocating utilitarianism. In Noever, The Future
Is Our Only Goal, Munich: Prestel, 1991, 137.
25 Theo van Doesburg, Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst, Munich: Albert
Langen Verlag, 1925. English transl. Janet Seligman, London: Lund Humphries,
1969, 2.
26 This curiosity-cum-impatience, the desire to have information and have it fast
and transparent, was similar to the sudden interest in East European art after the
collapse of communism in 1989–90, when curators of Western exhibition venues
asked for “before and after” exhibitions that would demonstrate clear contrast
between art in communism and after its collapse, following their own ideas rather
than the more complicated reality and less sudden changes in those countries.
27 El Lissitzky, letter to A. Rodchenko, March 3, 1922. A. M. Rodchenko, Aufsätze,
autobiographische Notizen, Briefe, Erinnerungen, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst,
1993, 169. According to Lodder (Lodder 2003, 45, n. 16) this project was the IZO
International Buro’s planned magazine International Iskusstv (The International
of the Arts), announced in September 1919. Although the first number including
contributions by Malevich, Tatlin, Lunacharsky, Khlebnikov, and others was put
together, the journal was not published.
28 Ulen (most likely Lisstzky’s pen name), “Die Ausstellungen in Russland”, Veshch,
Objet, Gegenstand, No. 1–2, 18–19.
29 Ibid. 19.
30 Ibid., 18.
31 “I am very glad that you suggested a meeting at your place with Moholy-Nagy and
Lissitzky at the earliest possible occasion,” Gropius to Behne, dated Weimar, January
3, 1923, in Hubertus Gassner, ed., WechselWirkungen, op.cit., 269.
32 Kállai wrote several reviews on Lissitzky’s work: “El Lissitzky,” Das Kunstblatt,
1922/1, 296–8; “El Lissitzky,” Der Cicerone 1924/1, 1058–63; “El Lissitzky,” in Georg
Biermann, ed., Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst, Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1924,
374–86. He also published a review of various graphic portfolios published in the
Kestner Mappe series: “Grafikus kiadványok. El Liszickij, Péri László, Moholy-Nagy
munkái (Kestner mappák),” Ars Una [Budapest] 1923, 242.
266 Notes
33 Ma, Vol. VIII, No. 8, August 30, 1922.

34 Bann, op.cit., 55.
35 Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach’s idea of the priority of pure empirical
experience was shared by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, but strongly opposed by
Lenin.
36 Tatyana Gorjacheva, “K ponjatiju ekonomii tvorchestva” Moskva: Nauka, 2000,
263–74, this quote 265.
37 Bann, op.cit., 55–6.
38 Ivan Puni, Sovremennaia Zhivopis, Berlin: Frenkel Verlag, 1923.
39 Ibid., 109.
40 The newspaper Nakanune, Berlin, 1922-1924, was edited by IU. V. Kliuchnikov
and G. L. Kirdetsov. Referred to by Hubertus Gassner, “Der Text im Kontext,” in
Iwan Puni. Synthetiker Musiker, Berlin: Berlinische Galerie 1999, 70.
41 Ilya Ehrenburg, Menschen, Jahre, Leben, Vol. II. Berlin (East): 1962, 19. Also in
Hubertus Gassner, op.cit., 71.
42 Puni 107.
43 Ibid., 109.
44 Ibid., 1923, 109–10.
45 Ibid., 1923, 112.
46 Ibid., 1923, 112–13.
47 Ibid., 1923, 114.
48 Ibid., 1923, 116.
49 Ibid.,120.
50 The talk was originally planned to be given in Hanover, at Lissitzky’s exhibition with
the Kestner Gesellschaft (Lissitzky-Küppers, op.cit., 24).
51 It is remarkable that Lissitzky uses “They” instead of “We” whereas he was a
member of UNOVIS.
52 Lissitzky 1922, in Lissitzky-Küppers 1967, 340.
53 N. Punin, “Tatlinova bashnya”, Veshch, No. 1–2, 1922, 2.
54 El Lissitzky to K. Malevich, Vitebsk, December 21, 1920; Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam, Khardzhiev papers, file 729, 2–4, translated by Kenneth MacInnes in
Irina Karasik, ed., In Malevich’s Circle: Confederates, Students, Followers in Russia
1920s-1930s, St. Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2003, 53; quoted by Maria Gough,
“Model Exhibition,” October, No. 150, Fall 2014, 16.
Chapter 7
1 Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung 1922, Nr. 32, August 1922, with reproduction of Puni’s
Synthetic Musician, 1922, and Tatlin’s Tower, 1920. Reproduced in Iwan Puni,
Notes 267
Synthetiker Musiker, Essays by Eberhard Roters and Hubertus Gassner, Berlin:

Berlinische Galerie, 1992, 13.
2 Hamburger Illustrierte Zeitung 1922, Nr. 22, May 1922, reproduced in Roters,
Gassner, ibid.,14.
3 “Zeitschriften”, Das Kunstblatt 1922/7, 316.
4 For the full text of the Appeal, see Fritz Mierau, ed., Russen in Berlin. Literatur
Malerei Theater Film 1918-1933, Leipzig: Reclam, 1987, 186.
5 Peter Nisbet, “Some Facts on the Organizational History of the Van Diemen
Exhibition,” First Russian Show. A Commemoration of the Van Diemen Exhibition
Berlin 1922, London: Annely Juda Fine Arts, 1983, 3, 67.
6 Ibid., 68, and Horst Richter, “1.Russische Kunstausstellung Berlin,” 1922, brochure
accompanying the reprint of the original catalog, Cologne: Walther König, 1988,
np. The subsequent description of the preparations of the 1922 exhibition heavily
relies on both Nisbet and Richter’s works.
7 Winfried Nerdinger, Rudolf Belling und die Kunstströmungen in Berlin 1918-1923,
Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft 1980, 142.
8 Nisbet, 1983, op.cit., 69.
9 Ibid., 69, quoting relevant Foreign Office file, Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt,
Bonn, Abt. IV/ Russland Austellungswesen Russland, Bd. 1, and Bd. 2. April 1921–
January 1923.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Nerdinger, Rudolf Belling, op.cit.,148.
13 Nisbet, 1983, op.cit., 69.
14 Ibid. It is hardly possible to compare the values of 70 million rubles and 5 million
Reichsmarks (particularly if we do not know if Lenin offered old or new rubles)
as inflation was rampant in both countries, although in Germany not yet at its
summer 1923 peak. According to historical exchange rate for ruble.doc and
www.történelmi márkaárfolyamok.doc, the numbers do not add up. In the first
quarter of 1922 1₤ equaled circa 1, 450 RM, while in rubles its value was 1, 650,
000. According to this, Lenin offered c. ₤45 for the exhibition while Lunacharsky
expected ₤3, 000 revenue.
15 Nisbet, op.cit., 70.
16 Nikolai Punin, “Brief Summary of Letter Sent to Lunacharsky by Shterenberg,
Concerning the Proposed Art Exhibit in Berlin, 1922,” in Sidney Monas, Jennifer
Green Krupala, eds., The Diaries of Nikolay Punin 1904-1953, translated by Jennifer
Greene Krupala, Austin: University of Texas Press 1999, 77.
17 For a detailed discussion, see Martin Hammer, Christina Lodder, Constructing
Modernity: The Art & Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven, London: Yale University
Press, 2000, 107–9.
18 Ibid.
268 Notes

20 Nerdinger, op.cit., 146.
21 Erste Russische Kunstausstellung, Berlin 1922, Catalog, list of applied art works, 31.
23 D. Shterenberg, “Vorwort” (Foreword), catalog Erste Russische Kunstausstellung
Berlin 1922, Berlin: Verlag internationale Arbeiterhilfe, 1922, 3.
24 Ibid., 4.
25 Hammer and Lodder, op.cit., 480, n. 63.
26 “Introduction,” catalog Erste Russische Kunstausstellung Berlin 1922, Berlin: Verlag
internationale Arbeiterhilfe, 1922, 12.
27 Ibid., 13.
28 Ibid.
29 Varvara Stepanova, “Thoughts of Aleksandr Rodchenko’s on Art,” Peter Noever,
op.cit., 136–7.
30 Vasilii Rakitin, “The Optimism of a Nonobjectivist,” in Matt Drutt, ed: Kazimir
Malevich. Suprematism New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003, 71.
31 Paul Westheim, “Die Ausstellung der Russen”, Das Kunstblatt, 1922/11 (November
1922) English translation David Britt, in BW, 405.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 406.
34 Ibid., 406–7.
35 Ibid., 407.
36 Ibid., 408.
37 Adolf Behne, “Der Staatsanwalt stützt das Bild”, Die Weltbühne, No. 47,
November 23, 1922, Translated by Don Reneau, “On the Russian Exhibition,”
BW, 408.
38 Ibid.
39 Pseudonym of Branislav Micić, 1898–1947.
40 Branko Ve Poljanski, “Kroz rusku izložbu u berlinu”, Zenit, Vol. 3, No. 22, March
1923, translated by. Maja Stařevič, BW, 414.
41 This painting is reproduced under its correct title Pure Red Color in Magdalena
Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, Peter Galassi, eds., Aleksandr Rodchenko, New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 1998, 174.
42 Ve Poljanski, op.cit., 414.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Alfréd Kemény, “Jegyzetek az orosz művészek berlini kiállításához”, Egység,
February 4, 1923, English translation John Bátki, BW. 413.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
Notes 269
48 Lajos Kassák, The Russian Exhibit in Berlin, (originally published as “A berlini

orosz kiállításhoz,” Ma, No. 8, December 15, 1922), BW, 409.
49 Ibid., BW, 410.
50 Ernst Kállai, “A berlini orosz kiállítás”, Akasztott ember (Hanged Man), Vol. 1, No. 2,
February 15, 1923, English translation John Bátki, BW. 410–11.
51 Ibid., 411.
52 Ibid.
53 Malevich’s article “Lenin,” translated and abridged by Lissitzky, was published in
Das Kunstblatt, Vol. 8, No. 10, October 1924, 289–93; A compilation of his writings,
probably translated by El Lissitzky, was published in Westheim and Einstein, eds.,
Europa Almanach, Potsdam: Gust Kiepenhauer Verlag, 1925, 142–4, and his Die
gegenstandslose Welt translated by Alexander von Riesen was a Bauhaus Book in
1927. For the first volume of Malevich’s writings, T. Andersen, 1968. As Andersen
acknowledges in the Preface, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism” was
translated by David Miller.
54 David Shterenberg: “Die künstlerische Situation in Russland,” Das Kunstblatt,
Vol. 6, No. 11, November 1922, 485–92.
55 Ibid., 485.
56 Ibid. 486–7.
57 Ibid. 487.
58 Ibid.
59 “Er is een bizondere tentoonstelling van de russen in Berlijn.16 Zaalen
vol werk. Ook revolutionaair werk. Kun je niet eens overwippen?” Van
Doesburg, Letter to Antony Kok, November 20, 1922, in De Stijl overal absolute
leiding . . . , 147.
60 Van Doesburg, Letter to Antony Kok, November 20, 1922. English translation of
this paragraph in Evert van Straaten, Theo van Doesburg: Constructor of the New
Life, Otterlo: Kröller–Müller Museum, 1994, 15.
61 Ivan Puni, “Zur Kunst von heute”, Das Kunstblatt, Vol, VII, No 7, July 1923,
193–201.
62 Ibid., 194.
63 Ibid., 195.
Chapter 8
1 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
2 Ibid., 14.
270 Notes
3 UNOVIS Flyer No. 1, November 20, 1920. Reproduced and published in English
translation in Larissa A. Zhadowa, op.cit., 297–9. The text offers a more complicated
color symbolism, projecting the transcendence of even color red: “we shall create
the new world to succeed the red world which gutted the image of the old world.
Red points the new way for man, while we point to the new creative work in art”
(ibid., 298). These words, however, are followed by the appeal to go to “the red pole.”
4 “Economy” is explained in “On New Systems in Art” as “the fifth dimension which
evaluates and defines the Modernity of the Arts and Creative Works.” T. Andersen
1968, 83, and Goriacheva, op.cit. 265.
5 UNOVIS flier, No. 1, November 20, 1920. Zhadova, op.cit., 299.
6 Alexandra Shatskikh, “Unovis—Epicenter of a New World” in The Great Utopia,
op.cit., 63.
7 On the implication of empiriocriticism, see Gorjacheva’s insight, op.cit., Chapter 6,
N. 33.
8 Malevich, “On New Systems in Art,” in Andersen, 1968, 116.
9 Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism,” in Andersen 1968, 38.
10 Malevich, letter to Benois, quoted in Jane Sharp, “The Critical Reception of the 0.10
Exhibition: Malevich and Benua,” The Great Utopia, op.cit., 44.
11 See, for example, Steven Mansbach, Visions of Totality: László Moholy-Nagy, El
Lissitzky, and Theo van Doesburg, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,1980; Patricia
Railing, More about Two Squares, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991.
12 Patricia Railing gives a detailed description of the spatial dynamics of Two Squares
in Railing, 1991, 31.
13 Ibid, 26. Railing suggests a parallel between Tale of Two Squares and Edwin A.
Abbot’s 1884 book Flatland, too.
14 It has been referred to as Proun Room in the literature, but the correct title is Prouns
Room, as the original German title was in plural, Prounen Raum.
15 Zhadova 1978, 317; Unidentified Unovis artists made designs for an abstract room,
see Rowell, Rudenstine, op.cit., 170–3.
16 Malevich: “From Cubism to Suprematism,” 33.
17 Erich Buchholz, an meinem fall scheitert die offizielle kunstgeschichte [sic], Frankfurt:
Edition Hoffmann, 1969; manuscript ed. of 150 copies np, nd. Subsequent quotes
regarding this room design are from this same manuscript.
18 It is not clear whether this term, used by Buchholz in his memoirs, inspired
Moholy-Nagy’s unrealized design project Raum der Gegenwart (1927), for the
Provinzialmuseum in Hanover, or vice versa.
19 Erich Buchholz, “El Lissitzky in Berlin,” El Lissitzky, Eindhoven: Catalog, Stedelijk
van Abbemuseum Kunsthalle Basel, and Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1966, 64.
20 These designs are in the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris.
Notes 271
21 Vasily Kandinsky, “Reminiscences/Rückblicke,” in Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter

Vergo, eds.: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York: DaCapo Press, 1994,
368–9.
22 Erich Buchholz, “El Lissitzky in Berlin,” in El Lissitzky, exh. cat. Eindhoven: op.cit.
,1965, 64.
23 Raoul Hausmann, Hans Arp, Ivan Puni, and László Moholy-Nagy: “Aufruf zur
elementaren Kunst,” De Stijl, Vol. 4, No. 10, 1921, 156.
24 Malevich. “God Is Not Cast Down,” Andersen, 1968, 195.
25 Bloom, op.cit., 14.
26 Lissitzky-Küppers op.cit., 39: “Habe einen sehr lieben Brief von Gropius
bekommen. Er dankt für die Mappe . . . ”
27 Bloom, op.cit, 15.
28 Lissitzky-Küppers, op.cit., 352.
29 Shatskikh 1992, 57.
30 See, for example, Malevich’s letter to Lissitzky dated September 6, 1924, in which he
thanks him for the intention to send him dollars, and for his interest in wanting “to
know how much it costs to live here.” VM, Vol I., 170, 172. Letters to Sophie in GRI
950076, Box 1, Folders 1–3: a parcel sent to Malevich with clothes and other things is
mentioned repeatedly as it was never received by Malevich, first because of the overly
high duty he would have had to pay for it, and when Lissitzky settled this through
friendly relations, the parcel disappeared. In a letter of 12.6.1924 (GRI 950016, Box 1,
Folder 2) Lissitzky expresses hope that Malevich will receive the package by Christmas.
31 See his correspondence with Sophie in the archives of the Getty Research Institute,
Cat. #950076, Box 1. F.1., and discussion of them in Chapter 9.
32 Malevich: “Lenin” (Iz knigi “O bespredmetnoshti,”) A. Shatskikh, ed., Kazimir
Malevich. Sobranie sochinenii v piatykh tomakh. Tom 2. Moscow: Gilea, 1998, 25–9.
English translation Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Edmond T. Little, “Appendix from the
Book of Non-Objectivity,” in Andersen 1976, 358.
33 Kazimir Malevich, “Lenin,” Das Kunstblatt, Vol.8, No.10, 1924, 289–93. For detailed
analysis and Lissitzky’s omissions, see Yve-Alain Bois, “Lissitzky: Censeur de
Malévich?” Macula 3–4, 1976, 191–201.
34 This design was published under Ilya Chashnik’s name in the November 20, 1920,
issue of the Unovis leaflet, np.
35 Zhadova 1978, plate 153.
36 Lissitzky, letter to Sophie, March 21, 1924, quoted in Lissitzky-Küppers 1968, 39.
37 Konstantin Akinsha, “Malevich and Lenin: Image, Ritual, and the Cube,” in
Douglas, Lodder 2007, op.cit.,139–60, this quote 140; Malevich 1924, 289.
38 Hans Arp and El Lissitzky, Die Kunstismen: Les isms de l‘art: The Isms of Art 1914-
1924, Erlenbach, Switzerland, Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1925.
39 Zhadova op.cit., plate 154, with caption: “Unovis. El Lissitzky’s studio. Based on a
design by I. Chashnik. Plan for Lenin Tribune 1920-1924.”
272 Notes
40 On the similarities, see Christina Lodder: “Conflicting Approaches to Creativity?

Suprematism and Constructivism,” in Christina Lodder, ed., Celebrating
Suprematism. New Approaches to the Art of Kazimir Malevich, Leiden, Boston; Brill,
2019, 259–88.
41 For the Moscow efforts for and against the cult of Lenin, see Tumarkin 1980 op.cit,
and Akinsha 2007, op.cit., and brief discussion of it in Chapter 9.
42 Andersen 1976, 315.
43 Ibid., 320, 328.
44 Ibid., 326.
45 Malevich: “On New Systems in Art,” Andersen 1968, 84.
46 See Introduction and Chapter 9.
47 Ilya Ehrenburg, “Shifs-Karta”, in Ehrenburg’s Shest povestei o legkikh konstakh,
Moscow and Berlin: Helikon, 1922.
48 El Lissitzky, “A. and Pan-Geometry,” originally published in Carl Einstein,
Paul Westheim, eds., Europa Almanach, Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag,
1925, 103–13; English, translation by Eric Dluhosch, in El Lissitzky: Russia: An
Architecture for World Revolution, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1984, 142–8.
49 El Lissitzky, “The New Culture,” published and translated by Peter Nisbet in his
dissertation, op.cit., 13, 49.
50 Lissitzky-Küppers, op.cit., 334–5.
51 John Milner, Kazimir Malevich and the Tradition of Geometry, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1996, 192–9.
52 Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, Jen Lissitzky, eds., Proun und Wolkenbügel. Schriften,
Briefe, Dokumente. Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1977, 69.
53 On 7.22.1925 he wrote in a letter to Jan Tschichold accompanying a reproduction
if his poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge: “‘Mit dem Keil mit dem Roten
schlage die Weisse’—can you see how one cannot translate it at all? Instead of four
words we get nine, and nothing remains from the ring to it: ‘Klinom krasnim bej
bjelih,’” GRI, Tschichold papers, 930039, Box 3, Folder 1.
54 BW, 413.
55 Ibid., 409.
56 Ibid., 410.
Chapter 9
1 Letter to Sophie Küppers, March 23, 1924, VM, Vol. 2, 213.

2 Anna Muza, “Weaving Texts: A Note on Malevich’s Uses of Language,” in Oksana
Bulgakowa, ed., Kazimir Malevich: The White Rectangle. Writings on Film, Berlin,
San Francisco: Potemkin Press, 2002, 86.
Notes 273
3 Some of the titles may have been given by Lissitzky, or some essays may have been
parts of longer texts known by different titles.
4 Letter on March 21, 1924, Orselina (Sanatorium). GRI 950076, Box 1, Folder 2;
VM, vol. 2, 213.
5 Ibid.
6 Malevich: “Lenin. Iz knigi ‘o bezprednosti’”, G. L. Demosfenova, A. Shatskikh,
Kazimir Malevich. Sobranie sochinenii v pjatii tomakh, Moscow: Hylea,
1998, 25–9; “Lenin”: published in Das Kunstblatt, Potsdam, 1924, 289–93,
translated and edited by El Lissitzky “aus dem Lenin-Buch”; English translation
by Troels Andersen in “Appendix. From the Book of Non-Objectivity,”
in Andersen 1976, 354–5. See also “Commentaries and Remarks” in
Demosfenova et al., 304–6.
7 K. Malewitsch: “Lenin. Aus dem Buch ‘Über das Ungegenständliche’,” Das
Kunstblatt, Vol. 8, No. 10, October op.cit. In a letter to Sophie, October 20, 1924,
Lissitzky wrote: “Just received Das Kunstblatt with ‘Lenin ’ in it. ( . . . ) Poor
Malevich. ( . . . ) The editing is not right.” GRI 950076, Box 1, Folder 2.
8 Yve-Alain Bois, “Lissitzky, Censeur de Malévich?” Macula 3–4, 1976, 201.
9 Nina Tumarkin, “Religion, Bolshevism . . . ,” op.cit., 38.
10 For a detailed discussion of this conflict, see Konstantin Akinsha, “Malevich and
Lenin: Image, Ritual, and the Cube,” in Charlotte Douglas and Christina Lodder,
eds. Rethinking Malevich, op.cit., 139–60, 139–58.
11 Malevich; “From the Book of Non-Objectivity,” in Anderson 1976, 354–5.
12 Lissitzky: Letter to Sophie Küppers, May 26, 1924; English translation by Antonina
W. Bouis, in VM, Vol. 2, 214; and letters to her dated 3.21.24, GRI, 950076, Box 1,
Folder 2; March 23, 1924, ibid., 213–14; April 2, 1924, May 26, 1924, ibid., 214.
The Vensky Verlag was, at the time, directed by Dr. jur. Martin Vensky (1891
Berlin–1933 Oldenburg), son-in-law of the publishing house’s founder Heinrich
Stallings. Vensky took it over from his father-in-law in 1919. http://www.alt-olden
burg.de/gewerbe/stalling-druck-und-verlag/die-stalling-bilderbuecher/index.html,
last accessed November 16, 2018.
13 Lissitzky: Letter to Sophie Küppers, March 30, 1924. GRI 950076, Box 1, Folder 2.
14 Lissitzky: Letter to Sophie Küppers, May 13, 1924. GRI 950076, Box 1, Folder 2.
15 VM, 213. N. 6.
16 Ibid.
17 Lissitzky: Letter to Sophie Küppers, May 31, 1924. GRI, 950076, Box 1, Folder 2.
18 El Lissitzky, Letter to László Moholy-Nagy, Orselina, April 11, 1924, Bauhaus
Archiv, Berlin.
19 El Lissitzky’s letter to Paul Westheim, dated July 5, 1924, Paul Westheim Archiv,
Akademie der Künste Berlin, Paul Westheim Archiv, 160.
20 Shatskikh mentions an “unnamed drawing reproduced in the guise of Supremus
No. 58, [with the subscription] ‘Color shield in motion based on the black axis
274 Notes
contra color plane’.” Shatskikh, Black Square, op.cit., 145, see Note 21 in reference
to it: “It was sent to Germany, along with others, in about 1924, for placement
as an illustration of Malevich’s essays on which El Lissitzky was working; prizing
Malevich’s originals, Lissitzky copied his teacher’s drawings to give them to the
printer.” Ibid., 297.
21 Lissitzky, Letter to Westheim. The titles in German are the following:
1 Aus “Die neuen Systemen in der Kunst”

2 Suprematismus
3 Die Neuerer in der Kunst (Staat, Gesellschaft, Kritik)
4 Über die Dichtung
5 Aus “Gott ist nicht gestürzt” (Kunst, Kirche, Fabrik)
6 Lenin (Aus “Über das Ungegenständliche”)
7 Das reine Geschehen
22 The document is in the Theo van Doesburg Archives of the Rijksbureau

voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), The Hague, in a folder labeled
“Miscellania.” It is likely a draft or a copy of an original which was probably typed
on De Stijl’s letterhead as van Doesburg usually did his correspondence on his
official stationery.
23 Bergzord door Akied Ottevanger, ed., De Briefwisseling tussen Theo van Doesburg en
Antony Kok, The Hague: RKD, 488.
24 El Lissitzky: Letter to Sophie Küppers, June 26, 1925, GRI 950076, Box 1,
Folder 3.
25 The original version of “Lenin,” as published in T. Andersen 1976, happens to
include numbered parts, but the German version does not.
26 Anatoly Lunacharsky: “Ob iskusstve”, Ogonek, No. 30, 1927. VM, Vol. 2, 538.
27 Theo van Doesburg: “Elemental Formation,” G, Zeitschrift für Elementare
Gestaltung, July 1, 1923. Translated for Bann 1974, by Richard Taylor; Stephen
Bann, op.cit., 91.
28 For details, see Kai-Uwe Hemken: El Lissitzky. Revolution und Avantgarde,
Cologne: DuMont 1990, 39. Lissitzky, according to Hemken, exhibited certain
parts of his room installation as objects for sale. Proof of this, he argues, is the
inclusion of three items in Lissitzky’s “Annotated Transcript of El Lissitzky’s Proun
Inventory” that, as in Peter Nisbet: El Lissitzky 1890–1941 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1987, 155), dates
from February 1924 and was compiled “to list the artist’s ‘assets’ when he was
preparing for an extended stay in a Swiss sanatorium.” That is, it was made later
than the Proun Room’s exhibition, but it does not exclude there being price tags in
the exhibition room.
29 Hemken, ibid., 39.
Notes 275
30 For detailed discussion, see Éva Forgács, The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics,
Budapest, London: Central European University Press 1995, 65–70.
31 Signed by Vilmos Huszar (but almost certainly penned by van Doesburg):
“Dasstaatliche Bauhaus in Weimar”, De Stijl, Vol. 5, No. 9, September 1922,
135–7.
32 Johannes Jacobus Pieter Oud, Dutch architect, 1890–1963.
33 Lissitzky: Letter to J. J. P. Oud, Orselina near Locarno, Pension Plante, March 26,
1924. GRI 90076, Box.1. F.3.
34 Lissitzky: Letter to Johannes Jacobus Pieter Oud, Ambri/Sotto, June 30, 1924, GRI,
90076, Box.1. F.3.
35 Van Doesburg, “Van ‘natuur’ tot ‘kompositie’,” De Hollandsche Revue, No. 24, 1919,
470–6. Referred to by Evert van Straaten, Theo van Doesburg: Constructor of the
New Life, Otterlo: Kröller-Müller Museum, 1994, 17.
36 Van Doesburg: Principles of Neoplastic Art, 1925, translated by Janet Seligman, as
reprint of Volume 6 of the Bauhaus Bücher series, London: Lund Humphries, 1969,
10. Subsequent quotes are from the same edition.
37 Ibid.
38 Oskar Schlemmer: Letter to Otto Meyer-Amden, January 3, 1926, Oskar
Schlemmer: Briefe und Tagebücher, Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1977, 86; VM, Vol.
2, 360.
39 Malevich: “From the Book of Non-Objectivity” (Lenin), op.cit, 355.
40 The Europa Almanach’s Malevich article is published in Russian in Demosfenova,
et al., op.cit., Vol. 2, 25–9, with comments on the original works, 308; and the note
that a copy of Europa Almanach was preserved in GINKhUK with Malevich’s own
remarks (also concerning his publication in Das Kunstblatt) saying that these were
fragments of rather old writings, whereas he would have preferred “to publish
newer works, from his books, including a work in progress, The Ideology of Art,
(Analysis of Cubism, Cézannism, Futurism, Suprematism, etc.)”
41 http://www.moma.org/collection_ge/browse_results.php?criteria=O:AD:E
:32854|A:AR:E:3&role=3 accessed August 27, 2012. See also Tripmacker, Wolfgang,
“Irmgard Kiepenheuer als Verlegerin.” Marginalien 143, No. 3 1996: 37–47; Weber,
Klaus, ed. Punkt, Linie, Fläche: Druckgraphik am Bauhaus. Berlin: G+H, 1999. As
the Staatsarchiv Leipzig, where the Kiepenheuer Verlag’s documents are deposited,
informed me, papers from the years 1924–5 are missing, allegedly due to war
damages.
42 Demosfenova, et al., op.cit., Vol. 1, letter No. 139, 180, Malevich to El Lissitzky,
February 4, 1925, Leningrad. VM, Vol. 1, 180.
43 K. Malewitsch/Suprematismus (Aus den Schriften 1915–20), Paul Westheim, Karl
Einstein, eds., Europa Almanach, Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1925,
142–4. Demosfenova, et al., op.cit., includes the Malevich illustration only.
276 Notes
44 Rather strangely, the editors indicate only that “translations from the contributions
written in the French language are by Roland Erb”; they give the translator’s name at
the end of many poems and articles but there is no word about who translated and
edited the Malevich article.
45 Malevich: Letter to El Lissitzky, February 11, 1925, in VM, Vol. 1, 181–2.
46 Ibid., 181.
47 Ibid., 182.
48 Email of Dr. Thekla Kluttig Referatsleiterin to the author, March 12, 2013. She
confirmed that the names Malevich, Lissitzky, and van Doesburg do not occur in
the index of the Kiepenheuer papers. Nor is any mention of them or the Malevich
book project in Siegfried Lokatis, Ingrid Sonntag, eds., 100 Jahre Kiepenheuer-
Verlage, Berlin: Ch.Links, 2011.
49 El Lissitzky, “Nasci,” Merz, Vol. 2, No. 8/9, April–July 1924. Lissitzky was also
coeditor of the double issue with Kurt Schwitters.
50 El Lissitzky’s letter to van Doesburg, sent from Villa Croce, Ambri-Sotto, Tessin,
July 7, 1924. RKD.
51 El Lissitzky, Letter to van Doesburg, Locarno, August 22, 1924, RKD.
52 El Lissitzky, Letter to Sophie Küppers, December 12, 1924, GRI, Lissitzky papers,
950076, box 1.
53 Europa Almanach, 106, Note 1.
54 Stephen Bann, ed., The Tradition of Constructivism, op.cit., 92.
55 The allusion seems to be direct, but it is also true that such repetitive upper-case-
letter ads were frequent in the German print media at the time.
56 Van Doesburg, “Bazar, bazar, bazar, bazar,” De Stijl, Vol. 7, No. 75/76, 1926–27,
57–8. Translated and quoted by Linda S. Boersma: “Malevich, Lissitzky, Van
Doesburg: Suprematism and De Stijl,” in Douglas and Lodder, Rethinking Malevich,
op.cit., 232.
57 See Erste Russische Ausstellung catalog, items No 583–90, 31, with reproductions, n.p.
58 See Chapter 10, N. 25.
59 Two paintings by this title are dated 1928–32 by the State Russian Museum, see
Yevgenia Petrova, ed., Kazimir Malevich in State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg:
Palace Editions, 2000, illustrations 46, 47; cat. Numbers 29 and 30, 331.
Commentary to Cat. No. 29 says: “Reproduced in S. Yefimovich ‘Vistavka tvoriv K.
S. Malevicha v Kiivskii Kartiniii Galerei’, 1930. no. 14 (44) (dated 1910).” See also
Elena Basner’s “Chronological Order of Malevich’s Works of Painting in Accordance
with the Artist’s Own Datings,” ibid., 388, where Head of a Peasant, Cat. No. 29, is
dated to 1910.
60 Vasily Rakitin’s commentary: “here we encounter another example of the
chronological mystification practiced by Malevich. The work entitled Head of a
Peasant was first shown at the Donkey’s Tail exhibition [in 1912].” VM, vol. 1, 182.
Notes 277
61 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris, Grand

Palais, April–October 1925.
62 VM, Vol. 1., 182. An interesting counterpart of this view is what architect
Hugo Häring’s secretary Margaret Aschenbrenner wrote to the Stedelijk
Museum’s director Willem Sandberg on June 28, 1957, responding to his queries
regarding Malevich’s 1912 paintings The Woodcutter and Harvest (catalogued
by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, under the title Taking the Rye): “It is the
suprematist paintings that western experts were, and are most interested in and
that they collect The Woodcutter and Harvest as ‘Russian’ in a particular sense.
Beneath their colors lurks something like a resurrection theme, working through
the elements of ‘nature’ that is born again; in this way comes the ‘picture’ to
life, too: the new nature, dematerialized and purified, turned into pure color
constellation.” Berlin: Archives of Akademie der Künste, Häring papers, No.
600/6.
Chapter 10
1 . See Troels Andersen, Malevich. Catalogue raisonné of the Berlin exhibition 1927,
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1970.
2 I. K. Bonset, “Toward a Constructive Poetry,” Mécano, Vol. 1, No. 4–5, text dated
Vienna, 1923.
3 Ibid., as in Stephen Bann, ed., The Tradition of Constructivism, op.cit., 112.
4 Chlenova, “Abstraction,” October 143, op.cit., 21.
5 Malevich, “The Suprematist Mirror,” Andersen 1968, 224–5. Originally in Zhizn’
Iskusstva, No. 20, May 22, 1923, 15–16.
6 Ernő Kállai, “Konstruktivizmus”, Ma, Vol. VIII, No. 7–8, May 1, 1923, n.p.; English
translation John Bátki, in BW 435–6.
7 Ibid., 435.
8 Kassák, “Egy generáció tragédiája”, Ma, Vol. VIII, No. 7–9, May 1, 1923, np.
9 Ernő Kállai: “Korrektúrát! A De Stijl figyelmébe” in: Ma, Vol. 8, No. 9–10, July 1,
1923, English translation John Bátki, in BW, 436–43.
10 Ibid., 440.
11 Ibid., 439.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 437.
14 S. Senkin: “VKhUTEMAS 1923,” in Hubertus Gassner, Eckart Gillen,
Zwischen Revolutionszeit und Sozialistischen Realismus, Cologne: DuMont,
1979, 134.
278 Notes
15 Mikhail Leonidovich Slonimsky (1897–1972): The Emery Machine, 1923; translated

by John Bátki from the Hungarian translation by Klára Szőllőssy, in János Elbert,
ed., Kegyetlen szerelem, Budapest: Európa, 1969, Vol. 2, 209–42.
16 French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau urged his contemporaries to open a new
page in history after the tragedy of the First World War.
17 The AKhRR (Assotsiatsia Khudozhnikov Revolutsionnoi Rossii, Association of
Revolutionary Artists of Russia); see Chapter 5.
18 G. F. Hartlaub: “Rückblick auf den Konstruktivismus,” Das Kunstblatt, Vol. XI, No.
6, June 1927, 256–63.
19 Ibid., 255.
20 Alfréd Kemény and László Moholy-Nagy, “Dynamisch-konstruktives
Kraftsystem,” Der Sturm, 13, No.12 (1922), 186; English translation Nicholas
Bullock, in BW, 470.
21 Ibid.
22 Alfréd Kemény: “Das dynamische Prinzip in der Welt Konstruktion im
Zusammenhang mit der funktionellen Bedeutung der konstruktiven Gestaltung”,
Der Sturm, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1923), 63–4. English translation David Britt, in BW
477–9.
23 Ernő Kállai, Alfréd Kemény, László Moholy-Nagy, and László Péri: Nyilatkozat,
Egység, 1923, No. 4, 51. Although this text was published in Hungarian in Austria,
all of its authors lived in Berlin and disseminated these ideas among their friends
and colleagues making their arguments generally known.
24 Ibid.
25 Lissitzky, Letter to Sophie Küppers, December 12, 1924. GRI, 950076, Box I, folder 2.
26 Ernő Kállai, “ Ideológiák alkonya,” orig. 365, April 19–20, 1925; translated by John
Bátki, BW 615–16.
27 Ibid., 615.
28 Malevich had brothers Antoni, Bolesław, and Stanisław Malewicz in Warsaw, but,
according to Andrzej Turowski, he was not close to them. For more details, see
Andrzej Turowski: Malewicz v Warszawe, (Cracow, 2002), Chapter 4, 190–2.
29 Kobro, born in Moscow, was of Russian, Latvian, and German extraction.
30 Władisław Strzemiński, “O sztuce rosyskiej—novatki”, Zwrotnica, No. 3,
(1922); translation adapted from Wanda Kemp-Welch in BW, 272–80; this quote 272.
31 Ibid., 279.
32 The Second Polish Republic was also referred to as Rzeczpospolita Polska, or
Commonwealth of Poland.
33 Irena Kossowska: “Introduction: Reframing Tradition—Art in Central and Eastern
Europe between the two World Wars,” in Kossowska, ed.: Reinterpreting the Past:
Traditionalist Artistic Trends in Central and Eastern Europe of the 1920s and 1930s,
Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2010, 10.
Notes 279
34 Strzemiński, “O sztuce rosyskiej—novatki,” 275. As further Polish artists living in

Russia, he cited Vladimir Orlovsky and Mikhail Vrubel.
35 Ibid.
36 Stażewski, “O suprematisme w malarstwie”, Blok, No. 1 (March 8, 1924); translated
by Wanda Kemp-Welch, BW, 492–3, these quotes 492.
37 Władisław Strzemiński, ‘B=2’, Blok, No. 8/9 (1924); translated by Wanda Kemp-
Welch, BW, 497–503; this quote 501.
38 Ibid.
39 Władisław Strzemiński: Unizm w malarstwie, Warsaw: Praesens, 1928.
40 Helena Syrkus: “Kazimir Malevich,” VM, Vol. 2, 355.
41 Ibid., 356.
42 Tadeusz Peiper, “Malewicz w Polsce”, Zwrotnica, No. 11 (1927); translated by Wanda
Kemp-Welch, BW, 664.
43 Andrzej Turowski, Malewicz w Warszawie, op.cit., 199, 202.
44 See a list of the publications in Turowski, op.cit., 206.
45 Mieczysław Szczuka, “Pozgonne suprematyzmu”, Dzwignia, No. 2–3, 1927;
translated by Wanda Kemp-Welch, BW, 664–6.
46 Ibid., 665.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., 666.
50 Ibid.
51 Troels Andersen, Malevich. Catalog Raisonné of the 1927 Berlin Exhibition
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1970, 57.
52 ibid.
53 Siegfried Giedion, “Zum neuen Bauen,” Der Cicerone, 1928, Vol. XX., No. 6,
210–12.
54 This was his concept as of 1927; his 1929 exhibition in the Tretiakov Gallery opened
a new chapter of painting for him.
55 A. Kemény, “Die Abstrakte Gestaltung vom Suprematismus bis heute,” Das
Kunstblatt, Vol. 8, No. 8, August 1924, 245–9. English translation David Britt, BW
479–82.
56 Ibid., BW 480.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ernst Kállai, “ Konstruktivismus,” Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst, 1924, 374–86.
60 The review of the 1924 Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst in Der Cicerone gives
special mention to Kállai’s articles in the volume, especially “Constructivism”
as a very clear and unprejudiced account. Der Cicerone, Vol. XX, No. 12,
1924, 1014.
280 Notes
61 Annemarie Jaeggi, www.international.icomos.org/.../ Soviet_Heritage_34_V–4_

Jaeggi, last accessed October 17, 2017.
62 A group of Russian students arrived in Germany to study construction
technologies, and the following year a delegation of Bauhaus students headed by the
textile department’s leader Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983) visited the Russian students
in Moscow. Former Bauhaus student Hinnerk Scheper (1897–1957) was working
in Moscow for a two-year period in 1929–31; and letters in the collection of the
Bauhaus-Archiv document state that “in 1931 a Soviet government delegation
visited Gropius in Berlin and nourished expectations that he be called to Moscow,
presumably as the head of the town planning department of GIPROGOR, the State
Institute for City Planning. But at the end, no more than a three-day lecture trip to
Leningrad in 1933 resulted from Gropius’s Russian plans.” A. Jaeggi, ibid.
63 Katalog Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung 1927, Veröffentlichungen des Kunstarchivs
Nr. 41/42, ed. Gustav Eugen Diehl, 107.
64 Peiper 1927, BW, 628. VM, vol. 2, 365. Subsequent quotes about the Bauhaus visit
are from this same article.
65 Ise Gropius wrote in a letter about Malevich’s visit: “Malevich came to lunch and
wondered if he could possibly work at the Bauhaus. That is, unfortunately, not
possible as the budget here has its limits, even if people at the Bauhaus are very
interested in his works. ( . . . ) We were impressed by Malevich as extraordinarily
strong and energetic. He blames the state of affairs in Russia for the impossibility
of actual work. Everything that is not directly political has no value there. He
was especially interested in the political attacks against the Bauhaus and the
inflammatory article in the ‘Deutsche Zeitung’ that accuses the Bauhaus with Soviet
propaganda. According to him the same things that here count for Bolshevik, are
rejected there as ‘western bourgeois’ views. Malevich would like to stay in Germany
and will try to establish a livelihood in Berlin” (Ise Gropius’s letter in Bauhaus
Archiv, Berlin; quoted in Heiner Stachelhaus, Kasimir Malewitsch. Ein tragischer
Konflikt, Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1989, 256–7).
66 Malevich, Letter to L. Yudin, Berlin, May 7, 1927, in Yevgenia Petrova, ed., Kazimir
Malevich in State Russian Museum, op.cit., 395.
67 Ernst Kállai, “Kasimir Malewitsch,” Das Kunstblatt, vol. 11, no. 7, July 1927, 264–6,
English translation in VM, vol. 2, 536–8.
68 Ibid. VM, vol. 2, 537.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., Westheim, “Die Ausstellung der Russen,” op.cit., 408.
71 Kállai, op.cit., 537.
72 Ever skeptical, Paul Westheim had already written satirically about the square
already in 1923, after his visit to the Bauhaus exhibition: “Three days in Weimar,
and one doesn’t want to see a square again for the rest of one’s life. ( . . . ) Talent is
a square, genius is an absolute square. The De Stijl people ( . . . ) claim that they
Notes 281
possess the only true squares” (Paul Westheim, Comments on the “Squaring” of the
Bauhaus, Das Kunstblatt, 1923, VM, vol. 2, 360).
73 A. Lunacharsky, “Ob iskusstve”, Ogonek (The Spark), 30, 1927. VM, Vol. 2, 538.
74 For a new full translation of Antonia W. Bouis, see Kazimir Malevich: The World as
Objectlessness, op.cit., 147–200.
75 Letter of Hans von Riesen to Moholy-Nagy, June 7, 1927, quoted by Stephan von
Riesen, “Introduction,” Malewitsch: Die gegenstandslose Welt, Mainz: Florian
Kupferberg Verlag, 1980. Reprint, XIII. The Hungarian edition of the book,
Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1986, translated from German into Hungarian by Éva
Forgács, includes a photocopy of the Russian original in the back matter.
76 Lost letter dated June 2, 1927, quoted by Stephan von Wiese, ibid.
77 Malewitsch: Die gegenstandslose Welt, 7. For a more recent translation, see Kazimir
Malevich: The World of Objectlessness. With essays and new translation of the
Bauhaus Book 1927. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Anna Brailkovsky, Meredith
Dale, Bronwen Saunders. Basel: Kunstmuseum and Ostfildern: Hetje Cantz Verlag,
2014.
78 Ibid., 148.
79 See Malevich’s contribution to the debate in BW 698–9; for details of the
debate, see Forgács, “‘This Is the Century of Light’ László Moholy-Nagy’s
Painting and Photography Debate in i 10, 1927,” Leonardo, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2017,
274–8.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.
Chapter 11
1 Peter Weibel in Booklet to the Exhibition Art in Europe 1945–1968. The Continent
that the EU Does Not Know, Peter Weibel, ed., Art in Europe 1945–1968, Karlsruhe:
ZKM 2017, 7.
2 I follow the description of the trajectory of Malevich’s works given by Joop M.
Joosten, “Malevich in the Stedelijk,” in Malevich 1878–1935, Exh. Cat., Leningrad,
Moscow, Amsterdam: 1988–9, and Hans von Riesen: “Vorwort”, in Kasimir
Malewitsch, Suprematismus—Die gegenstandslose Welt, Cologne: DuMont
Schauberg, 1962, 31–5.
3 For his views on film, see Hugo Häring, “Was wirkt im Lichtbild? Was wirkt im
Lichtbild?,” G, Material zur elementaren Gestaltung, 1926/1–2, Film issue, 128–9.
4 “On June 1 the ‘Society of the Friends of the New Russia’ was founded in Berlin. All
unprejudiced men and women who anticipate the making of a new world should
282 Notes
find here opportunities to have access to impartial information about the economic
and cultural directions in Russia from lectures and objective accounts.” G, vol. I. no.
2, September 1923, np.
5 Joosten, “Malevich in the Stedelijk,” op.cit., 8.
6 In 1934 Häring took over Albert Reimann’s private school of art and design because
Reimann, as a Jew, was forced out of it. He started to work with Secretary Margot
Aschenbrenner there. Joosten, op.cit., 9.
7 Joosten, ibid., 10.
8 Yve-Alain Bois, “The Availability of Malevich,” Allison McDonald, Ealan Wingate,
eds., Malevich and the American Legacy, New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2011, 31.
9 Alfred J. Barr, Jr., Letter to Naum Gabo, New York, October 7, 1957 (Stedelijk
Museum, folder 5828).
It has to be mentioned that Barr had already disclosed the history of his
accessioning the Malevich works in a letter responding to Max Bill’s inquiry, dated
New York, December 19, 1952. It is remarkable that he always gives an approximate
amount as the “purchase price,” not naming the exact amount either in US dollars
or Reichsmarks.
Having listed the purchased Malevich works and those he considered on
extended loan, he gave a detailed account to Max Bill (orthography unchanged):
all the above works by malevich were shown to me and my wife in the cellar
of the provincial museum in hannover in the summer of 1935 by dr. alexander
dorner, at that time director of this museum. I was collecting material for the
exhibition cubism and abstract art. in addition to the works listed we saw there
many other canvases, a number of drawings and several more of the placard
charts.
I was of course overjoyed to find this malevich material since we had had
great difficulty in borrowing anything from the u.s.s.r. at the time we were faced
with an uncertain question as to whether the nazi government would permit
the export of the malevich material which in some cases bore russian writing
and might also have been suspect because of the character of the designs
which bore resemblances to airplanes or other mechanical or architectural
motives. because I wanted to insure the inclusion of some of the material in
our exhibition and since I was also eager to acquire a few for our collection I
offered to buy two canvases, nos. 248.35 and 249.35, and two drawings, 251.35
and 250.35. dr. dorner agreed to a price of about $200 for the four items. these
four items I took with me across the german-dutch border, the drawings in my
suitcase, the two paintings wrapped around my umbrella.
(...)
to answer your question # 3: I do not know of any earlier owners of any of
the works by malevich in question, but my recollection is that when I discussed
Notes 283
the question with dr. dorner in hannover I had the impression that the material
had been left by malevich in dr. dorner’s care when malevich returned to the
u.s.s.r. about 1927 (?) and that malevich had not wanted the material returned
to him because of the increasing antipathy toward abstract art in the u.s.s.r. I
understood that dr. dorner was not the owner of the works by malevich but felt
entitled to act as agent.
while I deeply regret the loss of the drawings I believe that our museum
has done more than any individual or institution during the past 25 years to
increase the knowledge and fame of this great pioneer of abstract art. (copy,
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5828)
10 Gabo to Sandberg, Middlebury, Conn., October 24, 1957, Stedelijk Museum

Amsterdam, folder 5828.
11 Alfred J. Barr, Jr. to Gabo, New York, October 7, 1957, Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam, folder 5828.
12 See Ad Petersen, Sandberg: Graphiste et Directeur de Stedelijk Museum, translated by
Daniel Cunin, Paris: 2007, 87.
13 Ibid.
14 Hans L. C. Jaffe, letter to H. Häring. Amsterdam, September 1, 1952, carbon copy,
Archives of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5829.
15 De Stijl MoMA Exh. #527, December 16, 1952–February 15, 1953.
16 Hans L. C. Jaffe, De Stijl. The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, 1956.
17 Hans L. C. Jaffe, letter to Häring, September 1, 1954, Berlin, Akademie der Künste
Archiv, Häring 454.
18 Jaffe, Letter to Häring, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5830.
19 John Anthony Thwaites, Letter to W. Sandberg, March 17, 1954, carbon copy,
Archives of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, folder 5830.
20 Hans L. C. Jaffe, Letter to J. A. Thwaites, March 23, 1954, carbon copy, Archives of
the Stedelijk Musuem, Amsterdam, folder 5830.
21 Martin Hammer, Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity. The Art & Career of
Naum Gabo, New Haven: London, Yale University Press, 2000, 355.
22 Naum Gabo, Letter to W. Sandberg, Middlebury, Conn., April 3, 1955. Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam, folder 5828.
23 Carbon copy, Archives of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5829.
24 Ibid.
25 He uses plural “we” (“nous”) but does not name who else was included.
26 Sandberg, Letter to Gabo, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, November 7, 1955. In
French. folder 5828.
27 Ibid.
28 Many of these letters are in the Archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, among
the Häring papers. They include Correspondence with Max Bill, No. 147; Julius Bissier,
284 Notes
No. 151; Hans Curjel, No. 172; Hilberseimer, No. 249; Dr. Udo Rukser, No. 356;
Rudolf Springer, on behalf of Galerie Springer, No. 452; Jean-Pierre Wilhelm, No. 473;
Charlotte Weidler on behalf of the Carnegie Institute, No. 485; correspondence with
Sandberg, No. 600., Rose Fried on behalf of Rose Fried Gallery New York, No. 602.
29 Jean-Pierre Wilhelm to Häring, September 19, 1954. Akademie der Künste, Berlin,
Häring, 473.
30 Rose Fried to Häring, January 30, 1954, Berlin, Archives of Die Akademie der
Künste, Häring 602.
31 Sandberg to Gabo, as in Note 22.
32 Ibid.
33 W. Sandberg, letter to N. Gabo, March 7, 1956, in French. Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam, folder 5828. He relates that M. Achenbrenner recalled
he was extremely vivacious and remembered a lot of the details of the Malevich
pictures’ Odyssey: [after the closing of the exhibition] Malevich had a big crate
sent to Häring that included the paintings, gouaches, drawings, theoretical
charts in color etc. Häring did not open the crate but deposited it with the
transporter Knaur. After a few years when the storage fees became too heavy, he
had the crate transferred to Dorner (Kestner Gesellschaft) in Hanover. Dorner
had kept them for several years then he thought it was dangerous (entartete
Kunst); he sent the crate back to Häring who kept it in his home in Berlin.
When the Reimann school was bombed in 1943 he moved back to Biberach
and took the crate there. After the war Häring opened the crate and compared
the contents with the catalog of the 1927 Malevich exhibition finding that
12 pieces were missing ( . . . ).
Häring explained to me that as he had not been the owner of the works he
was not able to sell anything. ( . . . ) He also mentioned Max Bill who had made
propositions to him but with whom he has had a conflict since then. An art
dealer offered 120,000 DM for the whole material but he did not want to sell,
particularly not to an American ( . . . ) he wanted to keep the works together
and have them stay in Europe, preferably Amsterdam.
34 Gabo, Letter to Sandberg, Middlebury Conn., March 24, 1956. In English, I

corrected some of the names’ spelling. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5828.
About some of those showing interest in buying Malevich works, see the folder
Häring 172, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
35 Häring, Letter to Hans Curjel, July 10, 1954, Doc. Häring 172, Akademie der
Künste, Berlin.
36 Häring to Herrn. Professor. l. hilberseimer (sic!), 29.3.56, carbon copy, Archives of
the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5829.
37 Häring to Sandberg, 29.3,1956, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5829.
Notes 285
39 Sandberg to Gabo, in French, thanking for Gabo’s letter of 24.X.57, Stedelijk

Museum Amsterdam, folder 5828.
40 Ibid.
42 He mentioned Michel Seuphor, L’Art Abstrait, Paris: Maeght, 1949, 303, illustrations
on 220–5, a short text by Malevich on 179.
43 Jaffe to Alfred Barr, Amsterdam, July 15, 1957, carbon copy, Archives of the
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5829.
44 Lebedev, Letter to the director of the Stedelijk, carbon copy, Archives of the
45 “Casimir Malevitch,” document, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 3738.
46 Letter to Sandberg in the name of W. Schmalenbach, written, because of his
illness, by his secretary, Hanover, December 28, 1957, carbon copy, Archives of the
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 3824. The Kestner Gesellschaft had merits
in showing and purchasing works by El Lissitzky, among other modernists; its first
director having been Paul Küppers, whose widow Sophie married El Lisstizky and
eventually moved to Moscow with him.
47 Pontus Hulten to Sandberg, Stockholm, January 14, 1958, carbon copy, Archives of
48 Ibid.
49 Sandberg, Letter to Barr, Amsterdam, December 10, 1957, carbon copy, Archives of
50 Ibid.
51 Letter and list in Russian, dated January 30, 1958, carbon copy, Archives of the
52 This list of projects indicates how the Stedelijk’s exhibition influenced the
rediscovery of the interwar avant-gardes.
53 Sandberg to Schmalenbach, January 31, 1958, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder
3824.
54 Peter lufft, kasimir malewitsch (sic!), kunstverein braunschweig, haus salve hospes,
February 16–March 16, 58.
55 Alex Vömel to Sandberg, January 27, 1958, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder
3738.
56 Franz Meyer, Basel, Letter to Sandberg, carbon copy, Archives of the Stedelijk
Museum Amsterdam, folder 3824.
57 Givonani Carandente, ed., Casimir Malevic, Catalogo, Intr. di Palma Bucarelli,
Roma: Editalia, 1958.
58 Sandberg to Dott. Del Aqua, November 22, 1957, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,
folder 3823.
59 Malevich’s rediscovery marked the beginning of reacquainting the West with the
Russian and East European avant-gardes as integral parts of the interwar period’s
286 Notes
artistic progression. Since the 1922 First Russian Exhibition in Berlin until the
Stedelijk’s 1957 Malevich show this art had little visibility in the West. There were
a few occasions though: In 1923 three Russian constructivists had a small one-day
show in the Paul Guillaume Gallery in Paris while they were staying there with
Tairoff ’s theater. Picasso visited it the day before it opened and spread word of it,
so it attracted considerable interest from Parisian artists. (See Christina Lodder:
“Exhibitions of Russian Art after 1922,” The First Russian Show, a Commemoration,
London: Annely Juda Fine Arts, 1983, 80.) The three artists were K. Medunetsky,
Georgy, and Vladimir Stenberg; see also Andrei Nakov, 2 Stenberg, Paris, Galérie
Jean Chauvelin, April–May 1975, 50. There was Soviet participation at the
International Art Deco exhibition in Paris, 1925, where a model of Tatlin’s tower,
the Monument to the 3rd International and Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club interior
design attracted interest, Malevich had his solo show in Berlin in 1927 (see
Chapter 10), and there were sporadic shows in the United States, too. A few gallery
shows were organized in London in the late 1950s, and the Galérie Denise René in
Paris organized survey shows for international “constructive” art in 1957, 1959, and
1961.
60 Hans von Riesen, “Vorwort,” in Werner Haftmann, ed., Suprematismus—Die
gegenstandslose Welt, translated by Hans von Riesen, Cologne: DuMont Schauberg,
1962.
61 Ibid.
62 Wilder Green, Coordinator of the Museum program, MoMA, to Edy de Wilde,
director of the Stedelijk 1963–85, New York, March 31, 1967. Archives of the
63 De Wilde to W. Green, Amsterdam, May 27, 1968. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,
folder 5834.
64 Ibid.
65 See correspondence between de Wilde and the Rewolle Gallery, Bremen,
commissioned by the widow of Hans von Riesen to sell the manuscripts. Archives
of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, folder 5833. About the fact of the purchase,
letter of de Wilde to Dr. Franz Mayer, director of the Kunstmuseum, Basel,
Amsterdam, November 29, 1974, Archives of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,
folder 5834.
66 Malevich, Essays on art 1915–1928, edited by Troels Andersen. Vol. I., Copenhagen:
Borgen, 1968; Malevich, Essays on art 1928–1933, edited by Troels Andersen. Vol.
II., Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968.
Malevich, The World as Non-Objectivity. Unpublished Writings 1922–1933, edited
by Troels Andersen. Vol. d III., Copenhagen: Borgen,1976; Malevich, The Artist,
Infinity, Suprematism. Unpublished Writings 1913–1928, edited by Troels Andersen.
Vol. IV., Copenhagen: Borgen, 1978.
Notes 287
Chapter 12
1 In the magazine Reflex, forum of CoBrA’s predecessor, the Reflex group, Constant
wrote: “A painting is not a structure of colours and lines, but an animal, a night,
a cry, a man, or all of these together” (Fanny Kelk, Constant, Amsterdam: G.I.N.
Gallery, 1977, 1).
2 Constant, “Declaration of Freedom,” Reflex, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1948, quoted by Stewart
Home, The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War,
Sterling: A.K Press, 1991, 9.
3 The HfG was one of the most outspokenly antifascist institutions, founded and
initially financed by the brother-and-sister Scholl Foundation, in memory of Hans
and Sophie Scholl, killed by the Nazis for plotting against them. The HfG’s building
was designed by Max Bill, first rector of the school, 1955–6, followed by Tomás
Maldonado, 1956–68.
4 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-03167918/document, last accessed January 2,
2021.
5 For more detailed discussion, see Simon Ford, A User’s Guide to the Situationist
International, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2005, especially 15–23.
6 Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” 1935, in Benjamin,
Reflections, translated by Edmund Jephcott, New York: Shocken Books, 1986,
146–62; on Baudelaire and the flâneur: 156–58.
7 Ibid., 156.
8 Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, Paris: L’Arche, 1947.
9 Guy Debord: “Report on the Construction of Situations and on the Terms of
Organization and Action of the International Situationist Tendency,” in Tom
McDonough, Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Texts and Documents,
Cambridge, Mass., London: The MIT Press, 2002, 31.
10 Ibid., 32.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 36–8.
14 Ibid., 39.
15 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith,
New York: Zone Books, 1995, 11.
16 Ibid., 21.
17 Guy-Ernest Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” Les Lèvres
Nues, No. 6, 1955. http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/2, last
accessed September 3, 2019.
18 Lodder: Russian Constructivism, op. cit., 59, quotes Ehrenburg, Vse-taki ona
vetrtyitsa (“Eppur si muove,” Still [the earth] rotates) Berlin: 1922, 26.
288 Notes
19 Quoted by Lodder, Russian Constructivism, op. cit., 59, form Severnaya kommuna,
October 17, 1918.
20 “The Alba Platform,” in: Potlatch: Information Bulletin of the Letterist International
#27, November 2, 1956. Reprinted in Ken Knabb, ed.: Situationist International,
Anthology, Berkeley: Bureau of Public Services, 1981, 14–15.
21 Peter Wollen, “Bitter Victory: The Art and Politics of the Situationist International,”
in Elisabeth Susmann, ed.: On the Passage of a Few People through a Rather Brief
Moment in Time: Situationists 1957–1972, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990,
30.
22 Especially efficient was Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon that came out in
English and German in 1940, and in French in 1945, telling the story of a veteran
communist, detained, sentenced, and executed; and George Orwell’s dystopian
novel Nineteen Eighty Four, published in 1949.
23 Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999, 101.
24 Georgii Krutikov: The Flying City and Beyond, ed. by Selim O. Khan-Magomedov,
translated by Christina Lodder, Barcelona: Tenov Books, 2008, 68–89.
25 Ibid., 103.
26 Catalog to the exhibition Malevich of the Kunsthalle Bern, 1959, catalog essay by
Franz Meyer, director of the Bern Art Museums (Meyer put Malevich’s art in the
context of Matisse, Léger, and Marinetti).
27 Two Decades of Experiment in Russian Art, London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1962,
catalog essay signed “Grosvenor Gallery,” np.
28 Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties, New York: Abrams, 1996, 13.
29 With the difference, among other things, that “setting” in 1920s Russia would not
refer to the market but to official approval, or, at least, lack of disapproval.
30 Carlo Belloli, catalog essay to Contrubuto russo alle avanguardie plastiche, Milan:
Galleria Levante, 1964, 16.
31 Hans Richter: “Begegnungen in Berlin,” Avantgarde Osteuropa, Berlin: Kunstverein
Berlin-Akademie der Künste 1967, 14.
32 See Anatole Kopp, Ville et revolution Architecture et urbanisme Soviétiques des
années vingt, Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1967.
33 Anat Falbel, University of Campinas, Brazil: https://thecharnelhouse.org/2013/08
/02/anatole-kopp-1915-1990-the-engaged-architect-and-the-concept-of-modern-
architecture/, last accessed July 6, 2019.
34 Russische Künstler aus dem 20. Jahrhundert, October 11–November 22, 1968.
35 Art News Annual, No. 34, 1968. A rewritten version published in Art in Revolution,
London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1971, 21–8.
36 For more details, see Crow, op. cit., Chapter IV.
37 Ionel Schein, “Préface,” in Anatol Kopp, op.cit., 4.
Notes 289
38 Tomas Straus: Catalog essay (untitled), in Lajos Kassák 1887–1967, Cologne:

Galerie Gmurzynska, January 15–March 5, 1973, np.
39 Peter Spielmann: “Introduction,” in Lajos Kassák 1887–1967, Bochum: Museum
Bochum, 1973, np.
40 Mail art had its origin in Ray Johnson’s 1943 initiative, the New York
Correspondence School, as well as the Fluxus movement of the early 1960s.
41 Camilla Gray-Prokofieva: Introduction, Art in Revolution, p. 9; on Gabo and
Pevsner, see also Benjamin D. Buchloh: “Cold War Constructivism,” in Serge
Gilbaut, ed., Reconstructing Modernism, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990,
85–110.
42 G. Bussmann, Helmut R. Leppien, Uwe M. Schneede: “Zu dieser Ausstellung,”
Kunst der Revolution, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Württembergischer Kunstverein,
Kunsthalle Köln, 1972, np.
43 Wolfgang G. Fischer: “Tatlin’s Dream: A Note to the Exhibition,” Tatlin’s Dream,
London: Fischer Fine Art Ltd., November 1973–January 1974, 3.
44 Nigel Gosling: “Tatlin’s Dream at Fischer Fine Art,” The Observer, November 11,
1973.
45 A. Nakov, “Introduction,” Catalog of exhibition Tatlin’s Dream. Russian Suprematist
and Constructivist Art 1910–1923, London: Fischer Fine Art Ltd., 1973, 11. For
a detailed discussion concerning Flavin, see Natasha Kurchanova, “The Art of
Objecthood: Tatlin through the Eyes of Flavin”, in Silvia Burini, ed., Translations
and Dialogues: the Reception of Russian Art Abroad, Salerno, Europa Orientalis
Dipartimento DIPSUM – Università di Salerno, 2019, 231–239.
46 John Bowlt: “Art business á Moscou,” Macula, No. 1, 1976, 125.
47 See, for example, Klaus Groh: Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa, Cologne: DuMont-
Schauberg, 1972; and Présences Polonaies exhibition and catalog, Paris: Centre
Pompidou, 1980.
48 It might have been due to these same efforts that many samizdat publications
authored by Soviet and East European dissidents starting around the early 1980s
were also funded and printed in France.
49 “About October” by the editors, October, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1976, 3.
50 Cf. Sergei Eisenstein: “Notes for a Film of Capital,” October, Vol. 1, No.2; Annette
Michaelson: “Reading Eisenstein Reading Capital,” October, Vol. 1, Nos. 2, 3, and 4;
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe and John Johnston: “Gravity’s Rainbow and the Spiral Jetty,”
October, Vol. 1, No. 2 and 3.
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Index
Agursky, Samuel 50, 51 Barr, Alfred J., Jr. 203, 204, 207, 209, 211,
Akinsha, Konstantin 271 n.37, 272 n.41, 213, 282 n.9, 283 n.11, 285 n.43
273 n.10 Barta, Sándor 142
Allais, Alphonse 20 Bartos, Ewa 241 n.36
Alma, Peter 255 n.42 Basner, Elena 41, 241 n.23, 247 n.4,
Altman, Natan 31, 42, 43, 106, 126, 133, 276 n.59
134, 140 Bátki, John 269 n.50
Andersen, Troels 23, 189, 216, 217, 229, Baudelaire, Charles 221
241 nn.21, 37, 242 nn.40, 43, 243 n.70, Beekman, Chris 255 n.42
244 nn.82, 86, 245 n.114, 248 n.24, Behne, Adolf 124, 132, 139–40, 199,
255 n.42, 258 n.43, 269 n.53, 270 n.4, 265 n.31, 268 n.37
272 n.42, 273 n.6, 274 n.25, 277 n.1, Belloli, Carlo 288 n.30
279 n.51, 286 n.66 Benjamin, Walter 2, 221, 287 n.6
André, Carl 233 Benois, Alexander (1870–1960) 19, 20,
Andreeva, Maria Fiodorovna 106 242 n.51
Annenkov, Georges 226 Bergson, Henri 10, 28, 239 n.27
Antliff, Mark 261 n.45 Berlewi, Henryk 54, 55, 252 n.57
Antonova, Clemena 238 nn.15, 16 Berly, Andrei 107, 108
Appel, Karel 220 Bessaraboff, Nicholas 241 n.29
Apter-Gabriel, Ruth 250 n.43 Betts, Paul 259 n.9
Aranova, Ulia 234 Biely, Andrei 107
Archipenko, Alexander 110, 126, 226 Biermann, Georg 265 n.32
Arkhipov, Avram Efimovich 136 Bill, Max 221, 282 n.9
Aronson, Boris 42, 249 n.35 Birnholz, Alan C. 54, 247 n.2, 249 n.32,
Arp, Hans 68, 69, 100, 124, 154, 157, 250 n.46, 251 n.50, 252 n.56
182, 254 n.37, 271 n.23, 271 n.38 Blok, Alexander 107, 108
Arvatov, Boris 82, 85, 117, 258 n.37 Bloom, Harold 147, 154, 155, 269 n.1,
Aschenbrenner, Margaret 277 n.62 271 nn.25, 27
Aschenbrenner, Margot 209, 282 n.6 Blotkamp, Karel 59, 60, 63, 253 nn.2, 5,
Avenarius, Richard 266 n.35 10, 254 n.20
Boersma, Linda S. 76, 255 n.42,
Babichev, Alexei 81 276 n.56
Bähr, Ludwig 93, 132 Bogdanov, Alexander 6, 62, 115, 237 n.5,
Baj, Enrico 220 263 n.1, 266 n.35
Bajkay, Éva 263 n.9 Boguslavskaia, Xenia 21, 24, 32, 33, 41,
Bakhtin, Mikhail 23 107, 212
Balázs, Béla 62, 253 n.15 Boguslavskaja, Ksenia K. 246 n.120
Bann, Stephen 180, 252 n.66, 260 n.29, Böhme, Ernst 211
264 n.18, 265 n.23, 266 nn.34, 37, Bois, Yves-Alain 162, 204, 235, 258 n.46,
274 n.27, 276 n.54 271 n.33, 273 n.8, 282 n.8
Baránszky, László 263 n.73 Bolshakov, Konstantin 42
308 Index
Bonch-Bruevich, Vladimir Chave, Anna C. 36, 247 n.141, 261 n.46
Dmitriyevich 163 Chervinko, Ivan 57
Bonset, I. K. 63, 67, 277 n.2 Chilova, Alla 242 n.39
Bortnyik, Sándor 110 Chlebnikov, Velimir 126
Botar, Oliver 263 n.9 Chlenova, Masha 180, 252 n.63, 277 n.4
Bouis, Antonina W. 243 n.71, 273 n.12, Chtcheglov, Ivan 221
281 n.77 Cocteau, Jean 182, 278 n.16
Bowlt, John 234, 235, 242 n.42, 257 n.27, Cohn-Bendit, Daniel 228
258 n.38, 289 n.46 Coleman, Heather J. 237 n.2
Bragdon, Claude 241 n.29 Coppotelli, Arthur A. 241 n.34
Brailkovsky, Anna 243 n.71, 281 n.77 Cottington, David 240 n.6
Braque, Georges 17 Courtois, Stéphane 260 n.13
Brecht, Bertolt 99 Crockett, Dennis 263 n.1
Breuer, Marcel 193 Crow, Thomas 226, 288 n.28
Brik, Lily 107 Cunin, Daniel 283 n.12
Brik, Osip 31, 82, 89, 107 Curjel, Hans 209
Britt, David 268 n.31
Broderzon, Moshe 42 Dabrowski, Magdalena 247 n.6, 268 n.41
Brooker, Peter 254 n.34, 254 n.36 Dale, Meredith 243 n.71, 281 n.77
Broue, P. 260 n.14 Daniels, Robert V. 249 n.39
Bru, Sascha 254 nn.34, 36 Davydova, Natalia Mikhailovna 24, 30
Bucarelli, Palma 213, 214 Deak, István 95, 259 n.11
Buchholz, Erich 110, 112, 124, 152–3, Dearstyne, Howard 241 n.24
238 n.17, 254 n.32, 270 nn.17, 19, Debord, Guy 221–3, 225, 287 nn.9, 15, 17
271 n.22 De Gaulle, Charles 231
Buchloh, Benjamin D. 258 nn.46–8, Demosfenova, G. L. 273 n.6
264 n.14 Denikin, Anton Ivanovich 44
Bulgakov, Mikhail 17 de Staël, Nicolas 226
Bullock, Nicholas 255 n.53, 265 n.23 de Wilde, Edy 286 nn.62, 65
Burchartz, Max 112, 184 Diaghilev, Serge 41
Burini, Silvia 289 n.45 Dickerman, Leah 247 n.6, 268 n.41
Burliuk, David 12, 30, 32, 116, Dluhosch, Eric 272 n.48
240 nn.10, 16 Döblin, Alfred 94
Burliuk, Nikolai 12, 32, 240 n.16 Doesburg, Theodorus 59
Burliuk, Vladimir 12, 32 Dorgelès, Roland 239–40 n.6
Bussmann, G. 289 n.42 Dorleijn, G. J. 260 n.15
Dorner, Alexander 203, 204
Caden, Gert (Gerd Kaden) 110, 112, 124 Dotremont, Christian 220
Calinescu, Matei 238 nn.22, 24 Douglas, Charlotte 15, 25, 26, 239 n.3,
Camini, Aldo 63, 67 240 nn.15, 18, 241 n.32, 244 n.99,
Carandente, Givonani 285 n.57 244 nn.84, 93, 255 n.42
Carrà, Carlo 109 Doyle, Conan 103
Castoriadis, Cornelius 220 Drevin, Alexander 30, 31, 81, 136, 137
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 259 n.2 Dreyer, Katherine 203
Cendrars, Blaise 124 Drutt, Matthew 249 n.35, 258 n.37
Cézanne, Paul 35 Dutschke, Rudi 224
Chagall, Marc 32–4, 42, 44, 49, 116, 126,
226, 232, 250 n.45 Ebert, Friedrich 102
Chashnik, Ilya 33, 157, 251 n.50, 271 n.34 Eggeling, Viking 112, 124, 190
Index 309
Eghigian, Greg 259 n.9 Gershenzon, Mihail 246 n.123

Ehrenburg, Ilya 49, 54, 107, 108, 119, Giedion, Siegfried 189, 279 n.53
126, 159, 191, 249 n.31, 255 n.50, Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy 289 n.50
264 n.18, 266 n.41, 272 n.47 Gillen, Echart 243 n.78, 277 n.14
Einstein, Carl 10, 124, 165, 172, 175, Gitelman, Zvi Y. 248 n.21, 249 n.37,
232, 272 n.48, 275 n.43 250 nn.42, 44
Eisenstein, Sergei 58, 232, 235, 253 n.71, Glimcher, Arnie 242 n.41
289 n.50 Glowacki-Prus, Xenia 216–17, 241 n.22,
Ék, Sándor (Alex Kiel) 117 245 n.99
Elbert, János 278 n.15 Gmurzynska, Galerie 257 n.28
Ermolaeva, Vera 33 Goncharova, Natalia 7, 11, 12, 15, 19, 40,
Esenin, Sergei 107, 108 42, 110, 125, 208, 226
Exter, Alexandra 12, 54, 136 Goriacheva, Tatiana 41, 125, 266 n.36
Eyck, Erich 261 n.34 Gosling, Nigel 289 n.44
Gough, Maria 257 n.16, 266 n.54
Falbel, Anat 288 n.33 Gourianova, Nina 6, 237 n.7, 248 n.25,
Falk, Robert 42 261 n.36
Favorsky, Vladimir A. 181 Gray, Camilla 212, 216, 226, 232,
Fedorov, Nikolai 8 237 n.2, 238 n.12, 243 nn.59, 64,
Finsterlin, Hermann 94 262 n.70
Fischer, Wolfgang 233, 289 n.43 Gray-Prokofieva, Camilla 289 n.41
Fitzpatrick, Sheila 105, 237 n.5, 261 n.47 Green, Wilder 286 n.62
Flavin, Dan 233 Grinkrug, Lev 30
Flechtheim, Albert 99 Grohmann, Will 199
Flint, R. W. 241 n.34 Gropius, Ise 280 n.65
Florensky, Pavel 7, 238 nn.14, 15 Gropius, Walter 93, 94, 98, 124, 132, 155,
Fodorov, Nikolai F. (1828–1903) 6, 181, 189, 192–4, 203, 237 n.3, 251 n.51,
237 n.5 265 n.31, 280 n.62
Forgács, Éva 238 n.23, 254 n.35, Gross, Hans 98
255 n.40, 255 n.52 Grosz, Eva 263 n.73
Frampton, Kenneth 229 Grosz, George 101, 109, 261 n.33
Frank, S. L. 99 Groys, Boris 9, 239 n.26, 241 n.37,
Fried, Rose 284 n.30 253 n.8
Friedberg, Haia 47, 249 nn.30, 32, 33 Grüttemeyer, R. 260 n.15
Fritzsche, Peter 102, 259 n.9, 261 n.37 Gurianova, Nina 30, 102, 241 n.33,
244 n.79, 245 n.103
Gabo, Miriam 118, 213 Guro, Elena 234, 240 n.16
Gabo, Naum 107, 117, 118, 126, 133–5, Gutkin, Irina 238 n.22, 244 n.83
140, 183, 191, 204, 207–10, 212, 214,
226, 232, 263 n.73, 283 n.10, 283 n.22, Haffner, Sebastian 101, 261 n.35
284 nn.31, 33, 34, 285 n.39 Haftmann, Werner 216
Galassi, Peter 247 n.6, 268 n.41 Hammer, Martin 263 n.73, 264 nn.13–
Gambrell, Jamey 245 n.107, 249 n.28 15, 268 n.25, 283 n.21
Gan, Alexei 8, 23, 30, 78, 82, 243 n.78 Harden, Maximilian 99
Garb, Tamar 250 n.47 Hardiman, Louise 237 n.2, 237 nn.6, 7,
Gassner, Hubertus 242 n.39, 243 n.78, 238 n.8
259 n.7, 266 n.41, 267 nn.1, 2, 277 n.14 Häring, Hugo 189, 203, 205–11, 213,
Gay, Peter 94, 259 n.8 277 n.62, 281 n.3, 284 nn.29, 30, 33–6
George, Lloyd 260 n.21 Harten, Jürgen 237 n.2
310 Index
Hartlaub, Gustav Friedrich 182, 278 n.18 Judt, Tony 252 n.62
Hausmann, Raoul 100, 124, 154, 182, Jung, Franz 100, 260 n.26
271 n.23 Justi, Ludwig 132
Heartfield, John (Helmuth
Herzfeld) 100, 101 Kabakov, Ilya 17
Hedrick, Hannah L. 63, 254 n.22 Kachurin, Pamela 245 n.101
Heine, Heinrich 39 Kállai, Ernő (Ernst) 56, 78, 109–12,
Hemken, Kai-Uwe 168, 274 nn.28, 29 116, 125, 131, 142, 143, 180–1,
Henderson, Linda Dalrymple 238 nn.20, 183, 184, 190, 191, 195, 196, 199,
21, 241 n.30 252 n.65, 252 n.67, 254 n.35, 257 n.10,
Herzfelde, Wieland 101, 106 262 nn.67, 69, 265 n.32, 269 n.50,
Herzogenrath, Wulf 263 n.4 277 nn.6, 9, 278 nn.23, 26, 279 n.59,
Hilberseimer, Ludwig 203, 208–10 280 nn.67, 71
Hirschfeld-Mack, Ludwig 92, 155, Kamensky, Vasily 14, 30
259 n.2 Kampf, Avram 43, 247 n.13, 248 n.17,
Hitler, Adolf 9 250 n.41
Höch, Hannah 100 Kandinsky, Vasily 7, 8, 60, 78–80, 93, 99,
Hodges, Nora 261 n.33 107, 116, 126, 131, 132, 136, 153, 154,
Hoffmann, Xenia 246 n.127 177, 192, 193, 199, 226, 232, 259 n.3,
Holitscher, Arthur 135 271 n.21
Huelsenbeck, Richard 100 Kant, Immanuel 28, 241 n.26
Hulten, Karl Gunnar Vougt Pontus 212, Kanzendikas, Alexander 252 n.55
285 n.47 Karasik, Irina 266 n.54
Huszar, Vilmos 153, 275 n.31 Karginov, German 228
Hüter, Karl-Heinz 260 nn.23, 24 Kassák, Lajos 67–9, 110–12, 124, 125,
141–3, 160, 181, 231, 254 nn.35, 37,
Ingold, Felix Philipp 26, 244 n.91 269 n.48, 277 n.8
Ioganson, Karl 82, 257 n.28 Katsman, Evgeny 250 n.48
Isou, Isidore 221 Kemény, Alfréd 111, 112, 116, 117, 124,
Itten, Johannes 5, 121, 181, 194, 205 141, 160, 182, 183, 190, 264 nn.10,
Ivanov, Alexander (1806–58) 7 11, 268 n.45, 278 n.20, 278 nn.22, 23,
Ivanov, Vyacheslav 235 279 n.55
Ivanov-Razumnik, Vasilyevich 108, Kemp-Welch, Wanda 279 nn.36, 37, 42
262 n.62 Kessler, Charles 259 n.10
Kessler, Harry 94, 97, 101, 259 n.10,
Jaeggi, Annemarie 280 n.61 260 nn.21, 31
Jaffe, Hans L. C. 61, 205–7, 211, 233, Khan-Magomedov, Selim 79, 253 n.71,
253 nn.7, 14, 254 n.25, 283 nn.14, 16, 256 nn.7, 8, 257 nn.9, 12, 16, 19,
17, 20, 285 n.43 288 n.24
Jakobson, Roman 107 Khardzhiev, Nikolai 16, 241 nn.34, 35
Janecek, Gerald 240 n.7 Khlebnikov, Velimir (Victor) 12, 13, 16,
Jangfeldt, Bengt 30, 31, 105, 245 nn.104, 17, 240 n.9, 240 nn.10, 16, 241 n.36,
106, 109, 248 n.23, 262 nn.48, 49 265 n.27
Jappe, Anselm 225, 288 n.23 Kiepenheuer, Gustav 166, 172, 173,
Jephcott, Edmund 287 n.6 263 n.4
Joganson, Karl 78 Kiepenheuer, Irmgard 166
Johnston, John 289 n.50 Kirby, Victoria Nes 241 n.36
Joosten, Joop M. 203, 282 nn.5, 7 Kirdetsov, G. L. 266 n.40
Jorn, Asger 220, 221 Klein, Cäsar 93
Index 311
Kliuchnikov, IU. V. 266 n.40 Ladovsky, Nikolai 78–81, 257 n.11
Kliun, Ivan 20, 21, 24, 30, 81, 136, 137, Lapitsky, Zhenia 106
240 n.21 Larionov, Mikhail 7, 11, 12, 15, 19, 40–2,
Klobucka, Anna 259 n.1 110, 125, 208, 226, 238 n.12
Klucis, Gustav 264 n.15 Lavrentiev, Alexander 257 n.27
Kobro, Katarżyna (Ekaterina Kobro, Lawton, Anna 240 nn.7, 10, 11, 16,
1898–1951) 110, 185, 186, 187 241 n.28
Koestler, Arthur 288 n.22 Lebedev, P(avel) 212, 285 n.44
Kogan, Nina 33, 57 Le Corbusier 124
Kok, Antony 61, 72, 144, 255 n.42, Leering, Jan 252 n.57
255 nn.48, 49 Lefebvre, Henri (1901–91) 221, 287 n.6
Kokkori, Maria 239 n.28, 242 n.39 Léger, Fernand 92, 124
Konchalovsky, Piotr 12 Lehning, Arthur 8
Kopp, Anatole 228, 231, 288 n.32 Leib, Mani 54
Kopp, Victor 132 Lemmens, Albert 248 n.20
Korovin, Konstantin 136 Lenin, Vladimir 6, 27, 32, 49, 95,
Korthals-Altes, L. 260 n.15 108, 133, 156–8, 162–4, 168, 172,
Kossowska, Irena 185, 278 n.33 249 n.38, 259 n.12, 262 n.52,
Kozicharow, Nicola 237 n.2, 237 nn.6, 7 266 n.35, 272 n.41
Kracauer, Siegfried 102, 103, Leporskaia, Anna 242 n.45
261 nn.40, 41 Leppien, Helmut R. 289 n.42
Krasin, Leonid 6, 163, 237 n.5 Leschenko, Dmitry 106
Krauss, Rosalind 66, 235, 237 n.1, Liebknecht, Karl 32, 246 n.118
238 n.13, 254 n.31 Lifshitz, Benedikt 17, 242 n.42
Kreubel, Emil 98 Lindsay, Kenneth C. 259 n.3, 271 n.21
Krieger, Verena 26, 238 n.17, 238 nn.20, 94 Linse, Ulrich 237 n.2
Krimov, Nikolai Petrovich 136 Lipchitz, Jacques 212
Krivine, Alain 228 Lipchitz, Rob 212
Kromes, Mark 260 n.13 Lissitzky, Eliezer Mordukhovich (Lazar
Kruchenikh, Alexei 12, 13, 15, 17, 24, Markovich) 3–4, 9, 33, 39–59, 62,
240 n.10, 240 nn.8, 21, 241 n.36 66–76, 78, 80, 84–9, 93, 98, 104, 106,
Kruchenikh, Benedikt Lifshitz A. 125, 108, 110, 112, 116–29, 131, 134, 136,
240 n.16 137, 140, 141, 147–62, 164–78, 180,
Krupala, Jennifer Greene 262 n.54, 181, 183, 184, 188, 190, 191, 197, 203,
267 n.16 208, 212, 213, 226, 228, 232, 238 n.18,
Krutikov, Georgii 225, 288 n.24 247 nn.1, 10, 11, 248 nn.18, 22,
Kudriashev, Ivan 82 249 n.31, 250 nn.45, 46, 48, 251 nn.49–
Küpper, Christian Emil Marie 59 52, 252 nn.55, 57, 254 nn.33, 37,
Küppers, Paul 203 255 nn.48, 50, 53, 258 nn.38, 41,
Küppers, Sophie 66, 156, 157, 161, 165, 260 n.22, 264 nn.13, 15, 17, 18,
167, 175, 184, 203, 228, 249 n.34, 265 n.27, 266 nn.51, 52, 269 n.53,
250 n.48, 251 n.52, 252 n.70, 254 n.33, 271 n.30, 272 nn.48, 49, 273 nn.12–14,
264 n.13, 264 n.16, 271 nn.26, 28, 17–19, 274 nn.20, 21, 24, 275 nn.33,
272 nn.50, 52, 273 n.17, 278 n.25, 34, 278 n.25, 285 n.46
285 n.46 Lissitzky, Jen 248 n.22
Kurbanovsky, Alexei 237 n.2 Liubavina, Nadezhda 33
Kurchanova, Natasha 289 n.45 Livshitz, Benedikt 12
Kushner, Boris 30, 82, 245 n.104 Lloyd, Janet 238 n.25
Kustodiev, Boris 136 Lobachevsky, Nikolai (1792–1856) 9
312 Index
Lodder, Christina 20, 28, 30, 32, 54, Malsch, Friedemann 243 n.61, 247 n.5
119, 223, 239 nn.3, 28, 242 nn.38, Mamontov, Savva 239 n.5
39, 55, 243 n.57, 250 n.47, 252 n.54, Mansurov, Pavel 26, 136, 216, 226
255 n.42, 257 nn.16–18, 258 nn.34, Mao, Zedong 225
39, 49, 259 n.54, 262 n.50, 263 n.73, Margolin, Victor 249 n.38
264 nn.10, 13–15, 19, 265 n.27, Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 12, 16, 112,
268 n.25, 272 n.40, 283 n.21, 287 n.18, 113, 143
288 nn.19, 24 Markov, Vladimir 235, 240 n.7, 247 n.8
Lourie, Arthur 106 Maryanov, David 118, 133
Lubetkin, Berthold 134 Mashkov, Ilia 12
Ludendorff, Erich 101 Matyushin, Mikhail 12, 13, 15, 16, 18,
Ludwig, Emil 238 n.25 21, 23, 24, 29, 32, 61, 137, 233, 234,
Lufft, Peter 211, 213, 214, 216 241 n.36, 242 n.47, 243 nn.67, 73
Lukács, György 95, 109, 111, 260 n.16, Mayakovsky, Vladimir 12, 13, 30, 31,
262 n.66 107, 126, 240 n.10, 240 n.16
Lunacharsky, Anatoly (1875–1933) 6, Medunetzky, Konstantin 78, 81, 82, 135,
23, 52, 62, 105, 106, 115, 132, 133, 257 n.28, 286 n.59
134, 142, 163, 167, 169, 172, 191, 197, Menkov, Mikhail 24
237 n.5, 243 n.77, 263 n.1, 265 n.27, Meyer, Franz 214, 216, 285 n.56,
266 n.35, 274 n.26, 281 n.73 288 n.26
Lutz , Friedrich Adolf 133–4 Meyer, Hannes 193, 194, 255 n.40,
Luxemburg, Rosa 32, 246 n.118 261 n.46
Meyer-Chagall, Ida 216
McGeever, Brendan 248 n.19, 249 n.26 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 232
Mach, Ernst 266 n.35 Meyerzon, I. 262 n.68
MacInnes, Kenneth 266 n.54 Michaelson, Anette 235
McMillen, Arnold 217, 241 n.22, Michaud, Eric 238 n.25
245 n.99 Micić, Lubomir 67, 68, 124
Malevich, Kazimir Severinovich 1–4, Mierau, Fritz 262 n.60, 267 n.4
8, 9, 11–37, 39, 41, 45, 46, 49–54, Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 168, 194,
56–63, 65, 70–8, 80–7, 89, 96, 104, 106, 203, 207, 208, 210
108, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 120–9, Mikhienko, Tatiana 243 nn.61, 67, 68,
136–8, 140–3, 145, 147–52, 154–79, 75, 246 n.126
184–217, 223, 226, 228, 229, 232, Mileeva, Maria 239 n.28, 242 n.39
233, 235, 239 nn.1–3, 240 nn.17, 21, Miller, David 269 n.53
241 nn.23–5, 36, 37, 242 nn.40, 45, 47, Milner, John 257 n.31, 258 n.33,
243 nn.71, 73, 244 nn.81, 82, 87, 98, 272 n.51
99, 245 nn.99–101, 114, 246 nn.127–9, Misler, Nicoletta 238 n.14
132, 137, 247 n.143, 248 n.24, Miturich, Pavel 17, 233
250 n.48, 251 nn.49, 51, 252 nn.63, Moholy-Nagy, László 66–9, 110–12, 116,
64, 253 n.4, 254 n.18, 255 nn.42, 43, 125, 154, 165, 171, 180–3, 191, 193,
44, 47, 258 n.43, 265 n.27, 266 n.54, 197–9, 254 nn.30, 35, 37, 263 n.73,
269 n.53, 270 nn.8–10, 16, 271 nn.24, 264 n.10, 270 n.18, 271 n.23, 273 n.18,
30, 32, 33, 272 n.45, 273 nn.6, 11, 278 nn.20, 23
274 n.20, 275 n.39, 276 nn.44, 45, Möller, Ferdinand 99
48–52, 277 n.5, 278 n.28, 280 nn.65, Monas, Sidney 262 n.54, 267 n.16
66, 282 n.9, 284 nn.33, 285–6 n.59, Mondrian, Piet 1, 8, 60–3, 65, 70, 73–5,
286 n.66 141, 164, 175, 190, 191, 199, 206, 212,
Malewitsch, K. 273 n.7, 281 n.77 214, 253 n.14
Index 313
Morris, Robert 233 Peter the Great (1682–1725) 5

Mudrak, Miroslava M. 239 n.3 Petrov, Fedor 244 n.96
Müller, Hans 166, 167, 172, 173 Petrova, Yevgenia 241 n.23, 258 n.37,
Müller, Karl Alexander von 102 276 n.59
Münzenberg, Willi 133 Pevsner, Antoine 107, 135, 212, 214,
Murphy, Jonathan 260 n.13 226, 232
Mussolini, Benito 9, 104 Picasso, Pablo 17
Muza, Anna 161, 272 n.2 Piscator, Erwin 99
Poliakoff, Serge 226
Nabokov, Vladimir 99, 107 Poljanski, Branko Ve 140, 141
Nachtigäller, Roland 259 n.7 Popova, Liubov 24, 30, 31, 81, 111
Nakov, André 19, 233, 239 n.1, 242 n.52, Popper, Leo 109, 111, 262 n.66
286 n.59, 289 n.45 Prokofiev, Sergei 232
Nerdinger, Winfried 134, 262 n.65, Puni, Ivan (1892–1956) 21, 24, 32, 33,
267 n.7, 267 n.12, 268 n.20 41, 107, 116, 126–7, 131, 145, 153,
Neugärtner, Sandra 261 n.44 154, 177, 182, 188, 212, 226, 242 n.46,
Nicholas II 248 n.19 266 nn.38, 42, 269 n.61, 271 n.23
Nicholson-Smith, Donald 288 n.23 Punin, Nikolai 31, 34, 106, 129, 133,
Nieuwenhuys, Constant Anton 246 n.126, 266 n.53, 267 n.16
(Constant) 220
Nikon, Patriarch (1605–81) 6 Railing, Patricia 242 n.50, 243 n.72,
Nisbet, Peter 131, 133–5, 246 n.116, 244 n.99, 244 nn.85, 87, 245 n.99,
246 n.135, 247 nn.1, 3, 7, 11, 251 n.51, 246 n.127, 258 n.43, 270 nn.11–13
267 nn.5, 8, 13, 15, 268 nn.19, 22 Rakitin, Vassily 49, 57, 137, 249 n.35,
Nizen, Katherine 240 n.16 252 n.68, 257 n.28, 268 n.30, 276 n.60
Nochlin, Linda 250 n.47 Rapoport, Joseph 106
Noever, Peter 256 n.1, 258 n.35 Raskin, Ben-Zion 247 n.11
Ray, Man 66
Orwell, George 288 n.22 Read, Herbert 207, 210
Otto, Elizabeth 261 n.44 Redslob, Edwin 134, 135
Oud, Johannes Jacobus Pieter 60, 124, Reed, Brian 264 n.13
170, 275 nn.32, 33 Reimann, Albert 282 n.6
Ouspensky, Piotr (1878–1947) 8 Reinhardt, Max 99
Renders, Willem Jan 246 n.123
Pasternak, Boris 107 Reneau, Don 268 n.37
Patraskin, S. 241 n.33 Richter, Hans 66–9, 72, 98, 112, 124,
Paul, Cedar 238 n.25 168, 180, 190, 203, 227, 255 n.53,
Paul, Eden 238 n.25 260 n.22, 288 n.31
Pechstein, Max 93 Richter, Horst 267 n.6
Peiper, Tadeusz 186, 192, 193, 195, Rinsema, Evert 256 n.59
279 n.42, 280 n.64 Rinsema, Evert 74
Pen, Yurii (Yehuda) 32, 39, 245 n.115 Rodchenko, Alexander 8, 30, 31, 41,
Péri, László 116, 125, 183, 190, 254 n.35, 45, 46, 77–82, 84, 86, 117, 123, 124,
278 n.23 136, 137, 140, 191, 214, 228, 232,
Perloff, Nancy 241 n.31, 249 n.29, 245 nn.107, 108, 247 n.6, 248 n.25,
264 n.13 249 n.28, 256 n.1, 257 n.17, 258 n.36,
Pestel, Vera 24, 30 264 n.15, 265 n.27
Péter, Mátyás 263 nn.71, 73, 74, 76 Rodrigues, Olinde (1795–1851) 9,
Petersen, Ad 283 n.12 238 nn.22, 24
314 Index
Röhl, Peter 184 Seuphor, Michel 69, 285 n.42

Rose, Bernice 242 n.41 Shakespeare, William 39
Roslavets, Nikolai 24 Shapiro, T. 262 n.68
Rössler, Patrick 261 n.44 Sharp, Jane Ashton 14, 239 nn.4, 5,
Rostislavov, Alexander (1860–1920) 19, 241 n.27
242 n.54 Shatskikh, Alexandra 15, 20, 21, 27,
Roters, Eberhard 267 nn.1, 2 35, 52, 148, 240 n.20, 241 nn.22, 23,
Rozanova, Olga 24, 30, 32, 116, 136, 137, 242 nn.44, 45, 47, 48, 53, 243 nn.58,
143 60, 62, 63, 65, 244 n.95, 245 n.102,
Rozhdestvensky, Konstantin 27, 245 n.115, 246 nn.117, 120, 124, 130,
241 n.23, 244 n.97 131, 136, 247 n.142, 250 nn.45, 47,
Ruhle, Otto 96 251 n.49, 252 n.54, 258 n.40, 270 n.6,
Ryback, Issackar Ber 42, 247 n.9, 271 n.29, 273 nn.6, 20
248 n.20 Sheldon, Richard 261 n.39
Shklovskii, Viktor 102, 106, 107, 126,
Saint-Simon, Count 9, 238 n.22 235, 261 n.39
Sandberg, Willem (1897–1984) 204–14, Shterenberg, David 31, 43, 106, 126,
277 n.62, 283 nn.10, 19, 22, 26, 133–6, 143–5, 268 n.23, 269 n.54
284 nn.31, 33, 285 nn.39, 46, 49, 53, 58 Sievers, Johannes 132
Sarabianov, Dmitrii 243 n.63 Slonimsky, Mikhail Leonidovich
Saunders, Bronwen 243 n.71, 281 n.77 (1897–1972) 182, 278 n.15
Schad, Christian 66 Smith, Mary C. 241 n.26
Scharoun, Hans 94 Soloviev, Vladimir 25, 244 n.83
Schein, Ionel 231, 288 n.37 Sombart, Werner 99
Scheler, Max 99 Sorel, Georges 104
Scheper, Hinnerk 280 n.62 Soutine, Chaim 226
Schlemmer, Oskar 155, 171, 181, 184, Spielmann, Peter 231, 289 n.39
275 n.38 Srp, Karel 254 n.35
Schmalenbach, Werner 212, 213 Stalin, Joseph 6, 9, 44, 49, 50, 162,
Schmidt, Gary 211 247 n.16
Schmidt, Kurt 155 Stażewski, Henrik 67, 186, 187, 212,
Schmidt, Paul 240 n.15 279 n.36
Schneede, Uwe M. 289 n.42 Steinberg, Mark 237 n.2
Schöche, Lena 248 n.22 Stenberg, Georgii 81, 82, 232, 257 n.28,
Schoenmakers, Mathieu Hubertus 286 n.59
Josephus (1875–1944) 60, 61 Stenberg, Vladimir 81, 82, 232, 257 n.28,
Scholl, Hans 287 n.3 286 n.59
Scholl, Sophie 287 n.3 Stepanova, Varvara 78, 82, 84, 137, 232,
Schopenhauer, Arthur 26, 244 n.92 256 n.1, 257 n.27, 265 n.24, 268 n.29
Schreyer, Lothar 5, 121, 181 Stephen, Ann 259 n.2
Schulte, Jörg 248 n.20, 264 n.13 Sternhell, Zeev 104
Schweicher, Curt 214 Stölzl, Gunta 280 n.62
Schwerdtfeger, Rudolf 155 Stommels, Serge Aliosha 248 n.20
Schwitters, Kurt 67, 69, 124, 170, 174, Straus, Tomas 289 n.38
213, 233 Strigaljov, Anatoly 6, 237 n.2, 238 n.10
Seligman, Janet 239 n.30, 265 n.25, Strzemiński, Władisław (1893–
275 n.36 1952) 185–7, 235, 278 n.30,
Senkin, S. 277 n.14 279 nn.34, 37, 39
Service, Robert 106, 262 nn.51, 53 Suetin, Nikolai 57
Index 315
Sweeney, James Johnson 207, 210 Vakar, Irina A. 20, 243 n.57, 246 n.126
Syrkus, Helena 187, 279 n.40 van den Berg, Hubert 260 n.15
Syrkus, Szymon 187 van der Will, Wilfried 261 n.46
Szczuka, Mieczyslaw 186–8, 196, van Doesburg, Theo (I. K. Bonset) 3,
279 n.43 4, 10, 59–76, 98, 112, 122, 124, 141,
Szilágyi, Jolán 117 144, 145, 154, 164–78, 180, 183, 188,
Szőllőssy, Judy 263 n.73 197, 198, 220, 239 n.30, 253 nn.13, 16,
Szőllőssy, Klára 278 n.15 254 nn.19, 25, 30, 35, 255 nn.39, 42,
48, 49, 52, 53, 256 nn.58–61, 260 n.22,
Tabachnikova, Olga 248 n.20, 264 n.13 265 n.25, 269 nn.59, 60, 274 nn.22, 27,
Tarabukin, Nikolai 82, 257 n.15 275 nn.35, 36, 276 n.56
Tarasov, Oleg 6, 237 n.6, 238 n.9 van Eesteren, Cornelis 74, 256 n.60
Tarbukin, Nikolai 79 van Straaten, Evert 59, 63, 65, 253 n.1,
Taroutina, Maria 20, 21, 237 n.2, 253 n.6, 254 nn.24, 29, 30, 256 nn.57,
242 n.56 59, 269 n.60
Tatlin, Vladimir 12, 21, 23, 31, 32, 40, van t’Hoff, Robert 255 n.42
41, 96, 109, 112, 115, 117, 123, 128, Vasilievich, Mikhail 18
129, 136, 138, 140, 144, 154, 157, 177, Ve Poljanski, Branko 268 nn.40, 42
178, 180, 190, 191, 212, 214, 226, 229, Vergo, Peter 259 n.3, 271 n.21
232, 262 n.68, 265 n.27, 286 n.59 Verlag, Malik 101
Taut, Bruno 93, 94, 203 Vertov, Dziga 232
Taut, Max 94 Vesnin, Alexander 30
Taylor, Brandon 261 n.46 Vipper, Boris 238 n.16
Taylor, Richard 274 n.27 Vömel, Alex 214, 285 n.55
Teige, Karel 67, 68 von Beyme, Klaus 10, 239 nn.29, 32,
Teltscher, Georg 155 243 n.77
Terentiev, Igor 27, 244 n.96 von Blücher, Wipert 262 n.57
Thacker, Andrew 254 nn.34, 36 von Riesen, Alexander 269 n.53
Thwaites, John Anthony 283 n.19 von Riesen, Gustav 189, 197, 215,
Todorova, Maria 259 n.1 286 n.60
Tolstoi, Alexei 26, 107 von Riesen, Hans 197, 198, 215–17,
Trotsky, Lev Davidovich 224, 228 281 n.75
Troy, Nancy 255 n.39 von Wiese, Stephan 199
Tsantsanoglou, Maria 239 n.28, 242 n.39
Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin (1857–1935) 8, 17 Wagstaff, Peter 248 n.20, 264 n.13
Tumarkin, Nina 6, 162, 237 nn.4, 5, Walden, Herwarth 99, 124, 260 n.15
272 n.41, 273 n.9 Wallerstein, Immanuel 259 n.1
Turowski, Andrzej 187, 278 n.28, Wechsler, Judith Glatzer 250 n.47
279 n.43 Weibel, Peter 202, 281 n.1
Tzara, Tristan 100 Weikop, Christian 254 nn.34, 36
Tzvetaeva, Marina 107 Weima, Ober 255 n.49
Westheider, Ortrud 242 n.39
Udaltsova, Nadezhda 23, 24, 30, 31, 81 Westheim, Paul 116, 137–9, 143, 165,
Uitz, Béla 116, 117, 263 n.3 166, 172, 175, 196, 268 n.31, 272 n.48,
Umansky, Konstantin 115–17, 120, 126, 274 n.21, 275 n.43, 280 n.72
127, 132, 136, 138, 177, 188, 263 n.2, Wilde, Edy de 216
263 nn.4, 5 Wilhelm, Jean-Pierre 208, 284 n.29
Uspensky, Piotr Damianovich 15, Williams, Robert C. 99, 107, 260 n.25,
241 n.29 262 nn.56, 57, 61, 63
316 Index
Winter, Janus de 60, 62 Yudin, Lev 195

Wolff, Larry 259 n.1 Yurkevich, Mstislav 24
Wollen, Peter 288 n.21
Wright brothers 17 Zarnower, Teresa 186
Wünsche, Isabel 243 n.74 Zhadowa, Larissa A. 228, 246 n.129,
270 n.3, 271 nn.35, 39
Yablonskaya, M. N. 238 n.11 Zhuravlev, Vasilii 17
Yavlensky, Alexei 208, 226 Ziegler, Fabian 251 n.53

Éva Forgács - Malevich and Interwar Modernism - Russian Art and The International of The Square-Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2022)

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Malevich and Interwar Modernism

Malevich and Interwar Modernism

First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Éva Forgács, 2022

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension

Cover design: Toby Way

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-0417-1

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

List of Illustrations viii

1 The Sky Is the Limit: Malevich at the Vitebsk Junction, 1919 11

2 The Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party and El Lissitzky’s

3 Theo van Doesburg, Artist and Strategist 59

4 The Irreconcilable Conflict between Constructivism and

The “Construction-versus-Composition Debate” at INKhUK 80

5 The Mirage of World Revolution: Postrevolution, Postwar Berlin,

6 As Many Narratives as Narrators: Russian Accounts of New

8 Respectfully Challenging the Master: Lissitzky and Malevich 147

9 The Book That Was Not. Van Doesburg’s Thumbs-Down on the

10 Enter Malevich: Exhibitions in Post-Utopian Warsaw and Berlin,

11 The Postwar Scene and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam’s

12 The New Left’s Role in Retrieving the Interwar Avant-Gardes and

1.1 Malevich: Painterly Realism of a Football Player, 1915 20

Andersen 1968: Troels Andersen, ed., Malevich, Essays on Art 1915-1928,

Andersen 1978: Malevich, The Artist, Infinity, Suprematism. Unpublished

AK: Akademie der Künste, Berlin

BW: Timothy O. Benson, Éva Forgács, eds., Between Worlds. A

GRI: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

RKD: Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The

SMA: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

VM: Irina Vakar, Tatiana Mikhienko, eds., Kazimir Malevich.

Translations, unless otherwise referenced, are by the author.

The Sky Is the Limit

With the surprising inauguration of suprematism as early as 1915, Malevich

Malevich’s Road to Vitebsk

The concept of “verbal mass” forecast and inspired Malevich’s concept of

Taking Off: Victory over the Sun

Overthrowing the sun, intended or not, paralleled and complemented Marinetti’s

how extraordinary life is without a past

Malevich designed a black backcloth to create complete darkness in the theater

As organizer of the Moscow section of the show as well as an exhibiting artist,

latest trends is like a whirlwind: yesterday’s innovators—referring to the World

argument, that by addressing religion Malevich competed with Tatlin’s counter-

reason: the intensity of personally or conceptually rejecting him had to match

Malevich “gradually became aware that it was important to establish a

Malevich appears to have cherished the concept of an artist-prophet and

aphoristic and perfunctory history of the “savage” pre-suprematist painting heavy

and a philosopher’s rigorous use of philosophical terms and concepts in a system

As an artist, Malevich freely adapted philosophical and art historical terms

Entering the Soviet World

to them. “Today there was a meeting of Suprematists and non-objectivists,”

We decided to hold an exhibition of just suprematist and non-objective painting.

The latest announcement:

We, artists-non-objectivists, inform everyone that we have definitively discarded

Suprematism: The New Imagination

As of 1919, Malevich was working on establishing suprematism as the visual

In the great competition in both Russia and the international avant-garde,

The Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party and

El Lissitzky’s sudden discovery of suprematism appeared to be the obvious

Lissitzky’s Road to Vitebsk

Eliezer Mordukhovich (or Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky1 was born on November

October 1912 he spent time in St. Petersburg working as an architectural

In 1917 Rodchenko, Tatlin and other progressive artists organized Profsojuz,

1.1 Malevich: Painterly Realism of a Football Player, 1915 20

Figure 2.2 The first Soviet post stamp. Russia_1918_CPA_1_stamp_(Hand_with_

The first working-group of CONSTRUCTIVISTS (ALEKSEI GAN, RODCH