Kasimir Malevich: Russian Abstract Painter, Founder of Suprematism 26/09/2023, 10:24

Kasimir Malevich
Biography of Russian Abstract Painter, Founder of Suprematism.
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Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Contents

Black Circle (1913) oil on canvas
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg
A great example of non-objective art.
• Biography
• Youth and Training
• Early Art Exhibitions
• Alogism
• Suprematism
• Zero-Ten: Suprematist Art Show
• Non-Objective Art
• Vitebsk Art School
• International Recognition
• Selected Paintings

RUSSIAN MODERN ART Biography

RAYONISM (c.1910-20)
Russian avant-garde version of
Cubism founded by Mikhail Larionov Malevich was the inventor of Suprematism, a form of abstract art derived in
and Natalya Goncharova. Rayonism
was concerned with the forms arising part from Cubism, which eclipsed the Rayonism (1912-14) of Mikhail Larionov
from the intersection of reflected light and his partner Natalia Goncharova, and coexisted with Vladimir Tatlin's
rays from different objects. Larionov
claimed it was a combination of Constructivism (c.1917-21), during the early period of the Russian Revolution.
Cubism, Futurism and Orphism. In 1918, Malevich's quest for artistic meaning in abstract art reached a dead-
CONSTRUCTIVISM (c.1917-21)
Russian abstract architectural art end with his painting White on White, which consisted of a white square on a
movement led by Vladimir Tatlin white ground. Although he continued his "political-art career" for several years,
(1885-1953), Aleksandr Rodchenko
(1891-1956) and brothers Antoine
his style of avant-garde art was disliked by the Soviet authorities who preferred
Pevsner (1886-1962) and Naum Gabo the more politically correct style of Socialist Realism. Now, however, Malevich is
(1890-1977). Constructivist artists considered to be the most important avant-garde Russian painter in the era of
developed their architectural art
in an attempt to reflect the modern modern art. At Sotheby's, in November 2008, a Suprematist-style painting by
industrial world. For other abstract Malevich became the most valuable painting in the history of Russian art,
works similar to those produced by
Malevich or Larionov, please see: making him one of the greatest abstract painters in Europe.
Greatest 20th-Century Paintings.

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Abram Arkhipov (1862-1930) Youth and Training

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Kasimir Malevich: Russian Abstract Painter, Founder of Suprematism
Genre painter, critical realism.
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Greatest Russian colourist.
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26/09/2023, 10:24
The Russian painter Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born in Kiev. In the
1900s he painted Impressionist-influenced landscape and figure scenes. In
1904, after the death of his father, he moved to Moscow, where from 1904 to
1910 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture,
and in the studio of Fedor Rerberg. In 1907, he met Mikhail Larionov, with
whom, over the next few years, he shared a strong primitive style, and
exhibited with both the Knave of Diamonds group and the more radical
Donkey's Tail group. However, Malevich's paintings are more intense in colour
than Larionov's, the technique of gouache on paper lending itself to a broad
treatment; they reflect the influence of Matisse, whose work he saw in the
private collection of Sergei Shchukin.
Early Art Exhibitions
In 1911, his works appeared in the second exhibition of the Soyuz Molodyozhi
group (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg, along with Vladimir Tatlin. In 1912,
Malevich showed his paintings of peasant subjects at the "Donkey's Tail"
exhibition in Moscow.
The most recent of these Taking in the Rye (1912; Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam) showed a turning away from the crudely graphic manner that had
linked him to Larionov, towards massive, tubular forms owing something to
Picasso's paintings of 1908-9.
Malevich's paintings showed an increasing absorption of Western avant-garde
influences, so placing him in strong opposition to the anti-European bias of
Larionov. The Knife Grinder (1912; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven)
combines Cubist fragmentation and Futurist multiplication of the image. The
Cubist Head of a Peasant (1912; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) is arbitrary in
its relation to the subject, compared with the classic paintings of Picasso and
Braque.
Alogism
After breaking with Larionov, Malevich came into contact with a new intellectual
circle of modern artists including the writer Kruchenykh and the composer M.V.
Matyushin. The group subscribed to the concept of "alogism" which, as its
name implies, was an attempt to break free from the bounds of casual
connection. An "alogical" painting, such as An Englishman in Moscow (1914;
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) superimposes varied words and images in a
way that cannot be resolved in the way most intricate Cubist pictures can; it
undermines any kind of representational logic.
Suprematism
The culmination of "alogism" was the production in St Petersburg in December
1913 of the opera "Victory over the Sun" with a libretto by Kruchenykh, music
by Matyushin, and designs by Malevich. The title suggests a disturbing reversal
of established values. The cancellation of the sun and its imprisonment in a
box, achieved by the hero, can be equated with the partially deleted Mona Lisa
in a painting of 1914. Malevich's 1913 designs included a curtain with a black
square, which for him symbolized the zero, full of the new potentialities that
arose from the passing of the old order.
Thus began Malevich's exploration of his new and revolutionary form of art -
known as Suprematism. A form of concrete art founded on Utopian ideals,
Suprematist art was both politically revolutionary (it expressed limitless
confidence in the ability of engineers to create a new "Soviet" world) and
artistically revolutionary (it eliminated all representational or naturalistic
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Kasimir Malevich: Russian Abstract Painter, Founder of Suprematism 26/09/2023, 10:24

imagery). While he was developing it he found time in 1914 to exhibit his

works in the Salon des Independants in Paris, along with other Russian artists
including Alexander Archipenko, Aleksandra Ekster and Vadim Meller.

Zero-Ten: Suprematist Art Show

The first Suprematist exhibition ("0.10", Zero-Ten) took place in St Petersburg,

in December 1915, and featured thirty-five abstract works by Malevich,
including a host of rectangles, triangles and circles, many in vivid colours. Its
centrepiece, based on his Opera designs of 1913, was the painting Black
Square on White Ground (1913, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg), which
was to acquire the significance of an icon for Malevich. By confining himself to
such elementary means and a small predefined repertoire of "Suprematist"
colours he was able to arrive at an independence from the subject which had
evaded earlier Russian avant-garde painters.

After publishing his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism (1915), Malevich

worked with other Suprematist painters like Lyubov Popova (1889-1924) in a
co-operative in Skoptsi and Verbovka village. In 1916 and 1917, he took part in
exhibitions of the avant-garde Knave of Diamonds group in Moscow together
with David Burlyuk (1882-1967), Nathan Altman, and A. Ekster.

Non-Objective Art

Theoretically, Malevich justified his Suprematism by citing his desire to "free art
from the burden of the object". He went on to condemn representational art as
a theft from nature, and said that the artist must construct "on the basis of
weight, speed, and the direction of movement". In these abstract paintings he
conveyed strong impressions of floating or falling by placing shapes against a
plain background which permitted no spatial interpretations. However,
relationships can sometimes be inferred from overlappings, so that while
volume is rarely hinted at, there is no suggestion of purely two-dimensional
pattern.

Most of the early Suprematist paintings take their cue from Black Square in the
austerity of their conception. Later, superimpositions and the incorporation of
irregular quadrilaterals create a more complex image. Malevich faced the
dilemma that to develop abstract images through formal elaboration increased
the associative content of the painting, so impeding its ability to communicate
pure sensation. In paintings after 1917, he returned to a simple structure,
often basing his paintings on no more than a cross. After a short period during
which he moved away from absolute austerity - tilting his rectangles, adding
more depth and colours, and even a degree of painterly handling, he returned
to his purist designs with a series of White on White paintings, such as
Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918, Museum of Modern Art, New
York). This was a virtual admission that his researches had come to a dead
end.

At the same time he was out of sympathy with advanced artists in post-
Revolutionary Russia who renounced painting as a speculative activity.
Although a supporter of the Revolution and not conventionally religious,
Malevich's thinking was of a mystical bent. He was concerned with presenting a
new vision which, though not possible outside the context of a scientific and
industrial society, was not directly related to the problems of functional design.
In "The Non-Objective World" published in Munich in 1927, he stated that the
artist would always be in advance of society. This being the case, he could not
willingly suppress his own ideas for the sake of socially defined concepts of
utility.

Vitebsk Art School

Malevich's principal activity from 1918 onwards was in education. In that year

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Kasimir Malevich: Russian Abstract Painter, Founder of Suprematism 26/09/2023, 10:24

he became a Professor at the State Art and Technology Workshops in Moscow.

In 1919 he joined Marc Chagall at the Vitebsk art school, along with El Lissitzky
(1890-1941) with whom he formed among the pupils the "Unovis" group
(1920). This became a sufficiently powerful force to lead to the resignation of
Chagall, when the two quarrelled. In 1921 the group itself was ousted, and
after 1922, was based in St Petersburg (then Petrograd), where Malevich was
appointed head of the city's Arts Institute (1922-29). Under Malevich, who had
virtually given up painting, the group made a number of models that attempted
an investigation of his theories of "planity" and "arkhitektory" (basic
architectural form).

International Recognition

In 1927, Malevich travelled to exhibitions of his own work in Warsaw and Berlin
- which finally brought him international recognition - and visited the Bauhaus
design school in Dessau. Fortunately for the history of art, Malevich left most of
his paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union, assuming correctly
that the Soviet authorities would in due course crack down on the modernist
art movement. Sadly from his viewpoint this is exactly what happened: many
of his works were confiscated and he was banned from practising his style of
abstract art.

Thus after 1930 he returned to the peasant themes that had occupied him in
his early years, employing basic shapes as if trying to establish a new grammar
of form in terms of the human body. This partial return to figuration may have
been an attempt to come to terms with the newly established official doctrine
of "Socialist Realism", with its demand that art be comprehensible to the
masses. He died of cancer in Leningrad in May 1935, at the age of 56. He is
now regarded by many critics as an important figure in the emerging abstract
art movements of pre-Revolutionary Russia and one of the most innovative
20th century painters of the World War I era.

Selected Paintings

Works by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich can be seen in many of the world's

best art museums, notably the Museum of Modern art MOMA New York, and
the Tretyakov Gallery Moscow. His best known paintings include:

- Haymaking (1909, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

- The Knife Grinder (1912, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven)
- Head of a Peasant (1912, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam)
- Black Square on White Ground (1913, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg)
- Black Square (1915, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)
- Black Circle (1913, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg)
- Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918, MOMA, New York)
- Red Cavalry Riding (1928-32, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg)

• For more biographies of Russian artists, see: Famous Painters.

• For more information about modern art in Russia, see: Homepage.

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