Kazimir Malevich

Lore & Background

Malevich was born to Polish parents who fled Poland after the failed January Uprising of 1863. He was the first of fourteen children, only nine of whom survived into adulthood. The family settled near Kiev, and Malevich spoke Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. He taught himself to paint in a peasant style and briefly attended the Kiev School of Drawing. In 1896, the family moved to Kursk, where Malevich worked as a technical draughtsman and encountered Russian artists. He later settled in Moscow in 1906, attending the studio of Fedor Rerberg, though he was never admitted to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

In the early 1910s, Malevich exhibited with the Knave of Diamonds group and other Russian avant-garde artists. In 1915, working in a Cubo-Futurist mode, he developed Suprematism, a system of pure geometric abstraction on monochromatic grounds. His Black Square (1915), first shown at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Petrograd, marked a decisive break with representational painting. He set out his theory in the brochure From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. In 1919, he began teaching in Vitebsk with Marc Chagall, and in 1919 founded the UNOVIS artists collective. He had solo exhibitions in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927, the only time he left Russia. From 1928 to 1930 he taught at the Kiev Art Institute. In 1930, he was briefly arrested and interrogated by the OGPU in Leningrad. By the early 1930s, Stalin's restrictive cultural policy prompted him to return to figuration. Diagnosed with cancer in 1933, he was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union for treatment. He died on 15 May 1935.

Reader's Guide

Malevich's significance lies in his radical break with representational art through Suprematism, which reduced painting to pure geometric forms on monochromatic grounds. His Black Square (1915) became an iconic symbol of non-objective art, challenging centuries of Western pictorial tradition. His work and writings influenced Eastern and Central European contemporaries such as El Lissitzky, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, and Henryk Stażewski, as well as later abstract artists like Ad Reinhardt and the Minimalists. Despite the constraints of Stalin's cultural policies and his own illness, Malevich continued to paint and exhibit until his death. Posthumously, his work was celebrated in major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (1936), the Guggenheim Museum (1973), and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1989). In the 1990s, ownership claims to many Malevich works began to be disputed by his heirs, reflecting ongoing debates about the legacy of avant-garde art in the context of Soviet and post-Soviet history.

Did You Know?

• Malevich was born to ethnic Polish parents who fled Poland after the failed January Uprising of 1863.
• He claimed to have taken part in the Battle of the Barricades in Moscow in December 1905.
• His Black Square (1915) was first shown at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Petrograd.
• The only time Malevich ever left Russia was for solo exhibitions in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"We have rejected reason because we have found another reason that could be called trans-rational, which has its own law, construction, and sense..

.This reason has found a way-Cubism-of expressing the object." — Kazimir Malevich "..[to gather] under a new banner..

..[that the poets of yesterday's Futurism ] change the means of battle with thought, content, and logic..

..advance Alogism after Futurism." — Kazimir Malevich "Dynamism is also the forming formula for Futurists works; i.e. dynamism is the additional element that transforms the perception of one state of phenomena to another, for example, from a static to a dynamic perception." — Kazimir Malevich "Papuans bored, butCottage second-classTicket. Park. Arch." — Kazimir Malevich