Dabbling in Fauvism and Cubism before founding the Suprematist movement, Russian painter and sculptor Kasimir Malevich was a leading figure of the avant-garde and a pioneer of the non-objective style.
He painted the picture which should have ended all abstract pictures - a white square on a white ground (c. 1918: New York, M of MA).
From around 1904 in Moscow he was aware of modern French painting, mainly from the Shchukin collection; about 1912 he went to Paris for a month, and came back a Cubist. He claimed to have invented Suprematism as a purer form of Cubism in 1913, but it was more probaly in 1915.
Later in Germany 1928/32, he seems to have dated works 1910/20.
After the Revolution he had a violent disagreement with Marc Chagall over aesthetics: part of his 'Decree A in art, Vitebsk, 15 November 1920' reads: '1. The fifth dimension is established ... 18. To summon an economic council (of the fifth dimension) for the liquidation of all the arts of the old world ...'
He was in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927, and once Socialist Realism had taken hold of the arts in Russia he returned to painting more conventional figurative works, but without much success.
Amsterdam (Stedelijk) has the most important collection outside Russia.
Trivia:
- Pioneer of geometric abstract art.
- Parents were Polish Jews.
- First of fourteen children. Only nine survived their early years.
- Studied drawing in Kiev from 1895 to 1896.
- From 1904 to 1910 studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in the studio of Fedor Rerberg in Moscow.
- Participated in the second exhibition of the group Soyus Molod'ozhi (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg in 1911.
- In 1914 exhibited works in the Salon des Independants in Paris.
- Published his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism in 1915.
- 1915–1916 worked with other Suprematist artists in a peasant/artisan co-operative in Skoptsi and Verbovka village.
- 1916–1917 he participated in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow.
- Fascinated with aerial photography.
- 1919-1922 taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in Russia.
- 1922–1927 taught at the Leningrad Academy of Arts.
- His book World as Non-Objectivity published in 1926 outlining his Suprematist theories.
- Famous retrospective of his work in Warsaw and Germany.
- 1927–1929 taught at the Kiev State Art Institute.
- 1930 taught at the House of the Arts in Leningrad.
- As part of the Stalinist regime's turning against modernist art, he was persecuted. Many of his works were confiscated or destroyed.
- He died in poverty and obscurity in Leningrad.
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KAZIMIR MALEVICH
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Казимир Северинович Малевич
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