Kazimir Malevich
[7][8] Early on, Malevich worked in a variety of styles, quickly assimilating the movements of Impressionism, Symbolism and Fauvism and, after visiting Paris in 1912, Cubism.Gradually simplifying his style, he developed an approach with key works consisting of pure geometric forms and their relationships to one another, set against minimal grounds.From 1928 to 1930, he taught at the Kiev Art Institute, with Alexander Bogomazov, Victor Palmov, Vladimir Tatlin and published his articles in a Kharkiv magazine Nova Generatsiia (New generation).His art and his writings influenced contemporaries such as El Lissitzky, Lyubov Popova and Alexander Rodchenko, as well as generations of later abstract artists, such as Ad Reinhardt and the Minimalists.Malevich and other artists in Moscow gained an early exposure to Western avant-garde art, particularly to the works of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, through the private collection of Sergei Shchukin.[28][27]: 10 By 1904, as more French art was being reproduced and discussed in Russia in the magazine Mir iskusstva, Malevich had also become acquainted with the work of Paul Gauguin.[30] In March 1913, Malevich participated in the Target exhibition in Moscow together with Goncharova and Larionov, continuing to reinterpret Futurist vocabularies to "suggest movement by breaking cone shapes into almost unrecognizable forms".In 1914, Malevich exhibited his works in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris together with Alexander Archipenko, Sonia Delaunay, Aleksandra Ekster, and Vadim Meller, among others.[45]: 247–249 Art historian Matthew Drutt notes that despite these criticisms, Malevich's Warsaw exhibition and the lecture on Suprematism he had delivered during his visit had a lasting effect on Polish modernism.[48] Malevich's assumption that a shifting in the attitudes of the Soviet authorities toward the modernist art movement would take place after the death of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky's fall from power was proven correct in a couple of years, when the government of Joseph Stalin turned against forms of abstraction, considering them a type of "bourgeois" art, that could not express social realities.When Malevich died of cancer at the age of fifty-seven, in Leningrad on 15 May 1935, his friends and disciples buried his ashes in a grave marked with a black square.They didn't fulfill his stated wish to have the grave topped with an "architekton"—one of his skyscraper-like maquettes of abstract forms, equipped with a telescope through which visitors were to gaze at Jupiter.Nikolai Suetin, a friend of Malevich's and a fellow artist, designed a white cube with a black square to mark the burial site.[59] In 2013, Malevich's family in New York City and fans founded the not-for-profit The Rectangular Circle of Friends of Kazimierz Malewicz, whose dedicated goal is to promote awareness of Kazimir's Polish ethnicity.[55] However, the consensus among art historians, including those of Ukrainian origin, is that whereas the discussion (related to the Russian colonialism) clearly needs to take place among all involved parties, it has not yet occurred, and the question concerning the identity of Malevich has not been solved as of 2023.In 1939, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting opened in New York, whose founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim—an early and passionate collector of the Russian avant-garde—was inspired by the same aesthetic ideals and spiritual quest that exemplified Malevich's art.[64] The first U.S. retrospective of Malevich's work in 1973 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum provoked a flood of interest and further intensified his impact on postwar American and European artists.[17] In 1989, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam held the West's first large-scale Malevich retrospective, including the paintings they owned and works from the collection of Russian art critic Nikolai Khardzhiev.In May 2018, the same painting Suprematist Composition 1916 sold at Christie's New York for over US$85 million (including fees), a record auction price for a Russian work of art.The smuggling of Malevich paintings out of Russia is a key to the plot line of writer Martin Cruz Smith's thriller Red Square.At the Closing Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Malevich visual themes were featured (via projections) in a section on 20th century Russian modern art.Malevich wrote two biographical essays, a shorter one in 1923–25, and a much longer account in 1933, representing the artist's explanation of his own evolution up to the appearance of suprematism at the 1915 "0–10" exhibition in Petrograd.
Malevich (surname)Eastern Slavic naming customspatronymicfamily nameRussian EmpireUkraineLeningradRussian SFSRSoviet UnionSaint PetersburgRussiaMoscow School of Painting, Sculpture and ArchitectureAn Englishman in MoscowBlack SquareWhite on WhiteSuprematismRussian avant-gardeabstract artethnic PolishUNOVISUkrainian avant-gardeImpressionismSymbolismFauvismCubismgeometricOctober RevolutionVladimir TatlinConstructivismTrotskyiteAlexander BogomazovVictor PalmovNova GeneratsiiaintelligentsiaJoseph StalinEl LissitzkyLyubov PopovaAlexander RodchenkoAd ReinhardtMinimalistsMuseum of Modern ArtGuggenheim MuseumStedelijk MuseumPolishKiev Governoratepartitions of PolandRoman CatholicMoscowPablo PicassoHenri MatisseSergei ShchukinMir iskusstvaPaul GauguinSoyuz MolodyozhiSt. PetersburgAleksandra EksterDonkey's TailNatalia GoncharovaMikhail LarionovCubo-FuturistKnifegrinder or Principle of GlitteringVictory Over the SunSalon des IndépendantsAlexander ArchipenkoSonia DelaunayVadim MellerPavel FilonovVelimir KhlebnikovVladimir BurliukVladimir Mayakovskycraquelureco-operativeSkoptsiVerbovkaJack of DiamondsNathan AltmanDavid BurliukTretyakov GalleryLast Futurist Exhibition 0,10FuturistRed SquareAnna LeporskayaMystery-BouffeVladimir MayakovskiyVsevolod Meyerholdaerial photographyaviationabstractionsaerial landscapesNarkomprosVitebskBelarusMarc ChagallLeningrad Academy of ArtsMunichSocialist RealismWarsawPolonia HotelWładysław StrzemińskiKatarzyna KobroHenryk StażewskiMieczysław SzczukaMatthew DruttBerlinSoviet authoritiesmodernistVladimir LeninLeon TrotskybourgeoisAlexandre BenoiscancermaquettestelescopeJupiterWorld War IIDegenerate Artgated communityPoles who lived within the Russian EmpirePolish–Lithuanian CommonwealthAndrei NakovNew York CityGilles NéretRussian invasion of UkraineMetropolitan Museum of ArtRussian colonialismMikhail Matyushin