Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich was a Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist, whose pioneering work and writing influenced the development of abstract art in the 20th century. He was born in Kyiv, to an ethnic Polish family. His concept of Suprematism sought to develop a form of expression that moved as far as possible from the world of natural forms (objectivity) and subject matter in order to access "the supremacy of pure feeling" and spirituality. Malevich studied drawing in Kyiv and then attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he was influenced by teachers such as Vasily Tropinin and Karl Bryullov. In his early work he followed Impressionism as well as Symbolism and Fauvism, and, after visiting Paris in 1912, he was influenced by Pablo Picasso and Cubism. As a member of the Jack of Diamonds group, he led the Russian Cubist movement. ² In 1913 Malevich began to create abstract geometric patterns in a manner he called Suprematism, a term expressing the notion that colour, line, and shape should reign supreme over subject matter or narrative in art. During this period, he painted a few of his most influential works, including Black Square (1915) and Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918). ¹² From 1919 to 1921 he taught painting in Moscow and Petrograd (renamed Leningrad in 1924), where he lived the rest of his life. On a 1927 visit to the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, he met Wassily Kandinsky and published a book on his theory under the title Die gegenstandslose Welt (The Non-objective World). Later, when Soviet politicians decided against modern art, Malevich and his art fell out of favour. During his last years, his works show a return to figuration. Malevich died from cancer in poverty and oblivion. ²