{{short description|Russian artist and painter (1879–1935)}} {{Redirect|Malevich|the surname|Malevich (surname)}} {{family name hatnote|Severinovich|Malevich|lang=Eastern Slavic}} {{pp-extended|small=yes}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}} {{Infobox artist | name = Kazimir Malevich | native_name = {{nobold|Казимир Малевич}} | native_name_lang = ru | image = Casimir Malevich photo.jpg | image_upright = 0.8 | caption = Photograph of Kazimir Malevich, circa 1925 | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1879|2|23|df=y}} | birth_place = Kiev, Russian Empire<br />(now Kyiv, Ukraine) | death_date = {{Death date and age|1935|5|15|1879|2|23|df=y}} | death_place = Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) | field = | training = | movement = Suprematism | works = ''An Englishman in Moscow'', 1914; ''Black Square'', 1915; ''White on White'', 1918 }}
'''Kazimir Severinovich Malevich'''{{#tag:ref|{{langx|pl|Kazimierz Malewicz}}; {{langx|ru|Казими́р Севери́нович Мале́вич}} {{IPA|ru|kəzʲɪˈmʲir sʲɪvʲɪˈrʲinəvʲɪtɕ mɐˈlʲevʲɪtɕ|}}; {{langx|uk|Казимир Северинович Малевич|translit=Kazymyr Severynovych Malevych}} {{IPA|uk|kɐzɪˈmɪr seweˈrɪnowɪtʃ mɐˈlɛwɪtʃ|}}.|group=nb}} ({{OldStyleDate|23 February|1879|11 February}}<ref name="cdiak">[https://archive.today/20180224120738/https://scontent.fiev6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/28056606_1790253897693917_6692642840115314311_n.jpg?oh=a3effcc7af1b07734caef53705ae155b&oe=5B0365CD Запись о рождении в метрической книге римско-католического костёла св. Александра в Киеве, 1879 год] // ЦГИАК Украины, ф. 1268, оп. 1, д. 26, л. 13об—14.{{in lang|ru}}<!--https://scontent.fiev6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/28056606_1790253897693917_6692642840115314311_n.jpg?oh=a3effcc7af1b07734caef53705ae155b&oe=5B0365CD--></ref> – 15 May 1935) was a Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist,{{#tag:ref|Malevich's nationality has been a matter of scholarly dispute. However, most art historians consider Malevich—who was born in the Russian Empire (modern-day Ukraine) and who worked in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union for most of his life—a Russian avant-garde artist. For further information on recent debates regarding the artist's nationality, particularly in the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, see the Nationality and ethnicity section.|group=nb}} whose work and writings pioneered the development of abstract painting in the 20th century.<ref name="Schwartz p. 84">Milner and Malevich 1996, p. X; Néret 2003, p. 7; Shatskikh and Schwartz, p. 84.</ref> He is best known as the founder of Suprematism, a radically non-objective form of painting he introduced in 1915.
Born in Kiev, modern-day Ukraine, to an ethnic Polish family, Malevich worked primarily in Russia and became a leading figure of the Russian avant-garde. His work has also been associated with the Ukrainian avant-garde. Early in his career, he worked in multiple styles, assimilating Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, and Cubism through reproductions and the works acquired by contemporary Russian collectors. In the early 1910s, he exhibited alongside other Russian avant-garde artists, including Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. In 1915, working in a Cubo-Futurist mode, Malevich 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'', published to accompany the exhibition.
His trajectory mirrored the upheavals around the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918, Malevich began teaching in Vitebsk along with Marc Chagall. In 1919, he founded the UNOVIS artists collective and had a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in Moscow. His reputation spread westward with solo exhibitions in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927, the only time he ever left Russia.{{#tag:ref| Some sources mention Malevich's alleged trip to Paris in 1912, although that claim is not corroborated by documentary evidence. While Malevich is said to have made plans to travel abroad, including Paris, multiple times, the only documented travel outside of Russia (or the Soviet Union) was his 1927 trip to Poland and Germany. Sources: * Rosamund Bartlett, "Malevich blazed a path into the future," ''The Telegraph'', 12 July 2014, (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10957847/Malevich-blazed-a-path-into-the-future.html). * Charlotte Douglas, Preface, p. i in ''Rethinking Malevich: Proceedings of a Conference in Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of Kazimir Malevich's Birth'', Pindar Press, 2007. * ''Kazimir Malevich in the Russian Museum'', Gosudarstvennyĭ russkiĭ muzeĭ, eds. Evgeniia Andreevna Petrova, Elena V. Basner, Kazimir S. Malevich, Irina Arskaia, St. Petersburg: State Russian Museum, 2000, p. 20. * Marie Gasper-Hulvat, "State-Sanctioned Trips of Soviet Artists to the West in the Late 1920s: The Unusual Case of Kazimir Malevich," ''The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945'', Volume 15, General Issue, 2019. * Erik Kruskopf, ''Shaping the Invisible: A Study of the Genesis of Non-representational Painting, 1908–1919'', Vol. 55, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1976, p. 132. * David W. Galenson, ''Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 292. |group=nb}} From 1928 to 1930 he taught at the Kiev Art Institute alongside Alexander Bogomazov, Victor Palmov, and Vladimir Tatlin, while publishing in the Kharkiv magazine ''Nova Generatsiia''. In 1930, he was briefly arrested and interrogated by the OGPU in Leningrad. By the early 1930s, Stalin's restrictive cultural policy and the subsequent imposition of Socialist Realism had prompted Malevich to return to figuration and to paint in a representational style. Diagnosed with cancer in 1933, he was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to seek treatment abroad. While constrained by his progressing illness and Stalin's cultural policies, Malevich painted and exhibited his work until the end of his life. He died on 15 May 1935, at age 56.
His art and his writings influenced Eastern and Central European contemporaries such as El Lissitzky, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko and Henryk Stażewski, as well as generations of later abstract artists, such as Ad Reinhardt and the Minimalists. He was celebrated posthumously in major exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art (1936), the Guggenheim Museum (1973), and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1989), which has a large collection of his work. In the 1990s, the ownership claims of museums to many Malevich works began to be disputed by his heirs.<ref name="Wood">Wood, Tony. [https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/may/11/artsfeatures2 "The man they couldn't hang"]. ''The Guardian'', 10 May 2000. Retrieved 21 March 2018.</ref>
==Early life (1879-1905)== thumb|Kazimir Malevich (c.1900) Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born on either 23 (O.S. 11) February or 26 (O.S. 14) February 1879, to Severin (Seweryn) Antonovich and Liudviga (Ludwika) Alexandrovna.<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=5}}<ref name="Schwartz p. 84" /> His parents, who were Polish, had fled Poland following the failed January Uprising of 1863 against Russian rule.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Moran |first=Fiontán |title=Malevich |publisher=Tate Publishing |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-84976-146-8 |editor-last=Borchardt-Hume |editor-first=Achim |location=London |language=en |chapter=Chronologies}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=32}} Lucjan Malewicz, Kazimir's uncle, was a Catholic priest and one of the leaders of the 1863 insurrection.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tarasov |first=Olga |title=Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives |date=2017-11-13 |publisher=Open Book Publishers |isbn=978-1-78374-338-4 |editor-last=Hardiman |editor-first=Louise |language=English |chapter=Kazimir Malevich, Symbolism, and Ecclesiastic Orthodoxy |doi=10.11647/obp.0115 |doi-access=free |editor-last2=Kozicharow |editor-first2=Nicola}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=92}} The family subsequently settled near Kiev (modern-day Kyiv, Ukraine) in Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire. Kazimir was the first of fourteen children, only nine of whom survived into adulthood.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}} His parents were Roman Catholic, though his father attended Orthodox services as well.<ref name="Schwartz p. 84" />{{Sfn|Shkandrij|2019|p=106}} The primary language spoken within Malevich's household was Polish,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Turowski |first=Andrzej |title=Supremus Malewicza: wystawa w 125 rocznicę urodzin artysty |publisher=Muzeum Narodowe |year=2004 |isbn=83-7100-245-9 |location=Warszawa |language=pl}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=40}} but he also spoke Russian,<ref>Shatskikh, Aleksandra Semenovna. 2013. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=0m1Ar8IXIC0C&pg=PT14 Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism]''. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. p. 51. {{ISBN|9780300140897}}</ref> as well as Ukrainian due to his childhood surroundings.<ref name="Radio Svododa-2019">{{Citation |last=Radio Svododa |title=Malevich: Ukrainskyi kvadrat (dokumentalnyi film) |date=23 February 2019 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdL17kRCM4E |script-title=uk:Малевич. Український квадрат Документальний фільм |access-date=23 February 2019 |archive-date=25 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200425170331/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdL17kRCM4E&gl=US&hl=en |url-status=live }}</ref>
Malevich's father worked as manager at several different sugar refineries. Between 1889 and 1896, Malevich's family relocated multiple times due to his father's job.<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=5}} In 1889, they moved to Parkhomovka near Kharkov (modern-day Ukraine). In Parkhomovka, Malevich attended a two-year agricultural school and taught himself to paint in a simple peasant style, drawing inspiration from rural surroundings.<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=5}} About four years later, the family relocated to Voltochok near Konotop, which was near centers of Polish cultural activity at the time. There, Malevich met the composer Nikolai Roslavets. He later briefly attended classes at the Kiev School of Drawing under the encouragement of the realist painter Mykola Pymonenko.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}}<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=5}}
=== Kursk and Moscow (1896-1905) === In 1896, the family moved to Kursk (modern-day Russia), where Malevich encountered several Russian artists, such as Lev Kvachevsky, with whom he often worked outdoors.<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=5}} By Malevich's own admission, his dedication to painting would make him the "black sheep" of the family.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}} Through reproductions, Malevich also became familiar with the work of the ''Peredvizhniki'' (''Wanderers''), including Ivan Shishkin and Ilia Repin, two leading Russian Realist painters.<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=5}} In 1896, he began working as a technical draughtsman at the Moscow-Kursk-Voronezh railway company.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}}
Malevich would later describe 1898 as the year he began exhibiting his work, although there is no evidence for this claim.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}} In 1899, he met his first wife, Kazimira Ivanovna Zgleits, who was eight years his senior. They had two children, Galina and Anatolii, the latter of whom dies of typhoid in his early childhood.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|pages=5–6}} His father died in 1902, at the age of fifty-seven, and in 1903, Malevich held an exhibition at the Society for the Support of Primary Education in Kursk.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}}
Recognizing his style as increasingly more Impressionistic, Malevich intended to receive academic training in Moscow.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|pages=5–6}} 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.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Milner |first=John |title=Kazimir Malevich and the Art of Geometry |date=1996 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-06417-9 |location=New Haven |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|pages=2–4}} Malevich and other artists in Moscow gained an early exposure to Western modern art through the private collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=10}} Their acquisitions ranged from French Impressionism to paintings by Paul Cézanne and Gauguin, and were later expanded to include the works of the key Parisian avant-garde artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bartlett |first=Rosamund |date=2016-10-17 |title=The revolutionary collector who changed the course of Russian art |url=https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-revolutionary-collector-who-changed-the-course-of-russian-art/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240120045959/https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-revolutionary-collector-who-changed-the-course-of-russian-art/ |archive-date=20 January 2024 |access-date=2024-03-18 |website=Apollo Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref>
Malevich is said to have visited both collections soon after his first arrival in Moscow in the fall of 1904.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|pages=5-6}} Similarities between his ''Apple Tree in Blossom'' (1904) and Alfred Sisley's ''Villeneuve-la-Garenne'' (1872), then in Shchukin's collection, have been cited as an early indication of the collectors’ influence on Malevich's oeuvre.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|pages=5-6}} In October 1904, Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader and political activist, returns to Russia from exile. At the time, anti-government sentiment in Russia was gaining momentum, intensifying after Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg in January 1905, when Tsarist forces killed numerous protesters. On October 17, 1905, Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, granting limited voting rights to the middle class.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}} In November, the government suppressed further revolutionary activity through military force. In his autobiography, Malevich later claimed to have taken part in the Battle of the Barricades in Moscow in December 1905, an attempt to sustain the revolution against the Tsarist regime.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}}<gallery widths="180" heights="150"> File:Portrait of the father (Malevich, ca. 1902–03).jpg|''Portrait of the Artist's Father'' (1902–1903, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) File:Flowergirl, by Kazimir Malevich.jpg|''Flower Girl'' (1903, Russian Museum) File:Boulevard, by Kazimir Malevich.jpg|''Boulevard'' (1904–05, Russian Museum) </gallery>
== Moscow and the avant-garde (1906-1915) ==
=== Early years in Moscow (1906–1910) === Malevich settled in Moscow, along with his family and his mother, in the spring of 1906.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}} There, Malevich attended the studio of Fedor Rerberg, who was known to prepare his students for applications to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Despite Malevich's multiple attempts to apply to the Moscow art school, however, he was never offered admission.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=32}} In 1907, the ''Blue Rose Exhibition'' of a group of Moscow Symbolist painters—part of a broader early 20th-century movement that rejected naturalism in favor of mystical themes and dreamlike imagery—left a deep impression on the artist.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}}{{#tag:ref|Malevich submitted a single painting to the exhibition; it was rejected.|group=nb}} The impact of Symbolism on Malevich during that period is evident in paintings such as ''The Triumph of Heaven'' (1907) and ''The Shroud of Christ'' (1908).<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=9}}
By 1908, he developed a strong interest in Russian icons and Russian folk art.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}} At the same time, more Western avant-garde influences reached Moscow, including through the activities of the ''Golden Fleece'' group, who in 1908 organized a major exhibition of Russian and Western European art that included works by Vincent van Gogh, Matisse, Georges Braque, Gauguin, and Cézanne.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}} In 1909, the group also published in their journal a Russian translation of Matisse's treatise ''Notes on Painting'' (1908) and Shchukin opened his collection to the public.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}} In September 1909, Malevich's planned visit to Paris was cancelled when a sale of his painting fell through. Later that year, he met his future second wife Sofia Mikhailovna Rafalovich.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}}<gallery widths="180" heights="180"> File:Triumph of Heaven (Malevich, 1907).jpg|''Triumph of Heaven'' (1907, Russian Museum), an example of Malevich's early Symbolism-inspired work File:Three Bathers, by Kazimir Malevich.jpg|''Bathers'' (1908, Russian Museum) File:Отдых (Общество в цилиндрах). 1908. ГРМ.png|''Rest. Society with Cylinders'' (1908, Russian Museum) </gallery>
=== ''Knave of Diamonds'' and ''Donkey's Tail'' (1910–1912) === In December 1910, Malevich took part in the first of a series of exhibitions of an artistic collective ''Knave of Diamonds''. According to Malevich the name "Knave" (or "Jack") "stood for youth" and "diamonds" for "beautiful youth".<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}} The group was founded by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, leading figures of the Moscow avant-garde, who sought to combine the modernist Western vocabularies of artists like Cézanne with the traditions of Russian folk art.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sokolov |first=Kirill |date=1978 |title=P. P. Konchalovsky (1876-1956) (On His Methods as a Painter of Pictures) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1573962 |journal=Leonardo |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=321–325 |issn=0024-094X |jstor=1573962}}</ref> Years later, in 1924, Malevich claimed that the ''Knave of Diamonds'' exhibition "shook severely the aesthetic foundations and consequently the foundation of art in society and criticism".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Malevich |first=Kazimir |title=Notes on Architecture |year=1924}}</ref> During that time, Malevich took on some commercial projects as a way to support himself financially. In 1911, he worked with the company Brocard & Co., designing a bottle for their eau de cologne called ''Severny'', which was used by the company through the mid-1920s.<ref>Alexandra Shatskikh, Translated in English by Marian Schwartz. [https://books.google.com/books?id=0m1Ar8IXIC0C&q=bottle ''Black Square, Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404184806/https://books.google.com/books?id=0m1Ar8IXIC0C&q=bottle|date=4 April 2023}}, Malevich's perfume bottle for the eau de cologne Severny, Page 94. Yale University Press. November 2012. {{ISBN|9780300140897}}</ref> The base of the bottle consisted of a jagged form resembling an iceberg and the stopper featured a small figurine of a polar bear.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Steinhauer |first=Jillian |date=2014-07-17 |title=Kazimir Malevich's Little-Known Perfume Bottle |url=https://hyperallergic.com/138287/kazimir-malevichs-little-known-perfume-bottle/ |access-date=2025-09-08 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US}}</ref>
Also in 1911, Malevich participated in the second exhibition of the avant-garde group ''Soyuz Molodyozhi'' (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg, where he showed some of his Cubist-inspired paintings. Other artists included Goncharova, Larionov, Vladimir Tatlin, and David Burliuk.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=33}} That year, Goncharova and Larionov—both of whom had a strong influence on Malevich during that period—broke away from the ''Knave of Diamonds'' to establish the ''Donkey's Tail'' collective.<ref name=":7">{{Cite web |last1=Cramer |first1=Charles |last2=Grant |first2=Kim |date=2019-09-28 |title=Russian Neo-Primitivism: Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov |url=https://smarthistory.org/russian-neo-primitivism-goncharova-larionov/ |access-date=2025-09-07 |website=Smarthistory |archive-date=5 September 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250905230850/https://smarthistory.org/russian-neo-primitivism-goncharova-larionov/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Intending to focus more on Russian subject matter, they embraced a deliberately "primitive" approach, favoring flattened forms and simplified visual structures.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|pages=32–35}} Unlike their Western European counterparts—such as Picasso, whose turn to the "primitive" appropriated non-Western imagery mediated through French colonial conquests—the Moscow Neo-Primitivists drew on domestic sources, especially Russian peasant culture and folk imagery like the ''lubok''.<ref name=":7" /> Art historians have since noted that even as Russian artists sought to ground their work in local traditions, they continued to rely heavily on the formal vocabularies of the Western avant-garde.<ref name=":7" /> In March 1912, Malevich took part in ''Donkey's Tail'' exhibition in Moscow that ran through April, which included his recent works, such as the figurative and peasant-inspired gouache paintings titled ''Floor Polishers'' (1911–12) and ''Washerwoman'' (1911).<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|pages=32–35}}<gallery widths="150" heights="160"> File:Floorpolishers (Malevich, 1911).jpg|''Floorpolishers'' (1911-1912, Stedelijk Museum) exhibited at the ''Donkey's Tail'' in Moscow in 1912 File:Taking in the Rye Kazimir Malevich 1911.jpeg|''Taking in the Rye'' (1911, Stedelijk Museum) File:Self-Portrait (1908 or 1910-1911) (Kazimir Malevich).jpg|''Self-portrait'' (1912, Tretyakov Gallery) </gallery>
=== ''Target'' Exhibition and Cubo-Futurism (1913) === By 1913, the influence of Italian Futurism on Russian contemporary art had become more pronounced. Excerpts of the ''Manifesto of Futurism'', written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, were already published in Russia in 1909.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|page=33}} Its call to reject the past, glorify modernity, and embrace speed, dynamism, and aggressive provocation resonated with the Russian avant-garde. Adapting some of the futurist rhetoric, artists like Burliuk and Malevich shifted Marinetti's celebration of machines and violence more toward linguistic experimentation and cognitive transformation.<ref name=":9">{{Cite web |last1=Cramer |first1=Charles |last2=Grant |first2=Kim |date=2019-09-18 |title=Kazimir Malevich and Cubo-Futurism |url=https://smarthistory.org/kasimir-malevich-cubo-futurism/ |access-date=2025-09-08 |website=Smarthistory |archive-date=5 September 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250905230849/https://smarthistory.org/kasimir-malevich-cubo-futurism/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Among such experiments was a technique called ''zaum'', or “transrational” language, wherein Russian Futurist technique used invented sounds and words to bypass reason and evoke a higher reality.<ref name=":9" /> In a letter sent to his friend, composer Mikhail Matyushin, in the spring of 1913, Malevich wrote:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kovtun |first=Evgenii |title="The Beginning of Suprematism": From Surface to Space, Russia 1916-24 |publisher=Galerie Gmurzynska |year=1974 |location=Cologne |chapter=Kazimir Malevich to Matyushin, Spring 1913}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=40}}
{{Blockquote|text=We have come to reject reason, but we have rejected reason because a different kind of reason has arisen within us, one which might be called transrational [zaum] if compared with the one which we have rejected; it also has its own law, construction and meaning, and only when we have cognized it will our works be founded on the truly new law of transrationalism.|author=|title=Kazimir Malevich's letter to Mikhail Matyushin, spring 1913}}Around that time, Burliuk led a Russian futurist parade in Moscow, where artists with painted faces recited futurist poetry.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=64}} 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".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |title=Kazimir Malevich, 1878-1935 |publisher=The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center |isbn=0-9626953-0-0 |editor-last=D'Andrea |editor-first=Jeanne |location=Los Angeles |publication-date=1990}}</ref>{{Rp|page=8}} Malevich described himself in this period as working in a “Cubo-Futurist” style.<ref name="HF">Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) ''A World History of Art''. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing, pp. 794–795. {{ISBN|9781856695848}}</ref> Among other paintings, Malevich exhibited ''Morning in the Country after Snowstorm'' and ''Knifegrinder or Principle of Glittering'', both made in 1912, at ''Target'' for the first time.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|pages=8–9}} That same year, the Cubo-Futurist opera, ''Victory Over the Sun'', debuted in at Luna Park Theater in St. Petersburg.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=64}} The opera featured a libretto by Aleksei Kruchenykh written in ''zaum'', dissonant music by Matyushin, and stage and costume designs by Malevich.<ref name=":11">{{cite journal |author=Isobel Hunter |date=12 July 1999 |title=Zaum and Sun: The 'first Futurist opera' revisited |url=http://www.pecina.cz/files/www.ce-review.org/99/3/ondisplay3_hunter.html |journal=Central Europe Review |volume=3 |issue=1 |access-date=5 November 2008 |archive-date=31 October 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071031111019/http://www.pecina.cz/files/www.ce-review.org/99/3/ondisplay3_hunter.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Its allegorical plot depicts the Sun—symbolizing the old order—being captured and buried, reflecting the Futurist celebration of technological progress and the rejection of past traditions.<ref name=":11"/> For one scene Malevich designed a curtain with the outline of a square, which he later identified as the first appearance of his ''Black Square''.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=64}} Although the production was poorly received by contemporary audiences, it prefigured Malevich's subsequent development of abstract painting.<ref name=":11" />
=== Paris Salon and Wartime Works (1914) ===
In March 1914, Malevich was invited by Nikolai Kubin to participate in the ''Salon des Indépendants'' in Paris.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=65}} He sent several of his works to be shown at the Salon, including ''Samovar'' from 1913, a Cubist depiction of a traditional Eastern European metal container used to heat and boil water.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|page=65}} Malevich also co-illustrated, with Pavel Filonov, ''Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914'' by Velimir Khlebnikov and another work by Khlebnikov in 1914 titled ''Roar! Gauntlets, 1908–1914'', with Vladimir Burliuk.<ref name="WDL">{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9236/ |title = Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914 |website = World Digital Library |year = 1914 |access-date = 28 September 2013 |archive-date = 28 November 2015 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151128120209/http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9236/ |url-status = live }}</ref><ref name="WDL2">{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9555/ |title = Roar! Gauntlets, 1908–1914 |website = World Digital Library |year = 1914 |access-date = 28 September 2013 |archive-date = 3 October 2013 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131003003855/http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9555/ |url-status = live }}</ref> On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, precipitating the outbreak of the Great War (later known as World War I). Sometime in the fall or winter of 1914, Malevich made ''Reservist of the First Division'', a Cubo-Futurist work that incorporated collage, a post stamp with an image of Tsar Nicholas, printed text, and a thermometer affixed to the canvas, among other non-traditional compositional elements.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|pages=111-113}} Scattering multiple political, cultural, and military references across abstract geometric planes, the work has been interpreted by some as reflecting Malevich's own status as an army reservist.<ref name=":14">{{Cite web |last1=Cramer |first1=Charles |last2=Grant |first2=Kim |date=2019-09-28 |title=Kazimir Malevich and Cubo-Futurism |url=https://smarthistory.org/kasimir-malevich-cubo-futurism/ |access-date=2025-09-13 |website=Smarthistory |archive-date=5 September 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250905230849/https://smarthistory.org/kasimir-malevich-cubo-futurism/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> He also created a series of propagandistic chromolithographs in various formats in support of Russia's entry into the war.<ref name=":13" />{{Reference page|page=407}} These prints were accompanied by captions by Vladimir Mayakovsky and published by the Moscow-based publication house Segodniashnii Lubok (Contemporary Lubok). While the prints drew on folk-art traditions of the ''lubok'' and emphasized bold blocks of pure color, the ''Reservist'' relied on Cubo-Futurist collage and abstraction; together, these works signaled formal strategies of flat planes and geometric ordering that further anticipated Malevich's turn to Suprematism the following year.<ref name=":14" /><ref name=":13">{{Cite journal |last=Gasper-Hulvat |first=Marie |title=What a Boom, What a Blast: Kazimir Malevich's War Propaganda |url=https://www.academia.edu/41955097 |journal=Print Quarterly |date=January 2018 |volume=XXXV |issue=4 |pages=407–419 |issn=0265-8305}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=407}}<gallery widths="150" heights="180"> File:The Knife Grinder Principle of Glittering by Kazimir Malevich.jpeg|''The Knifegrinder or Principle of Glittering'' (1912, Yale University Art Gallery) shown at the ''Target'' exhibition in Moscow in 1913 File:Samovar (Malevich, 1913).jpg|''Samovar'' (1913, Museum of Modern Art), exhibited at the ''Salon des indépendants'' in 1914 File:Head of a Peasant Girl.jpg|''Head of a Peasant Girl'' (1912-1913, Stedelijk Museum) File:1913 Malevich Portrait von Mikhail Matjuschin anagoria.JPG|''Portrait of Mikhail Matyushin'' (1913, Tretyakov Gallery) File:An Englishman in Moscow, by Kazimir Malevich.jpg|''Englishman in Moscow'' (1914, Stedelijk Museum) File:Reservist of the First Division (Malevich, 1914).jpg|''Reservist of the First Division'' (1914, Museum of Modern Art) </gallery>
==Suprematism (1915-1918)==
=== ''Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10'' (1915) === {{Main|0,10 Exhibition}} In March 1915, Malevich took part in the ''Tramway V: First Futurist Exhibition'' in Petrograd, organized by Ivan Puni and his wife Ksenia Boguslavskaya, presenting collage-based works still within a Cubo-Futurist idiom. At the same time, Malevich became increasingly critical of Cubo-Futurism's dependence on the object, which he would later argue prevented painting from achieving self-sufficiency of pure form.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|pages=92-93}} In a letter to Matyushin dated 27 May, Malevich referenced his curtain drawing for ''Victory Over the Sun'' and declared that "that which was done unconsciously, now bears extraordinary fruit", a statement interpreted as an early articulation of the ideas that would become Suprematism.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|pages=92-93}} Over the summer of 1915, Malevich produced his first abstract composition featuring a black quadrilateral on a white ground. When Puni visited his studio that September and saw the new work, Malevich—concerned that his ideas would be copied—composed his first text on Suprematism with Matyushin's assistance.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|pages=92-93}}
On 19 December 1915, Malevich presented thirty-nine abstract oil paintings at the ''Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10'', held at the Art Bureau of Madame Nadezhda Dobychina in Petrograd. He hung the black quadrilateral painting in the upper corner of the room, a placement that echoed the position traditionally reserved for icons in Russian domestic interiors.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|pages=92-93}} To accompany the exhibition, Malevich published a brochure entitled ''From Cubism to Suprematism in Art, to New Realism in Painting, to Absolute Creation'', later republished in expanded form as ''From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism''. In the adjacent room, Tatlin exhibited his corner reliefs. Puni, Malevich, Boguslavskaya, Klyun, and Mikhail Menkov collectively published a short manifesto. The exhibition was visited by more than 6,000 people.<ref name=":8" />{{Reference page|pages=92-93}}
In 1915–1916, he worked with other Suprematist artists in a peasant/artisan co-operative in Skoptsi and Verbovka village. In 1916–1917, he participated in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow together with Nathan Altman, David Burliuk, Aleksandra Ekster and others. Famous examples of his Suprematist works include ''Black Square'' (1915)<ref>Drutt and Malevich 2003, p. 243.</ref> and ''White On White'' (1918).
=== ''The Black Square'' === Malevich exhibited his first ''Black Square'', now at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, in Petrograd in 1915.<ref name="HF" /> The second ''Black Square'' was painted around 1923. Some believe that the third ''Black Square'' (also at the Tretyakov Gallery) was painted in 1929 for Malevich's solo exhibition, because of the poor condition of the 1915 square. One more ''Black Square'', the smallest and probably the last, may have been intended as a diptych together with the ''Red Square'' (though of smaller size) for the exhibition Artists of the RSFSR: 15 Years, held in Leningrad (1932). The two squares, Black and Red, were the centerpiece of the show. This last square, despite the author's note ''1913'' on the reverse, is believed to have been created in the late twenties or early thirties, for there are no earlier mentions of it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/what-s-on/temp_exh/1999_2013/hm4_1_30/?lng=en|title=Hermitage Museum, ''Malevich. Black Square'', Exhibition: 20 June 2002 – 30 June 2003|publisher=Hermitagemuseum.org|access-date=18 March 2014|archive-date=6 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306113907/http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/what-s-on/temp_exh/1999_2013/hm4_1_30/?lng=en|url-status=live}}</ref>
While Malevich's ideas and theories behind Suprematism were grounded in a belief in the spiritual and transformative power of art, he saw Suprematism as a way to access a higher, more pure realm of artistic expression and to tap into the spiritual through abstraction. Thus, the overarching philosophy of Suprematism expressed in various manifestos would be that he "transformed himself in the zero of form and dragged himself out of the rubbish-heap of illusion and the pit of naturalism. He destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of objects, moving from the horizon-ring to the circle of spirit".<ref>{{cite web|title=Malevich: Suprematism|pages=116–124|website=monoskop.org|url=https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Malevich_Kazimir_1927_2000_Suprematism.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171126225709/https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Malevich_Kazimir_1927_2000_Suprematism.pdf|archive-date=26 November 2017|access-date=28 December 2024}}</ref>
Malevich's student Anna Leporskaya observed that Malevich "neither knew nor understood what the black square contained. He thought it so important an event in his creation that for a whole week he was unable to eat, drink or sleep".<ref name="Neret2003">{{cite book |last=Néret |first=Gilles |author-link=Gilles Néret |year=2003 |title=Malevitch |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YbvaqgO81HcC&pg=PA50 |location=Köln |publisher=Taschen |page=50 |isbn=3-8228-1961-1}}</ref> In 1918, Malevich decorated a play, ''Mystery-Bouffe'', by Vladimir Mayakovskiy produced by Vsevolod Meyerhold. He was interested in aerial photography and aviation, which led him to abstractions inspired by or derived from aerial landscapes.<ref name="chadaga">Julia Bekman Chadaga (2000). Conference paper, "Art, Technology, and Modernity in Russia and Eastern Europe". Columbia University, 2000. "the Suprematist is associated with a series of aerial views rendering the familiar landscape into an abstraction…"</ref><gallery widths="170" heights="170"> File:Kazimir Malevich, 1915, Black Suprematic Square, oil on linen canvas, 79.5 x 79.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.jpg|''Black Square'' (1915, Tretyakov Gallery) File:Black circle.jpg|''Black Circle'' (motive 1915, painted 1924, State Russian Museum) File:Black Cross.jpg|''Black Cross'' (1920s, State Russian Museum) File:Kazimir malevich, quadrato rosso (realismo del pittore di una campagnola in due dimensioni), 1915.JPG|''Red Square'' (1915, State Russian Museum) File:Казимир Малевич, Супрематическая композиция, 1915.jpg|''Suprematist Composition'' (1915, Beyeler Foundation) File:Malevich-Suprematism..jpg|''Suprematist Painting: Eight Red Rectangles'' (1915, Stedelijk Museum) File:Suprematist Composition - Kazimir Malevich.jpg|''Suprematist Composition'' (1916,private collection), sold at Christie's New York for US$85,812,500 in 2018 File:Supremus 55 (Malevich, 1916).jpg|''Supremus No. 55'' (1916, Museum of Art, Krasnodar) </gallery>
=== Painting technique === According to an observation by radiologist and art historian Milda Victurina, one of the features of Kazimir Malevich's painting technique was the layering of paints one on another to get a special kind of colour spots. For example, Malevich used two layers of colour for the red spot—the lower black and the upper red. The light ray going through these colour layers is perceived by the viewer not as red, but with a touch of darkness. This technique of superimposing the two colours allowed experts to identify fakes of Malevich's work, which generally lacked it.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Фальшак |url=https://www.sovsekretno.ru/articles/falshak/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190704212713/https://www.sovsekretno.ru/articles/falshak/ |archive-date=4 July 2019 |access-date=2021-11-22 |website=www.sovsekretno.ru}}</ref>
{{Multiple image | image1 = 0.10 Exhibition.jpg | image2 = Kazimir Malevich - Suprematism - Google Art Project.jpg | image3 = Kazimir Malevich - 'Suprematist Composition- White on White', oil on canvas, 1918, Museum of Modern Art.jpg | direction = horizontal | caption2 = ''Suprematism'', oil on canvas, 1915, Russian Museum | caption3 = ''Suprematist Composition: White on White'', oil on canvas, 1918, The Museum of Modern Art, New York | caption1 = Suprematist works by Malevich at the 0.10 Exhibition, Petrograd, 1915 | total_width = 580 | align = center }}
==Post-revolutionary years (1918-1935)== thumb|Kazimir Malevich with his paintings in Leningrad (1924) After the October Revolution (1917), the Russian Civil War ensued. Between 1918 and 1919, Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts of Narkompros, the Commission for the Protection of Monuments and the Museums Commission. He taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in Belarus (1919–1922) alongside Marc Chagall,<ref name="Wall Street Journal">{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-chagall-and-malevich-battled-in-russia-1533828420|title=When Chagall and Malevich Battled in Russia|first=Alexandra|last=Bregman|date=11 August 2018|newspaper=Wall Street Journal|access-date=25 August 2019|archive-date=25 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190825151408/https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-chagall-and-malevich-battled-in-russia-1533828420|url-status=live}}</ref> the Leningrad Academy of Arts (1922–1927), the Kiev Art Institute (1928–1930),<ref name=Filevska2>Filevska, Tetiana. [https://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/events/6680-prezentacija-anglijsykogo-perekladu-knigi-kazimir-malevich-kijivsykij-period-1928-1930-ta-kolokviumu-shhodo-publikacij-z-ukrajinsykogo-modernizmu "The Ukrainian Museum will be displaying new materials highlighting artistic modernism in Ukraine: Kazimir Malevich.Kyiv Period"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200130001135/https://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/events/6680-prezentacija-anglijsykogo-perekladu-knigi-kazimir-malevich-kijivsykij-period-1928-1930-ta-kolokviumu-shhodo-publikacij-z-ukrajinsykogo-modernizmu |date=30 January 2020 }} 11 February 2017. Retrieved 30 January 2020.</ref> and the House of the Arts in Leningrad (1930). He wrote the book ''The Non-Objective World'', which was published in Munich in 1926 and translated into English in 1959. In it, he outlines his Suprematist theories.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last1=Malevich |first1=Kazimir Severinovich |url=http://archive.org/details/kazimir00male |title=Kazimir Malevich : suprematism |last2=Drutt |first2=Matthew |last3=Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin |last4=Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum |last5=Menil Collection (Houston |first5=Tex ) |date=2003 |publisher=New York, N.Y. : Guggenheim Museum; Distributed by Harry N. Abrams |others=Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Library |isbn=978-0-89207-265-1}}</ref>
Following the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established in 1922, led by Vladimir Lenin. In 1923, Malevich was appointed director of Petrograd State Institute of Artistic Culture, which was forced to close in 1926 after a Communist party newspaper called it "a government-supported monastery" rife with "counterrevolutionary sermonizing and artistic debauchery." The Soviet state was by then heavily promoting an idealized, propagandistic<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.britannica.com/art/Socialist-Realism|title=Socialist Realism {{!}} art|work=Encyclopedia Britannica|access-date=15 October 2018|language=en|archive-date=15 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181015192937/https://www.britannica.com/art/Socialist-Realism|url-status=live}}</ref> style of art called Socialist Realism—a style Malevich had spent his entire career repudiating. Nevertheless, he swam with the current, and was quietly tolerated by the Communists.<ref name="JAMA">{{cite journal|url=http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/646105|title=Spring|first=Thomas B.|last=Cole|date=16 March 2011|journal=JAMA|volume=305|issue=11|pages=1066|access-date=8 August 2017|via=jama.jamanetwork.com|doi=10.1001/jama.2011.280|pmid=21406637|archive-date=6 June 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240606144822/https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/646105|url-status=live|issn = 0098-7484 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>
=== Stalinism and censorship === 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 in 1924 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. As a consequence, many of his works were confiscated and he was removed from his teaching position.{{Citation needed|date=August 2025}}
In autumn 1930, he was arrested and interrogated by the OGPU in Leningrad, accused of Polish espionage, and threatened with execution. He was released from imprisonment in early December.<ref name="Radio Svododa-2019" /><ref name="Rudzytskyi" /> Critics derided Malevich's art as a negation of everything good and pure: love of life and love of nature. The Westernizer artist and art historian Alexandre Benois was one such critic. Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art's sake alone, saying that "art does not need us, and it never did".{{Citation needed|date=August 2025}} In 1934, Socialist Realism was officially imposed as the only permissible form of artistic expression in the Soviet Union, effectively banning avant-garde art.<ref name=":10">{{cite book |author1-last=Elliott |author1-first=David |title=Oxford Art Online |author2-last=Juszkiewicz |author2-first=Piotr |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-1-884446-05-4 |chapter=Socialist Realism |doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t079464 |access-date=2023-11-26 |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/documentID/oao-9781884446054-e-7000079464}}</ref>
=== Travel to Poland and Germany (1927) === [[File:Banquet in honor of Malevich's solo exhibition at the Hôtel Polonia, 1927.jpg|thumb|Banquet celebrating Kazimir Malevich's 1927 exhibition at Hotel Polonia in Warsaw, with multiple Suprematist paintings seen hung on the wall in the back]] In March 1927, Malevich traveled to Warsaw where he exhibited his work at the Polish Arts Club housed in the Polonia Hotel.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last1=Lodder |first1=Christina |url=https://brill.com/view/title/19236 |title=Celebrating Suprematism: New Approaches to the Art of Kazimir Malevich |last2=Forgács |first2=Éva |date=2019-01-01 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-38498-9 |location=Leiden |publication-date=2019 |pages=240–258 |chapter=Suprematism: A Shortcut into the Future: The Reception of Malevich by Polish and Hungarian Artists during the Inter-War Period |doi=10.1163/9789004384989_014 |access-date=18 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211129002531/https://brill.com/view/title/19236 |archive-date=29 November 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{Rp|page=248}} He met with several Polish artists, including his former students Władysław Strzemiński (whose own theory of Unism was highly influenced by Malevich), sculptor Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski, an abstract painter associated with the Polish Constructivist movement.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last=Lodder |first=Christina |title=Henryk Stażewski |publisher=Skira Editore |year=2018 |isbn=978-88-572-3735-0 |editor-last=Szczepaniak |editor-first=Andrzej |location=Milan |pages=25–37 |language=en |chapter=Henryk Stażewski: The Suprematist Dimension}}</ref><ref name="A.T.">{{cite book |author=Andrzej Turowski |url=http://www.antykwariat.waw.pl/ksiazka,1005680/andrzej_turowski_malewicz_w_warszawie_rekonstrukcje_i_symulacje,203919.html |title=Malewicz w Warszawie: Rekonstrukcje i Symulacje |publisher=Krakow: Universitas |year=2002 |isbn=8370524869 |trans-title=Malevich in Warsaw: Reconstructions and Simulations |quote=Foreword. |access-date=4 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303214103/http://www.antykwariat.waw.pl/ksiazka,1005680/andrzej_turowski_malewicz_w_warszawie_rekonstrukcje_i_symulacje,203919.html |archive-date=3 March 2016 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
While generally greeted with enthusiasm, Malevich faced criticism from some contemporary artists, including Mieczysław Szczuka, who argued that Suprematism, as understood by Malevich, was no longer relevant for Polish utilitarianism-oriented avant-garde and that the artist was "a Romantic who loves painterly means for their own sake".<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|pages=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.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Drutt |first=Matthew |title=Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism |publisher=The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-89207-265-1 |location=New York |pages=16–31 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=19}} At the end of March 1927, Malevich and Tadeusz Peiper, a Polish poet and art critic who was the editor of the literary journal ''Zwrotnica'', left Warsaw for Berlin. In April that year, him and Peiper visited the Bauhaus in Dessau, where they met with Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy.<ref name=":5" />{{Rp|page=19}}
Malevich returned to Berlin in May 1927 to participate in the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. Over seventy of his works, including paintings, gouaches, charts, and drawings that spanned the entirety of the artist's oeuvre, were displayed at the exhibition.<ref name=":5" />{{Rp|page=20}} The Berlin show has been described as "a defining moment in Malevich's career in terms of the reception of his work in the West" and it became a "primary source of knowledge of Malevich's oeuvre for the next fifty years".<ref name=":5" />{{Rp|page=21}} He arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union.<ref name="lootedart.com">{{Cite web |title=If This Picture Could Talk: A Malevich painting's long route to the auction block |url=https://lootedart.com/news.php?r=NBNUH7312361 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220223062903/https://lootedart.com/news.php?r=NBNUH7312361 |archive-date=23 February 2022 |access-date=2022-02-23 |website=lootedart.com}}</ref>
=== Death === Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad on 15 May 1935.<ref name="THE PROPHET">{{cite magazine|last1=Schjehldahl|first1=Peter|title=The Prophet: Malevich's Revolution|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/02/the-prophet-2|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=15 May 2015|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304195201/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/02/the-prophet-2|url-status=live}}</ref> On his deathbed, Malevich had been exhibited with the ''Black Square'' above him, and mourners at his funeral rally were permitted to wave a banner bearing a black square.<ref name="JAMA" /> Malevich had asked to be buried under an oak tree on the outskirts of Nemchinovka, a place to which he felt a special bond.<ref name="artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com">Sophia Kishkovsky (30 August 2013), [http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/malevichs-burial-site-is-found-underneath-housing-development/ Malevich’s Burial Site Is Found, Underneath Housing Development] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140104132036/http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/malevichs-burial-site-is-found-underneath-housing-development/ |date=4 January 2014 }} ''The New York Times''.</ref> His ashes were sent to Nemchinovka, and buried in a field near his dacha. Nikolai Suetin, a friend of Malevich's and a fellow artist, designed a white cube with a black square to mark the burial site. The memorial was destroyed during World War II. The city of Leningrad bestowed a pension on Malevich's mother and daughter.
In Nazi Germany his works were banned as "Degenerate Art".<ref name="lootedart.com" /><ref>{{Cite news|last=Vogel|first=Carol|date=1999-06-19|title=The Modern Gets to Keep Malevich Works|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/19/arts/the-modern-gets-to-keep-malevich-works.html|access-date=2022-02-23|issn=0362-4331|archive-date=23 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220223063249/https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/19/arts/the-modern-gets-to-keep-malevich-works.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR)-Case Summary-Malevich v. City of Amsterdam|url=https://www.ifar.org/case_summary.php?docid=1184618872|access-date=2022-02-23|website=www.ifar.org|archive-date=15 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220415173558/https://www.ifar.org/case_summary.php?docid=1184618872|url-status=live}}</ref> In 2013, an apartment block was built on the place of the tomb and burial site of Kazimir Malevich. Another nearby monument to Malevich, put up in 1988, is now also situated on the grounds of a gated community.<ref name="artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com" /><gallery heights="170" widths="170"> File:Red Cavalry Riding.jpg|''Red Cavalry Riding'' (1928-1932, Russian Museum) File:Malevich - Boy.jpg|''Boy'' (1928-1932, Russian Museum) File:Malevich - Mann in suprematischer Landschaft.jpeg|''Sensation of an Imprisoned Man'' (1930–31, Albertina) File:Malevich142.jpg|''Mower'' (1930, Tretyakov Gallery) File:Людина, що біжить. Казимир Малевич.jpg|''Sensation of Danger'' or ''Running Man'' (1930–31, Musée National d'Art Moderne) File:Девушка с гребнем в волосах.png|''Girl with a Comb in her Hair'' (1933, Tretyakov Gallery) </gallery>
==Nationality and ethnicity== {{multiple image | align = right | direction = vertical | width = 200 | header = | image1 = Malewicz signature.jpg | alt1 = | class1 = bg-transparent | caption1 = Malevich signed himself in Polish (as '''K. Malewicz''') on the back... | image2 = Self-portrait (Malevich, 1933).jpg | alt2 = | caption2 = ...of his self-portrait entitled "Artist" (1933, Russian Museum) }}
Most academic literature and museum collections identify Malevich as a Russian painter, based on his integral role in shaping the Russian avant-garde, centered primarily around Moscow and Petrograd (modern-day St. Petersburg), and the fact that he achieved prominence while living and working in the Russian Empire and later, from 1922 until his death in 1935, the Soviet Union. However, his nationality has been a subject of scholarly dispute.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Matiossian |first=Vartan |date=2023-02-21 |title=The Met Shouldn't Have Reclassified Ivan Aivazovsky as "Ukrainian" |url=http://hyperallergic.com/802391/met-museum-shouldnt-have-reclassified-ivan-aivazovsky-as-ukrainian/ |access-date=2024-04-12 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US |archive-date=2 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240402233033/https://hyperallergic.com/802391/met-museum-shouldnt-have-reclassified-ivan-aivazovsky-as-ukrainian/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite news |last=Helmore |first=Edward |date=2023-03-19 |title=As the Met reclassifies Russian art as Ukrainian, not everyone is convinced |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/19/metropolitan-museum-art-reclassifies-russian-art-ukrainian |access-date=2024-04-12 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> Based on surviving correspondence, some scholars have also suggested that Malevich considered Russia an "adopted place to live and work" rather than a "true homeland".<ref name=":6" />
=== Polish === Malevich's family was one of the millions of Poles who lived within the Russian Empire following the Partitions of Poland. Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev<ref name="nytimes1">Nina Siegal (5 November 2013), [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/arts/international/rare-glimpse-of-the-elusive-kazimir-malevich.html "Rare Glimpse of the Elusive Kazimir Malevich"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171106065013/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/arts/international/rare-glimpse-of-the-elusive-kazimir-malevich.html|date=6 November 2017}}. ''The New York Times''.</ref> on lands that had previously been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth<ref name="dziennik.com">{{cite web |title=Walczą o polskość Malewicza |url=http://www.dziennik.com/publicystyka/artykul/walcza-o-polskosc-malewicza |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729214514/http://www.dziennik.com/publicystyka/artykul/walcza-o-polskosc-malewicza |archive-date=2013-07-29 |access-date=8 August 2017 |website=Novy Dziennik}}</ref> of parents who were ethnic Poles.<ref name="Schwartz p. 84" /> Both Polish and Russian were native languages of Malevich,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kazimir Malevich Biography |url=http://www.incorm.eu/Biogs/Malevich.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201230145917/http://www.incorm.eu/Biogs/Malevich.pdf |archive-date=2020-12-30 |website=International Chamber of Russian Modernism}}</ref> who would sign his artwork in the Polish form of his name as ''Kazimierz Malewicz''.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w9uEHrbEwWE/T7Ol2wGoIYI/AAAAAAAAMmo/ZXf8HuLtawc/s1600/Artysta_podpis_Tiff+4.jpg| title = Polish form of his name: Kazimierz Malewicz| access-date = 3 April 2014| archive-date = 6 March 2014| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140306220543/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w9uEHrbEwWE/T7Ol2wGoIYI/AAAAAAAAMmo/ZXf8HuLtawc/s1600/Artysta_podpis_Tiff+4.jpg| url-status = live}}</ref> His mother Ludwika wrote poetry in Polish and sang Polish songs, and kept a record of the Polish families living in the area.{{Sfn|Shkandrij|2019|p=106}} In a 1926 visa application to travel to France, Malewicz claimed ''Polish'' as his nationality.<ref name="dziennik.com" /> French art historian Andrei Nakov, who re-established Malevich's birth year as 1879 (and not 1878), has argued for restoration of the Polish spelling of Malevich's name.
In 1985, Polish performance artist Zbigniew Warpechowski performed "Citizenship for a Pure Feeling of Kazimierz Malewicz" as an homage to the great artist and critique of Polish authorities that refused to grant Polish citizenship to Kazimir Malevich.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Zbigniew Warpechowski, Obywatelstwo dla czystego odczucia Kazimierza Malewicza |trans-title=Zbigniew Warpechowski, Citizenship for the pure feeling of Kazimierz Malewicz |url=https://artmuseum.pl/pl/filmoteka/praca/warpechowski-zbigniew-obywatelstwo-dla-czystego-odczucia |website=Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw |access-date=29 January 2019 |archive-date=29 January 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190129182008/https://artmuseum.pl/pl/filmoteka/praca/warpechowski-zbigniew-obywatelstwo-dla-czystego-odczucia |url-status=live }}</ref> 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.<ref name="dziennik.com"/>
=== Ukrainian === According to Russian scholars Tatiana Mikhienko and {{ill|Irina Vakar|ru|Вакар, Ирина Анатольевна|}}, the secret police file from Malevich's arrest on September 20, 1930 indicates that Malevich declared his nationality as Ukrainian.<ref name="Radio Svododa-2019" /><ref name="Rudzytskyi">{{Cite web |last=Rudzytskyi |first=Artur |title=Istorik: "V nekotorykh anketakh 1920-kh godov v grafe 'natsionalnost' Kazimir Malevich pisal: ukrainets" |script-title=ru:Историк: "В некоторых анкетах 1920–х годов в графе "национальность" Казимир Малевич писал: украинец" |url=http://life.pravda.com.ua/society/2009/04/9/17532/ |access-date=23 February 2019 |website=Ukrainska Pravda |language=ru |archive-date=24 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190224173547/https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/2009/04/9/17532/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Scholar Marie Gasper-Hulvat notes that this may have been in part motivated by Malevich's desire to avoid anti-Polish discrimination, since Ukraine was at that time part of the Soviet Union.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Gasper-Hulvat |first=Marie |date=2019 |title=State-Sanctioned Trips of Soviet Artists to the West in the Late 1920s: The Unusual Case of Kazimir Malevich |journal=Space Between: Literature & Culture, 1914-1945 |volume=15 |pages=14 |quote=}}</ref> It is sometimes claimed that he self-identified as a Ukrainian throughout his life.<ref name="Myroslav Shkandrij">{{Cite web |title=Myroslav Shkandrij. Reinterpreting Malevich: Biography, Autobiography, Art // Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Vol. 36. No. 4 (Winter 2002). pp. 405–420. |url=http://shron.chtyvo.org.ua/Myroslav_Shkandrij/Reinterpreting_Malevich_Biography_Autobiography_Art_anhl.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161213101158/http://shron.chtyvo.org.ua/Myroslav_Shkandrij/Reinterpreting_Malevich_Biography_Autobiography_Art_anhl.pdf |archive-date=13 December 2016}}</ref> Similarly, the French art historian Gilles Néret claimed that Malevich, while at times identifying as Polish "out of tact or mischief" and using the Polish spelling of his name, always emphasized his Ukrainian background.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Néret |first=Gilles |title=Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) and Suprematism |date=2003 |publisher=Taschen |isbn=3-8228-1961-1 |location=Cologne |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=7}}
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 there has been more political and cultural pressure to reconsider his Russian nationality and to identify him instead as a Ukrainian painter.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Méheut |first=Constant |date=2024-03-08 |title='Decolonizing' Ukrainian Art, One Name-and-Shame Post at a Time |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/world/europe/decolonizing-ukrainian-art-oksana-semenik.html |access-date=2024-04-12 |work=The New York Times |archive-date=12 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240412224140/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/world/europe/decolonizing-ukrainian-art-oksana-semenik.html |url-status=live }}</ref> This push resulted in the Metropolitan Museum of Art relabeling him as a Ukrainian painter, and later Stedelijk Museum labeling him as a "Ukrainian painter of Polish origin". The relabeling caused a backlash from Russia, including a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<ref name=":3" /> However, the consensus among art historians, including those of Ukrainian origin, is that whereas the discussion (related to 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.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Davies |first1=Katie Marie |date=1 May 2023 |title=The art of decolonization How Eastern European art became the latest battlefront in countering Russian imperialism |url=https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/04/27/the-art-of-decolonization |work=The Beet |access-date=1 May 2023 |archive-date=1 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230501145357/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/04/27/the-art-of-decolonization |url-status=live }}</ref>
==Legacy== Alfred H. Barr Jr. included several paintings in the groundbreaking exhibition "Cubism and Abstract Art" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. 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.<ref name="gagosian1">[http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/march-03-2011--malevich-and-the-american-legacy Malevich and the American Legacy, March 3 – April 30, 2011] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140223144011/http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/march-03-2011--malevich-and-the-american-legacy |date=23 February 2014 }} Gagosian Gallery, New York.</ref>
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.<ref name="gagosian1"/> However, most of Malevich's work and the story of the Russian avant-garde remained under lock and key until Glasnost.<ref name="nytimes1"/> 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.<ref name="nytimes1"/>
From 15 January - 4 April 1993, the Fundación Juan March, Madrid exhibited ''Malevich. Collection of the Russian State Museum, Saint Petersburg''. The exhibit was the first retrospective of Malevich's work in Spain. The exhibit later traveled to Museo Picasso, Barcelona (22 April - 6 June 1993) and I.V.A.M., Valencia (23 June - 29 August 1993).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Malevich. Collection of the Russian State Museum, Saint Petersburg {{!}} Fundación Juan March |url=https://www.march.es/en/exhibitions/malevich-collection-russian-state-museum-saint-petersburg,%20https://www.march.es/en/exhibitions/malevich-collection-russian-state-museum-saint-petersburg |access-date=2025-12-24 |website=www.march.es |language=en }}{{Dead link|date=June 2026 |bot=InternetArchiveBot }}</ref>
=== Collections === Malevich's works are held in several major art museums, including the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and in New York, the Museum of Modern Art<ref name="nytimes1"/> and the Guggenheim Museum. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam owns 24 Malevich paintings, more than any other museum outside of Russia.<ref name="nytimes1"/> Another major collection of Malevich works is held by the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.<ref name="nytimes1"/>
=== Art market === ''Black Square'', the fourth version of his magnum opus painted in the 1920s, was discovered in 1993 in Samara and purchased by Inkombank for US$250,000.<ref name=KIS/> In April 2002, the painting was auctioned for an equivalent of US$1 million. The purchase was financed by the Russian philanthropist Vladimir Potanin, who donated funds to the Russian Ministry of Culture,<ref name=HER/> and ultimately, to the State Hermitage Museum collection.<ref name=KIS>{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/18/arts/arts-abroad-from-a-crate-of-potatoes-a-noteworthy-gift-emerges.html | title=From a Crate of Potatoes, a Noteworthy Gift Emerges | author=Sophia Kishkovsky | work=The New York Times | access-date=23 August 2009 | date=18 July 2002 | archive-date=29 August 2009 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090829115028/http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/18/arts/arts-abroad-from-a-crate-of-potatoes-a-noteworthy-gift-emerges.html | url-status=live }}</ref> According to the Hermitage website, this was the largest private contribution to state art museums since the October Revolution.<ref name=HER>{{cite web|url=http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/05/hm5_4_0.html |title=Co-operation With the State Hermitage Museum |publisher=State Hermitage Museum |access-date=23 August 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091006192020/http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/05/hm5_4_0.html |archive-date=6 October 2009 }}</ref>
In 2008, the Stedelijk Museum restituted five works to the heirs of Malevich's family from a group that had been left in Berlin by Malevich, and acquired by the gallery in 1958, in exchange for undisputed title to the remaining pictures.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/news/he-city-of-amsterdam-and-the-heirs-of-kazimir-malevich-reach-an-amicable-settlement-regarding-the-malevich-collection-in-amsterdam|title=He city of amsterdam and the heirs of kazimir malevich reach an amicable settlement regarding the malevich collection in amsterdam|access-date=12 July 2019|archive-date=12 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190712014507/https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/news/he-city-of-amsterdam-and-the-heirs-of-kazimir-malevich-reach-an-amicable-settlement-regarding-the-malevich-collection-in-amsterdam|url-status=live}}</ref> On 3 November 2008, one of these works entitled ''Suprematist Composition'' from 1916, set the world record for any Russian work of art and any work sold at auction for that year, selling at Sotheby's in New York City for just over US$60 million (surpassing his previous record of US$17 million set in 2000). 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.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/arts/design/a-malevich-and-brancusi-set-auction-highs-for-artists.html ''A Malevich and a Bronze by Brancusi Set Auction Highs for the Artists''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181025110253/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/arts/design/a-malevich-and-brancusi-set-auction-highs-for-artists.html |date=25 October 2018 }}, ''The New York Times'', 15 May 2018</ref>
[[File:Malevich perfume bottle.jpg|thumb|Original Malevich-designed frost glass bottle with craquelure for "Severny eau de cologne" (1911–1922)]]
=== In popular culture === Malevich's life inspires many references featuring events and the paintings as players. The smuggling of Malevich paintings out of Russia is a key to the plot line of writer Martin Cruz Smith's thriller ''Red Square''. Noah Charney's novel, ''The Art Thief'' tells the story of two stolen Malevich ''White on White'' paintings, and discusses the implications of Malevich's radical Suprematist compositions on the art world. British artist Keith Coventry has used Malevich's paintings to make comments on modernism, in particular his Estate Paintings. Malevich's work also is featured prominently in the Lars von Trier film, ''Melancholia''. 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.
In 2015, a local businessman in Konotop, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine commissioned Yurii Vedmid to create a monument of Kazimir Malevich, who lived there from 1894 to 1895. In 2016, it became the communal property of the Konotop community and was relocated to the city square outside the House of Trade.<ref>{{cite web |last1=|first1=|date=2016-09-06 |title=Пам'ятник Малевичу перенесли на площу біля Будинку торгівлі |url=https://konotop.in.ua/pam-yatnik-malevichu-perenesli-na-ploshhu-bilya-budinku-torgivli/ |trans-title=The monument to Malevich was moved to the square near the House of Trade |website=konotop.in.ua |language=uk |url-status= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250406151824/https://konotop.in.ua/pam-yatnik-malevichu-perenesli-na-ploshhu-bilya-budinku-torgivli/ |archive-date=2025-04-06 |access-date=2025-04-06 }}</ref>
===Autobiographies=== 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.{{sfn|Shkandrij|2019|loc=''Kazimir Malevich's Autobiography and Art'', pp. 102–115}} Both are published in:
* {{Cite book |title=Malevich o sebe: Sovremenniki o Maleviche |publisher=RA |year=2004 |isbn=5269010283 |editor-last=Vakar |editor-first=I. A. |volume=1 |location=Moscow |pages=17–45 |language=ru |editor-last2=Mikhienko |editor-first2=T. N.}}
Abridged and revised translations are published in:
* {{Cite book |last=Malevich |first=Kazimir |title=Kazimir Malevich, 1878–1935 : [exhibition], National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 16 September 1990-4 November 1990, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 28 November 1990–13 January 1991, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 7 February 1991–24 March 1991 |date=1990 |isbn=0-295-97066-9 |editor-last=D'Andrea |editor-first=Jeanne |location=Los Angeles |pages=169–75 |language=en |chapter=From 1/42: Autobiographical Notes, 1923–1925 |oclc=22999015}}
The 1923–25 autobiography appears in:
* {{Cite book |last=Malevich |first=Kazimir |title=K. S. Malevich: Essays on Art: 1915–1933 |publisher=Borgen |year=1968 |isbn=978-0815004196 |editor-last=Troels |editor-first=Andersen |volume=2 |location=Copenhagen |pages=147–54 |language=en |translator-last=Glowacki-Prus |translator-first=Xenia |chapter=IZ 1/42: Avtobiograficheskie zametki, 1923–1925 |translator-last2=McMillin |translator-first2=Arnold}}
The 1933 autobiography appears in:
* {{Cite book |last1=Khardzhiev |first1=Nikolai |title=K istorii russkogo avangarda |last2=Malevich |first2=Kazimir |last3=Matiushin |first3=Mikhail |publisher=Almqvist and Wiksell International |year=1976 |isbn=9122000836 |editor-last=Khardzhiev |editor-first=Nikolai |location=Stockholm |pages=85–127 |language=ru}} * {{Cite journal |last1=Malevich |first1=Kazimir |last2=Upchurch |first2=Alan |date=1985 |title=Chapters from an Artist's Autobiography |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/778487 |journal=October |language=en |volume=34 (Fall 1985) |pages=25–44 |doi=10.2307/778487 |jstor=778487 |access-date=15 December 2022 |archive-date=16 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221016211649/https://www.jstor.org/stable/778487 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}
== See also == * List of Russian artists * Sergei Senkin * Oberiu * UNOVIS
== Footnotes == {{Reflist|group=nb}}
== References == {{Reflist|30em}}
== Bibliography == * Crone, Rainer, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich and David Moos. ''Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. * Dreikausen, Margret, ''Aerial Perception: The Earth as Seen from Aircraft and Spacecraft and Its Influence on Contemporary Art'' (Associated University Presses: Cranbury, NJ; London, England; Mississauga, Ontario: 1985). {{ISBN|0-87982-040-3}} * Drutt, Matthew; Malevich, Kazimir, ''Kazimir Malevich: suprematism'', Guggenheim Museum, 2003, {{ISBN|0-89207-265-2}} * Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) ''A World History of Art''. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing. {{ISBN|9781856695848}} * Malevich, Kasimir, ''The Non-objective World'', Chicago: P. Theobald, 1959. {{ISBN|0-486-42974-1}} * ''Malevich and his Influence'', Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2008. {{ISBN|978-3-7757-1877-6}} * Milner, John; Malevich, Kazimir, ''Kazimir Malevich and the art of geometry'', Yale University Press, 1996. {{ISBN|0-300-06417-9}} * Nakov, Andrei, ''Kasimir Malevich, Catalogue raisonné'', Paris, Adam Biro, 2002 * Nakov, Andrei, vol. IV of ''Kasimir Malevich, le peintre absolu'', Paris, Thalia Édition, 2007 * Néret, Gilles, ''Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism 1878–1935'', Taschen, 2003. {{ISBN|0-87414-119-2}} * Petrova, Yevgenia, ''Kazimir Malevich in the State Russian Museum''. Palace Editions, 2002. {{ISBN|978-3-930775-76-7}}. (English Edition) * Shatskikh, Aleksandra S, and Marian Schwartz, ''Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism'', 2012. {{ISBN|9780300140897}} * Shishanov, V.A. ''Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art: a History of Creation and a Collection''. 1918–1941. – Minsk: Medisont, 2007. – 144 p.''[https://web.archive.org/web/20081030225608/http://vash2008.mylivepage.ru/file/1774/6236_MuzeyVitebskFragment3.pdf Mylivepage.ru]'' * {{Cite book |last=Shkandrij |first=Myroslav |title=Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910–1930: Contested Memories |year=2019 |location=Boston}} * Tedman, Gary. Soviet Avant Garde Aesthetics, chapter from Aesthetics & Alienation. pp 203–229. 2012. Zero Books. {{ISBN|978-1-78099-301-0}} * Tolstaya, Tatyana, [http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-square ''The Square''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150615023639/http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-square |date=15 June 2015 }}, ''The New Yorker'', 12 June 2015 * Das weiße Rechteck. Schriften zum Film, herausgegeben von Oksana Bulgakowa. PotemkinPress, Berlin 1997, {{ISBN|3-9804989-2-1}} * ''The White Rectangle. Writings on Film.'' (In English and the Russian original manuscript). Edited by Oksana Bulgakowa. PotemkinPress, Berlin / Francisco 2000, {{ISBN|3-9804989-7-2}}
== External links == {{Commons category}} {{wikiquote|Kazimir Malevich}} * [http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/3710 Malevich works, MoMA] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160420034738/http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/3710 |date=20 April 2016 }} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20150924044233/http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/1102 Kazimir Malevich, Guggenheim Collection Online] * [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/malevich_kasimir.html Kasimir Malevich Works Online, Artcyclopedia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624004506/http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/malevich_kasimir.html |date=24 June 2016 }} *[https://www.academia.edu/27688221/The_Scythian_element_of_the_Russian_primitivism_in_music_and_visual_arts._Based_on_the_work_of_three_painters_Goncharova_Malevich_and_Roerich_and_two_composers_Stravinsky_and_Prokofiev_ Floirat, Anetta. 2016, The Scythian element of the Russian primitivism, in music and visual arts] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220305145334/https://www.academia.edu/27688221/The_Scythian_element_of_the_Russian_primitivism_in_music_and_visual_arts._Based_on_the_work_of_three_painters_Goncharova_Malevich_and_Roerich_and_two_composers_Stravinsky_and_Prokofiev_ |date=5 March 2022 }}. Based on the work Goncharova, Malevich, Roerich, Stravinsky and Prokofiev * [http://bibliothequekandinsky.centrepompidou.fr/clientBookline/service/reference.asp?INSTANCE=INCIPIO&OUTPUT=PORTAL&DOCID=0417675&DOCBASE=CGPP Peter Brooke, ''Deux Peintres Philosophes – Albert Gleizes et Kasimir Malévitch and Quelques Réflexions sur la Littérature Actuelle du Cubisme'']{{Dead link|date=April 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, both Ampuis (Association des Amis d'Albert Gleizes) 1995 * [http://www.43info.com/kazimir_malevich_bottle_cologne_severny/ History of Malevich-designed Perfume bottle of the eau de cologne "''Severny''"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200512011433/http://www.43info.com/kazimir_malevich_bottle_cologne_severny/ |date=12 May 2020 }}
{{Kazimir Malevich}} {{Minimal art}} {{Futurism|state=expanded}} {{Painters of Leningrad Union of Artists}} {{Modernism}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Malevich, Kazimir}} Category:1879 births Category:1935 deaths Category:Ukrainian abstract painters Category:Russian abstract painters Category:Painters from Kyiv Category:Ukrainian people of Polish descent Category:19th-century painters from the Russian Empire Category:20th-century Russian painters Category:Futurist painters Category:People from the Russian Empire of Polish descent Category:Russian male painters Category:Russian modern painters Category:Russian collage artists Category:Polish collage artists Category:Ukrainian collage artists Category:20th-century Polish painters Category:Polish male painters Category:Russian avant-garde Category:Soviet painters Category:Suprematism (art movement) Category:Ukrainian avant-garde Category:Ukrainian male painters Category:Ukrainian male sculptors Category:Deaths from prostate cancer Category:Deaths from cancer in the Soviet Union Category:19th-century male artists from the Russian Empire Category:20th-century Russian male artists Category:Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture alumni