About the artist

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Kiev, February 23rd, 1878; Leningrad, May 15th, 1935) studied at the School of Drawing in Kiev.

In 1896 the Malevich family moved to Kursk, where they stayed until 1904. In the autumn of 1904 he went to Moscow. He studied at Fedor Rerberg’s studio (1906-1910). In his autobiography he states that he exhibited works from 1898 onwards; the first available record, however, is from the Exhibition of the Moscow Association of Artists (1907-1909).

In 1910 he was invited by Larionov to present his artworks at the first Jack of Diamonds exhibition and participated in many avant-garde exhibitions thereafter (the first Moscow Salon, 1911; the exhibitions of “Union of Youth”, Petrograd, 1911-1914). Associating with the group “Union of Youth”, he took part in the Target exhibition (Moscow, 1913). He designed the scenery for Aleksei Kruchenykh’s and Mikhail Matiushin’s futurist opera Victory over the Sun in 1913. He was a Cubo-futurist, (1912-1913) and later painted in the manner of “transrational realism” (1912-1914).

In 1915-1916 he participated in important avant-garde exhibitions, including “The First Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: Tramway V” (Petrograd, 1915), the “Last Futurist Exhibition of Pictures: 0.10” (Petrograd, 1915-1916) and published the first of his major theoretical essays: “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism.”

In 1916 he participated in the exhibition “The Store” in Moscow. From 1916 to 1917 Malevich organized the “Supremus” group in Moscow, and with his colleagues, Liubov Popova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Kliun, Vera Pestel and others, prepared the group’s journal for publication, which was not published in the end. After the Revolution of 1917 he became politically active.

In 1918 he joined the newspaper Anarchy, where he published a series of articles about art and power. He was also very active in The Visual Arts Department of the People’s Commisariat for Enlightenment (IZO NARKOMPROS). He designed the set and costumes for Vladimir Maiakovskii’s theater play “Mystery-Buffe” in Petrograd.

From the autumn of 1918 he was professor at the Free State Art Studios (SVOMAS) in Moscow and in Petrograd. From November 1919 to August 1922 he lived in Vitebsk, where he taught at the School of Fine Arts; after philosophical disputes, he soon replaced Chagall as director.

In 1919 he wrote On New Systems in Art. He organized the “Unovis” group in Vitebsk, together with El Lissitzky and Vera Ermolaeva and his students Chashnik, Suetin and Yudin. Branches of “Unovis” opened in Orenburg, Smolensk and in Moscow with Malevich’s participation. In 1919-1920 he held a one-man show of 153 works in Moscow at the Sixteenth State Exhibition. The title of the exhibition was “Kazimir Malevich, His Path from Impressionism to Suprematism.”

From 1922 onwards he lived in Petrograd, accompanied by his students, including the artists Ilia Chashnik and Nikolai Suetin. In Petrograd, he joined a new branch of the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKHUK). He conducted theoretical research and worked on architectural models.

In 1927 he traveled to Poland for a one-man show in Warsaw and to Germany, where his work was shown in a separate section at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. He was invited to teach at the Bauhaus School in Dessau. In 1929 he held a one-man show at the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, and in 1930 in Kiev. In the late 1920s and 1930s he worked in a post-suprematist and realistic style.