Tribute to Malevich - 90 years

Kasimir Servernovitch Malevitch was born in Kiev in 1879 to Polish parents. Malevitch soon showed an interest in painting. It was not until 1904 that he began to receive artistic education. This displeased his father, who wanted him to become a priest.

His move to Moscow brought him into contact with the avant-garde. In particular the famous Vassily Kandinsky, the Russian painter and father of abstraction. Malevitch took part, along with other members of the Russian avant-garde, in a series of exhibitions between 1910 and 1915, including ‘The Jack of Diamonds’ and ‘The Tail of the Donkey’. The artist drew inspiration from many styles, including Picasso, Cézanne and Braque's cubism, to develop an idiosyncratic style, while also collaborating with poets and musicians. 

The origin of success 

In 1913, Malevich worked on the costumes and set for Alexei Kroutchenykh and Mikhaïl Matiouchine's cubo-futurist opera Victory over the Sun. The cubist staging, with its abstract forms, won over an audience of mainly Western intellectuals. 

His research for the opera launched his search for abstraction, characterised by a radical geometrisation of form and construction. This gave rise to his famous Black Square on a White Background. 

This work was exhibited alongside works by fourteen artists, including Malevich and his thirty-five other paintings, at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0.10. This event took place in Petrograd, now St Petersburg, in December 1915. Kasimir Malevich's paintings were brought together under the banner of Suprematism. This term, coined by the artist in 1915, is described in his brochure From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: A New Pictorial Realism. He describes Suprematism as an aesthetic centred on form, detached from any external environment or reality. The purity of form is mastered and colour is worked on solely for its own sake. 

A philosophy, Suprematism 

According to the artist and his artistic path, Suprematism has three degrees. Black, colour and white. Illustrated by his Black Square on a White Background or Quadrangle, Red Square - Pictorial Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions, and his White Square on a White Background. This principle, which goes beyond mere plastic expression, is conceived as a philosophical approach to painting. Malevich wrote on this subject: 

Suprematism ‘is not only a new artistic recipe, it is an ontology, a revelation of the abyss of being, which must metamorphose all human manifestations from top to bottom’. 

This idea of the disappearance of the subject was experimented with by other artists, such as Mondrian (1872-1944) with his Losange with four yellow lines, and Kandinsky, for whom the subject became secondary. This is reflected in the numbering of his works as titles, particularly Composition V. Malevich called this the ‘objectless world’. 

The White Square on a White Background bears witness to a certain iconoclasm in the painter's body of work, a reference to the Russian prophetic tradition. This work is considered to be the first monochrome in history. The colour white appeals to the concept of infinite space. This research into monochromy was revisited by Yves Klein in his Blue Monochrome (IKB 3), the originality of which lies in the invention of a new shade of blue. 

Cubism and Fauvism were the first earthquakes in art, followed by Kandinsky's abstraction. Malevich pushed back the boundaries with the creation of Suprematism, which brought together several Russian artists such as Lazar Lissitzky and Olga Rozanova.

From Suprematism to the figurative

Malevitch fell into considerable disrepute at the end of his career. The painter returned to figurative art. He conformed to the demands of the Soviet regime. He died of cancer in 1935. His emblematic Black Square became the backdrop for his state funeral. 

His work continues to be admired and a source of inspiration for many artists, including Mark Rothko. 

90 years after his death, Museum TV pays tribute to him and invites you to learn more about the various art movements that led to the birth of Suprematism on our video-on-demand platform my.museumtv.art and by watching Museum TV.