***November 2005*** |
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Kasimir Malevich
February 23, 1878 – May 15, 1935
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Kasimir Malevich was born in 1878, one of six children
and the son of a foreman in a sugar factory in Kiev.
He received only a rudimentary formal education, but
through his own energies he was well read. He developed
a passion for art during his teens, largely teaching
himself while living in the Ukraine. In 1895 Malevich
became a student at the Kiev School of Art, and after
saving money from his job as a railway clerk, he moved
to Moscow to study art full time at the school of Fedor
Rerberg. Malevich worked mainly under the influence
of Impressionism until 1909 when his work took a turn
when he was introduced to the post-impressionist movements
especially that of the Fauves and the Nabis.
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At this time Malevich became acquainted with Michael
Larionov and Nathalie Gontcharova in Moscow and assumed
an active role in the exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds
group. By 1911 Malevich was working in a cubist manner
that was probably closer to Fernand Léger in
style than to Pablo Picasso. By 1913 he had so transformed
his material that recognizable imagery had disappeared,
though inferences of light, bulk, and atmosphere had
remained. Later that year he carried abstraction to
its ultimate limit: he painted a black rectangle on
a white ground. This, the first suprematist work and,
according to the artist, expressed "the supremacy
of pure feeling in creative art."
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In 1919 he had a retrospective exhibition in Moscow and also
took over the directorship of the School of Art in Vitebsk, which
he renamed the College of New Art. His painting output slowed as
he spent more and more time teaching and writing. In 1922 he moved
to Leningrad, where he was provided with a studio and living quarters
in the newly reorganized Museum of Artistic Culture.
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In the 1920s Malevich made several sculptures which look like
models of modern buildings. These he called "arkhitectonics."
In the early 1920s the Soviet government began to assume a negative
attitude toward abstract art, since it was ineffectual as a tool
for propaganda, and started to support "socialist realism."
Despite his loss of stature, Malevich was permitted to go to Germany
in 1927 to exhibit his work and to lecture at the Bauhaus. By the
end of the 1920’s Kasimir had once again taken up figurative
painting, depicting peasants in a colourful and stylized manner
and painting portraits of family and friends.
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Though his production of paintings had
slowed, he continued to paint up until his death from
cancer in 1935. He was buried in Leningrad in a coffin
that he himself had decorated with suprematist motifs.
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Kasimir Malevich, founder of suprematism, is credited
with having painted the first geometric, totally non-representational
picture and his contribution to 20th century art is
of great importance through both his paintings and
his theoretical writings.
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