Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich, in full Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, was born on February 23rd (February 11, Old Style), 1878, near Kiev. He died on May 15rd, 1935, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russian avant-garde painter, who was the founder of the Supremist school of abstract painting.
Malevich was trained at the Kiev School of Art, the Stroganov School in Moscow, and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In his early work he followed Impressionism as well as Symbolism and Fauvism, and, after a trip to Paris in 1912, he was influenced by Picasso and Cubism. As a member of the Jack of Diamonds group, he led the Russian Cubist movement.
In 1913 Malevich created abstract geometrical patterns in a manner he called Subrematism, a term which expressed the notion that color, line, and shape should reign supreme over subject matter or narrative in art. From 1919 to 1921 he taught painting in Moscow and Leningrad, 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 gegenstandsloseWelt (The Nonobjective World). Later, when Soviet politicians decided against modern art, Malevich and his art were doomed. He died in poverty and oblivion.
Malevich was the first to exhibit paintings composed of abstract geometrical elements. He constantly strove to produce pure cerebal compositions, repudiating all sensuality and representation in art. His well-known White on White (1918) carries his Suprematist theories to their logical conclusion.
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The Art of Kazimir Malevich
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