FOUNDER OF SUPREMATISMKAZIMIR MALEVICH

KAZIMIR MALEVICH BIOGRAPHY*Malevich was born in Ukraine to parents of Polish origin, who moved continuously within the Russian Empire in search of work.

* Kazimir was the first of fourteen children.

*His father took jobs in a sugar factory and in railway construction, where young Kazimir was also employed in his early teenage years.

*He spent most of his childhood in the villages of Ukraine, amidst sugar-beet plantations, far from centers of culture. Until age twelve he knew nothing of professional artists, although art had surrounded him in childhood. He was happy in village, and in decorated walls and stoves

*Without any particular encouragement from his family, Malevich started to draw around the age of 12. With his mind set firmly on an artistic career, Malevich attended a number of art schools in his youth, starting at the Kiev School of Art in 1895.

KAZIMIR MALEVICH KEY IDEAS*Malevich worked in a variety of styles, but he is mostly known for his contribution to the formation of a true Russian avant-garde post-World War I through his own unique philosophy of perception and painting, which he termed Suprematism. He invented this term because he believed that art should transcend subject matter -- the truth of shape and color should reign 'supreme' over the image or narrative.

*More radical than the Cubists or Futurists, at the same time that his Suprematist compositions proclaimed that paintings were composed of flat, abstract areas of paint, they also served up powerful and multi-layered symbols and mystical feelings of time and space.

*Malevich was also a prolific writer. His treatises on the philosophy of art addressed a broad spectrum of theoretical problems conceiving of a comprehensive abstract art and its ability to lead us to our feelings and even to a new spirituality.

SUPREMATISM*In 1915,. He published his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. In 1916–1917 he took part in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow. Famous examples of his Suprematist works were exhibited there, including Black Square (1915) and White on White (1918).

*After the October Revolution, Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts of Narkompros, the commission for the protection of monuments and the museums commission (all from 1918–1919).

*He taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in the USSR (now part of Belarus) (1919–1922), the Leningrad Academy of Arts (1922–1927), the Kiev State Art Institute (1927–1929), and the House of the Arts in Leningrad (1930). He wrote the book The World as Non-Objectivity (Munich 1926; English trans. 1959) which outlines his Suprematist theories.

*In 1927 he traveled to Warsaw, and then to Berlin and Munich, for a retrospective exhibition. This finally brought him international recognition. Malevich laid down the foundations of Suprematism

*Malevich arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union,

*Critics derided Malevich for "negating everything good and pure: love of life and love of nature". Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art's sake alone, regardless of its pleasure: art does not need us, and it never did.

*Malevich's work only recently reappeared in art exhibitions in Russia after a long absence. Since then art followers have worked to reintroduce the artist to Russian lovers of painting. A book of his theoretical works with an anthology of reminiscences and writings has been published.

DEATH

*Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad on 15 May 1935. On his deathbed he was exhibited with the black square above him, and mourners at his funeral people carried a black square.Malevichwanted to be buried under an oak tree on the outskirts of Nemchinovka, a place to which he felt a special bond.

*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.

*In 2013, an apartment block was built on the place of the tomb and burial site of KazimirMalevich..

Black Square

Square : Sensation , Balance , LimitBlack : NothingnessWhite : Apart from the feeling of thespace

White on White

SuprematistComposition

Airplane Flying

SuprematistPainting

DynamicSuprematism

COSMOS

TREE FIGURES