Self-Portrait. 1933, oil
on canvas, 73x6
Kasimir
Malevich
(1878-1935)
Kasimir Malevich is Belorussian
painter and designer, with Mondrian the most important pioneer of geometric
abstract art.
Malevich was born February
26, 1878, near Kiev. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture,
and Architecture in 1903
(Early
creativity) During the early years of his career, he experimented with
various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, such
as those of the Moscow Artists’ Association, which included Vasily Kandinsky
and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow.
Malevich showed his Primitivist paintings of peasants at the exhibition
Donkey’s Tail in 1912. After this exhibition, he broke with Larionov’s
group. In 1913, with composer Mikhail Matiushin and writer Alexei Kruchenykh,
Malevich drafted a manifesto for the First Futurist Congress. That same
year, he designed the sets and costumes for the opera Victory over the
Sun by Matiushin and Kruchenykh. Malevich showed at the Salon des Ind?pendants
in Paris in 1914. At the 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd
in 1915, Malevich introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings.
In 1919, he began to explore the three-dimensional applications of Suprematism
in architectural models. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Malevich
and other advanced artists were encouraged by the Soviet government and
attained prominent administrative and teaching positions. Malevich began
teaching at the Vitebsk Popular Art School in 1919; he soon became its
director. In 1919–20, he was given a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition
in Moscow, which focused on Suprematism and other non-objective styles.
Malevich and his students at Vitebsk formed the Suprematist group Unovis.
From 1922 to 1927, he taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd,
and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with
his students. In 1927, Malevich traveled with an exhibition of his paintings
to Warsaw and also went to Berlin, where his work was shown at the Grosse
Berliner Kunstausstellung. In Germany, he met Jean Arp, Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier,
and Kurt Schwitters and visited the Bauhaus , where he met Walter Gropius.
The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow gave Malevich a solo exhibition in 1929.
Because of his connections with German artists, he was arrested in 1930
and many of his manuscripts were destroyed. In his final period, he painted
in a representational style. Malevich died May 15, 1935, in Leningrad.
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