Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Polish Kazimierz Malewicz; February 11, 1879, Kyiv - May 15, 1935, Leningrad) - Russian and Soviet avant-garde artist of Polish origin, teacher, art theorist, philosopher. The founder of Suprematism - one of the earliest manifestations of modern abstract art.
In accordance with the entry in the metric book of the Kyiv church of St. Alexandra, Kazimir Malevich was born on February 11 (23), and baptized on March 1, 1879 in the city of Kyiv. It was previously believed that the year of his birth is 1878.
His father, Severin Antonovich Malevich (1845-1902) (gentry of the Volyn province of the Zhytomyr district), originally from the town of Turbova, Podolsk province, served as a manager at the sugar factories of the famous industrialist Nikolai Tereshchenko. Mother, Ludviga Aleksandrovna (1858-1942), nee Galinovskaya, was a housewife. They got married in Kyiv on February 26 (March 10), 1878.
Parents are Polish by origin. Casimir became their first child. The family had four more sons (Anton, Boleslav, Bronislav, Mechislav) and four daughters (Maria, Wanda, Severina, Victoria). In total, the Malevich couple had fourteen children, but only nine of them survived to adulthood.
The Malevich family was Polish, they spoke Polish at home in the family, and Ukrainian in the environment; Subsequently, Malevich wrote a number of articles on art in Ukrainian. Malevich's contemporaries considered him a Pole, and Kazimir Malevich himself considered himself a Pole, but in the 1920s, during the so-called. Indigenization, Malevich in some questionnaires wrote about himself "Ukrainian" and even tried to persuade his relatives to this. In "Chapters from the Artist's Autobiography", written shortly before his death, he recalled himself and his best friend of the Kursk period, Lev Kvachevsky: "We were both Ukrainians." Also in some sources they look for the Belarusian roots of the artist's father.
Casimir's childhood years were spent in the Ukrainian village. Up to 12 years in Moevka, Yampolsky district, Podolsk province, then in Parkhomovka, Volchka, Belopolye; further, until the age of 17, he mainly remained in Konotop. In 1895-1896 he attended the Kyiv drawing school of N. I. Murashko, studying with N. K. Pimonenko.
In 1894-1895 Malevich lived in Konotop. According to the memoirs of the artist himself (initiated in 1933 by Nikolai Khardzhiev), he painted his first oil painting at the age of 16 (in all likelihood, in 1894). The painting called "Moonlight Night", three-quarters in size, depicted a river with a boat on the shore and the moon reflecting the rays. The work was liked by Malevich's friends. One of the friends (apparently from Konotop) offered to sell the painting and, without asking the artist, took it to the store, where it was quickly bought for 5 rubles. The location of the painting remains unknown.
In 1896 the Malevich family moved to Kursk. Here, Kazimir worked as a draftsman in the Moscow-Kursk Railway Administration, while painting at the same time. Together with his spiritual comrades-in-arms, Malevich managed to organize an art circle in Kursk. Malevich was forced to lead, as it were, a double life - on the one hand, the daily worries of a provincial, an unloved and dreary service as a draftsman on the railway, and on the other, a thirst for creativity.
In his Autobiography, Malevich himself called the year 1898 “the beginning of public exhibitions” (although no documentary information about this has been found).
In 1899 he married Kazimira Ivanovna Zgleits (Polish Kazimiera Zglejc) (1881-1942). The wedding took place on January 27, 1902 in Kursk in the Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Virgin.
In Kursk, the Malevich family rented a house (five rooms) for 260 rubles a year, at ul. Postal, 13, owned by Anna Klein. The building has survived to this day.
In 1904, he decided to drastically change his life and move to Moscow, despite the fact that his wife was against it, since Malevich left her with her children in Kursk. This marked a split in his family life.
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Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born in 1879 in Kyiv. He came from a family of ethnic Poles. The family was big. Casimir was the eldest of 14 children. The family spoke only Polish, and communicated with neighbors in Ukrainian.
Until the age of 17, Kazimir was brought up at home (by that time the family managed to move to Konotop), and in 1895 he entered the Kiev drawing studio (the artist painted his first painting at the age of 16, and his friends, judging by his stories in his autobiography, sold it for 5 rubles).
In 1896, Kazimir began to work (at that time the family was already living in Kursk). He did not leave creativity, continuing to paint unprofessionally. In 1899 he married.
First trip to Moscow
In 1905 Malevich left for Moscow. He tried to enter the Moscow School of Painting, but he was not enrolled in the course. In 1906, he made a second attempt to enter the school, failed again and returned home.
Final move to Moscow
In 1907 the whole family moved to Moscow. Casimir began attending art classes.
In 1909, he divorced and married Sofya Rafalovich, a Polish woman, whose father sheltered Malevich's children in his house (there is no indication in Kazimir Malevich's brief biography of the reason why his children were left alone, without a mother).
Recognition and creative career
In 1910-1914, a period of recognition of Malevich's neo-primitivist work began. He took part in a large number of Moscow exhibitions (for example, "Jack of Diamonds"), exhibited in a Munich gallery. It was at this time that he met M. Matyushin, V. Khlebnikov, A. Morgunov and other avant-garde artists.
In 1915, he wrote the most famous work - "Black Square". In 1916, he organized the Supremus society, where he promoted the ideas of moving away from cubism and futurism to suprematism.
After the revolution, he, as they say, "fell into the stream" and began to deal a lot with the development of Soviet art. By this time, the artist already lived in Petrograd, worked with V. Meyerhold and V. Mayakovsky, taught at the People's Art School, led by M. Chagall.
Malevich created the UNOVIS society (many of Malevich's students faithfully followed him from Petrograd to Moscow and back) and even called his newborn daughter Una.
In the 1920s he worked as director of various museums and institutes in Petrograd, conducted scientific and teaching work, exhibited in Berlin and Warsaw, opened several exhibitions in leading museums in Petrograd and Moscow, taught in Kiev, where a workshop was opened especially for him. At the same time, he divorced his second wife and remarried.
In the 30s he worked at the Russian Museum, exhibited a lot, but painted mostly portraits, although he was interested in architecture and sculpture.
In 1933 he fell seriously ill and died in 1935. He was buried near the village of Nemchinovka, where he lived and worked for a long time.
Other biography options
- In 1930 Malevich was imprisoned. He was charged with spying for Germany. But the investigators and friends in the authorities did everything to ensure that the artist was released six months later.
- Few people know that in addition to the “Black Square”, there is also the “Black Circle” and “Black Triangle”, and the master rewrote the “Black Square” several times and only the last, fourth version, completely satisfied him.
At the mention of such clichés as “ambiguous daub”, “unnecessary, abstract art”, images and faces of a whole galaxy of avant-garde innovators and futurists involuntarily grow in memory, but he alone has always been considered the brightest and at the same time loudest name - the chief architect and revolutionary, ideologist and philosopher, genius and madman - Kazimir Severinovich Malevich.
In May 2017, a painting by Kazimir Malevich "Suprematist composition with a stripe in the projection" became the most expensive lot of the world's oldest auction house Sotheby's. It was sold for 21.2 million dollars with an estimated cost of 12-18 million.
"Suprematist composition with a strip in the projection", K. Malevich. Photo: Sotheby's
In 2008, at the same Sotheby's auction, another painting by Malevich was sold, with the same name, only without a strip - "Suprematist composition" which has become one of the most expensive paintings in history, written by a Russian artist. An unknown buyer agreed to part with an amount in excess of $60 million.
"Suprematist composition", K. Malevich. Photo: Sotheby But perhaps the most famous and at the same time the most discussed painting by the Russian avant-garde artist is "Black square" . There are four black squares in total. The first and third are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the second - in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The fourth hangs in the Hermitage. The approximate cost of each separately is more than 20-30 million dollars. The paintings are not for sale.
"Black Square" by K. Malevich. Photo: rma.ru ″
This simple operation could be performed by any child - however, the children would not have the patience to paint over such a large area with one color. Such work is within the power of any draftsman - and Malevich worked as a draftsman in his youth - but draftsmen are not interested in such simple geometric shapes. A mentally ill person could draw a similar picture - but he didn’t draw it, and if he did, it would hardly have had the slightest chance of getting to the exhibition at the right time and in the right place. Having done this simplest operation, Malevich became the author of the most famous, most mysterious, most frightening painting in the world - "Black Square". With a simple movement of the brush, he once and for all drew an uncrossable line, marked the abyss between the old art and the new, between a man and his shadow, between a rose and a coffin, between life and death, between God and the Devil. Tatyana Tolstaya, writer, in the essay "Square"
According to the Russian art critic, art historian and a great specialist in the Russian avant-garde and in particular the work of K. Malevich Tatyana Goryacheva:
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In the history of world culture, there are not many works whose names have gone beyond their original meaning and acquired the character of a common noun ... There is no picture with a louder glory than Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square", there is no work that caused the appearance of so many other works, .. there is no artifact that has such enduring relevance ... "Black Square" became a real milestone in the history of Russian art of the twentieth century.
I am sure that most experts and critics, and not only Russian ones, will agree with the opinions of the two Tatyanas ... Malevich is certainly a world-famous artist and, as we see, collectors without regret lay out impressive sums for the right to possess paintings by the Russian avant-garde artist. BUT!
Most people, ordinary connoisseurs of painting, do not understand or have doubts about Malevich's work, distinguishing between normal art and degenerate art,* dividing the creators of painting into healthy artists and "mentally ill" ... And there is nothing surprising in this. A matter of artistic taste. But it should be understood that the artist Malevich and his paintings for the same collectors are not an object of admiration and admiration, but a good investment, an investment!
In 1927, Malevich exhibited his paintings at exhibitions in Warsaw and later in Berlin. After the urgent departure of Kazimir Malevich to the USSR in June 1927, the collection of paintings (more than a hundred paintings) was transferred to the German architect Hugo Goering for storage. Goering later took these canvases out of Nazi Germany, where they were to be destroyed as "degenerate art".
"Degenerate art" (German: Entartete Kunst) is a Nazi propaganda term for avant-garde art, which was presented not only as modernist, anti-classical, but also as Jewish-Bolshevik, anti-German, and therefore dangerous for the nation and for the entire Aryan race.
However, avant-gardism was also unloved by the Soviet leadership, unnecessary and ugly.
You will be surprised, but the rich legacy of the avant-garde artist Malevich, in addition to masterpieces from his characteristic areas of Suprematism and Cubism, includes paintings and “simpler”, more understandable and familiar to the classical average connoisseur of painting ... And today we will try to destroy the clichés formed in society about the prohibitively complex and incomprehensible Malevich.
So, another Malevich! Or 20 "indecently simple" paintings by Kazimir Malevich, without complex plots, cubism, suprematism and mystical abstractions:
Self-portrait. 1910-1911. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Self-portrait. Around 1910. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Boulevard. Around 1930, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Spring. 1928-1929. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Argentine polka. 1911. Private collection
The head of a boy in a hat. Early 1930s. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Girl without service. Around 1930. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Female portrait. 1932-1934. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Blacksmith. 1933. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Male portrait. 1933-1934. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
On the boulevard Around 1930. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Leisure (Society in top hats). 1908. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Mother's portrait. Around 1932. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Portrait of the artist's wife. 1934. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Portrait of a drummer (Krasnoznamenets Zharnovsky). 1932. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Worker. 1933. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
(1878, near Kyiv - 1935, Leningrad). Painter, graphic artist, art theorist.
The work of K. S. Malevich occupies a special place in the history of Russian art. He is the creator of the "geometric" version of non-objective art - the famous Suprematism. The artist was born into a family of immigrants from Poland. His father worked at sugar beet factories and in 1894 transferred to a factory in the village of Parkhomovka near the Kyiv-Kursk railway. In Parkhomovka, Malevich graduated from an agricultural school and joined the peasant world. He helped the villagers paint stoves, coat huts with clay, and this life and its figurative world fascinated him very much. Filled with impressions, Malevich painted everything he saw around him.
Paintings by Malevich K. S. with titles
Hall 1
Hall 2
Hall 3
Hall 4
Hall 5
Hall 6
Hall 7
Hall 8
Hall 9
Hall 10
Hall 11
Hall 12
In 1894-1896 he studied at the Kyiv drawing school. In 1896 the Malevich family moved to Kursk. Here Malevich worked as a draftsman in the railway department in order to accumulate funds for art education. In Kursk, he was a member of a circle of art lovers, which was organized by officials of the railway department. In the circle, Malevich got acquainted with the reproductions of the works of I. E. Repin and I. I. Shishkin. Creative searches led him in the early 1900s to work from nature in the open air and to impressionism (“FLOWER”, 1903, State Russian Museum; “ON THE BOULEVARD”, 1903, State Russian Museum; “SPRING - FLOWERING GARDEN”, 1904, State Tretyakov Gallery). At that time, Malevich tried three times to enter the MUZhVZ, but the attempts were unsuccessful. In 1906, he studied at the Moscow studio of F.I. Rerberg, where they prepared for the entrance exams at the School, but this did not help either. More likely. Malevich never got to the School and added the legend of his stay in it to his biography already in the 1920s on the eve of his solo exhibition in 1929 at the Tretyakov Gallery. F. I. Rerberg introduced Malevich to the Moscow Association of Artists, where he exhibited his works in 1907-1910. There Malevich met with artists - supporters of renewal in art - N. S. Goncharova, M. F. Larionov, D. D. Burliuk. Having met like-minded people, he gave up trying to become a student at the School and continued to work independently. Already in 1910, M.F. Larionov invited him to take part in the exhibition of the Jack of Diamonds association. In Moscow, obviously not without the influence of his new friends, Malevich became interested in icons, which he perceived as emotional peasant art. At this time, he turned to the neo-primitive (“KOSAR”, 1912; “REAPER”, 1912, Art Gallery, Astrakhan; “PEASANT WOMAN WITH BUCKETS AND A CHILD”, 1912) and with these works, together with N. S. Goncharova and M. F. Larionov took part in the exhibition of the "Union of Youth" in 1911 in St. Petersburg, and then in the exhibitions "Donkey's Tail" and "Target" in 1912 and 1913. 1913; "SAMOVAR", 1913; "LIFE IN A SMALL HOTEL", 1913-1914). Cubism became for Malevich an expression of a new approach to artistic creativity, since he considered the cubist form a sign of the developed psyche of a person who can already look at the world in a new way: “We have reached the rejection of reason due to the fact that another has arisen in us, in which also has its own law and design and meaning. "Another mind" in Malevich's theory was called "abstruse". One of the first results of the artist's reflections on the new art was his joint work with M. V. Matyushin and A. E. Kruchenykh on the opera Victory over the Sun. The prologue was written by V. Khlebnikov, Malevich made sketches of costumes and scenery.
The artist considered color and a sense of dynamics to be the main and fundamental elements of painting. Color carries energy that is not associated with the subject, so this pictorial tool does not need a form. But non-objectivity does not imply the abolition of the "old" art, but is its logical continuation and completes the trend that the masters of cubism began. It is significant that Malevich performed non-objective works in the traditional technique of painting in oil on canvas. He developed his theory of art throughout 1914, secluded in his studio. Great was the desire to amaze the public, but it is not for nothing that they say that everything secret becomes clear. Malevich presented new works at the "Last Futuristic Exhibition of Paintings 0.10" in 1915, organized by his random visitor, the artist I. A. Puni. To maintain his primacy, Malevich published a brochure on the eve of the exhibition, on the cover of which for the first time a new term appeared: “From Cubism to Suprematism. New pictorial realism. The name was derived from the Latin word "supremus" - "highest". Among the 39 works presented at the exhibition were the now famous paintings "BLACK SQUARE" (1914-1915) and "RED SQUARE" (1915), as well as "SUPREMATISM. SELF-PORTRAIT IN TWO DIMENSIONS" (1915) and a number of canvases under the same name "SUPREMATISM". In the early 1920s, the BLACK CROSS and BLACK ROUND were added to this series. In 1916, Malevich organized the Supremus group, whose tasks included the theoretical and practical development of the ideas of Suprematism. It included I. V. Klyun, L. S. Popova, O. V. Rozanova, N. A. Udaltsova, A. A. Exter, N. M. Davydova. In the same year, Malevich was called up for military service. In 1917 he was elected to the Moscow Council of Soldiers' Deputies, in which he became chairman of the art department. After the October Revolution, in 1918, Malevich was also elected a member of various commissions: the Commission for the Arts of the Narkompros: the Commission for the Protection of Artistic Values of Art and Antiquity, the Museum Commission. In 1919, Malevich directed a workshop at the State Free Art Workshops and in the same year received an invitation to work at the Vitebsk Higher Folk Art School, headed by M. Z. Chagall. Malevich sought to introduce a collective method of education and creativity, which caused methodological disputes with M. Z. Chagall. As a result, M. Z. Chagall left Vitebsk, and Malevich took his place as head of the school. In 1920, as a result of the search for organizational forms and the name "new charter in art", as Malevich himself designated the group, it received the name Unovis (Affirmative of the new art). At exhibitions, all paintings were exhibited anonymously. In 1920, Malevich had a daughter, Una (named after Unovis), and in the same year he published the album “Suprematism. 34 drawings.
In 1922, Malevich, with several students, including I. G. Chashnik and N. M. Cyetin, returned to Petrograd and began to embody the ideas of spatial Suprematism, developing ways for its practical application. In the same year, Kazimir Severinovich took over as director of the Museum of Artistic Culture, and in 1923 and until 1926 he was director of the State Institute of Artistic Culture (Giphuk). Here he led the formal-theoretical department, the department of material culture, and in 1925, together with his students, created spatial Suprematist models - "architectons". Due to a number of disagreements, the artist was forced to leave Ginhuk. In 1927, Kazimir Severinovich visited Germany with an exhibition of his works and in 1928 returned to Russia.
During this period and until 1930, he published a number of articles on contemporary art in the Kharkov journal New Generation. Colleagues at the State Institute of Art History, of which Malevich was an employee at that time, had a negative attitude towards his research activities and made the artist leave the institute. To this, Malevich responded by stating that "Art critics always demand that art be understood, but they never demand that they adjust their heads to understanding."
During this period, the artist again returned to painting in a peasant theme, combining in his paintings the ideas of cubo-futurism and suprematism (“PEASANT”, 1928-1932, Tretyakov Gallery; “TORSO IN A YELLOW SHIRT”, 1928-1932, Russian Museum, “LANDSCAPE WITH FIVE HOUSES”, 1928-1932, Russian Museum). In the timing; "PORTRAIT OF V. A. PAVLOV", 1933, Fri).
1. Black Suprematist Square, 1915
Canvas, oil. 79.5×79.5 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
The most famous work of Kazimir Malevich, created in 1915 specifically for the final futuristic exhibition "0.10", which opened in St. Petersburg on December 19, 1915. "Black Square" is included in the series of Suprematist (from Latin supremus - the highest) works of Kazimir Malevich. Being a kind of abstractionism, Suprematism was expressed in combinations of multi-colored planes of the simplest geometric outlines, devoid of pictorial meaning. Suprematist works occupied a separate hall of the exhibition. Among the thirty-nine Suprematist paintings, in the most prominent place, in the so-called "red corner", where icons are usually hung in Russian houses, hung the "Black Square".
"Black Square" is part of the series of Suprematist works by Kazimir Malevich, in which the artist explored the basic possibilities of color and composition; is, by design, part of a triptych, which also contains the "Black Circle" and "Black Cross".
The "Black Square" has neither top nor bottom; approximately equal distances separate the edges of the square from the vertical and horizontal lines of the frame. Few deviations from pure geometry remind viewers that the picture is still painted with a brush, that the artist did not resort to a compass and ruler, drew an elementary geoform "by eye", joined intuition to its inner meaning. We used to think that the background of the "Black Square" is white. It is actually the color of baked milk. And in the jerky strokes of the background, different layers of paint alternate - thin and dense. But on the black plane it is impossible to find a single trace of a brush - the square looks uniform.
Attempts by convinced fans of figurative art alone, who believe that the artist is misleading them, to explore the canvas in order to find a different original version under the top layer of painting, have been made repeatedly. However, technological expertise has not confirmed the presence of any other image on this canvas.
Subsequently, Malevich, for various purposes, performed several author's repetitions of the Black Square. Now four variants of the Black Square are already known, differing in pattern, texture and color. All author's repetitions of the painting are stored in Russia, in state collections: two works in the Tretyakov Gallery, one in the Russian Museum and one in the Hermitage.
It is interesting that in 1893 a painting by Alphonse Allais with a dull black field of canvas was exhibited, under the title "Battle of Negroes in a deep cave on a dark night."
2. Black circle, 1923
Canvas, oil. 106×105.5 cm
The Black Circle is one of the most famous paintings by Kazimir Malevich, the founder of a new trend in painting - Suprematism.
The picture belongs to the direction of Russian non-objective painting, called Suprematism by K. S. Malevich, or “new pictorial realism”. The non-objectivity of Suprematism for K. S. Malevich was called by him a conclusion from the objective world, a new aspect that revealed nature, space, the Universe to the artist. Suprematist forms "fly", are in a state of weightlessness. The "Black Circle" for the artist was one of the three main modules of the new plastic system, the style-forming potential of the new plastic idea - Suprematism.
The picture was painted in 1915, later the author made its variants for various exhibitions - the author's repetitions. The first "Black Circle" was painted in 1915 and exhibited at the "Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings" 0.10 "". Now kept in a private collection. The second version of the painting was created by Malevich's students (A. Leporskaya, K. Rozhdestvensky, N. Suetin) under his guidance in 1923. This picture is included in the triptych: "Black Square" - "Black Cross" - "Black Circle". Currently stored in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
3. Red Square, 1915
Canvas, oil. 53×53 cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
"Red Square" - a painting by Kazimir Malevich, written in 1915. The title on the back is "Woman in Two Dimensions". It is a red rectangle on a white background, slightly different in shape from a square. Exhibited at the exhibition in 1915. In the exhibition catalog of 1915, he received a second name - "Picturesque realism of a peasant woman in two dimensions." Currently located in the Russian Museum.
In 1920, Malevich wrote about this painting that "in the hostel, he received more significance" "as a signal of the revolution."
Xana Blank compares Malevich's Suprematism with the work of Leo Tolstoy. In particular, Tolstoy's short story "Notes of a Madman" describes a room where Fyodor begins to experience mortal anguish: "A clean whitewashed square room. How, I remember, it was painful for me that this room was exactly square. There was only one window, with a red curtain. That is, a red square on a white background is, in fact, a symbol of longing. Malevich himself explained the concept of his first "Black Square", that "a square is a feeling, white space is an emptiness behind this feeling." Xana Blank comes to the conclusion that, as in Tolstoy's story, the red square on a white background graphically depicts the fear of death and emptiness. However, this interpretation of Xana Blank completely contradicts the title of the painting: "A Woman in Two Dimensions", which Malevich left on its back.
4. Red cavalry galloping, 1928-1932
Canvas, oil. 91×140 cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Painted in 1928-1932, the exact date is unknown; Malevich put an earlier date on many of his later paintings. Currently stored in the Russian Museum.
The picture is divided into three parts: heaven, earth and people (red cavalry). The ratio of the width of the earth and sky in the proportion of 0.618 (golden section). Cavalry of three groups of four riders, each rider blurs, possibly four ranks of cavalry. The earth is drawn from 12 colors.
For a long time, the painting was the only one of the artist's abstract works recognized as the official history of Soviet art, which was facilitated by its title and depiction of the events of the October Revolution. Malevich put the date 18 on the reverse side, although in fact it was written later.
5. Suprematist composition, 1916
Canvas, oil. 88.5cm×71cm
Private collection
The painting was painted by the artist in 1916. In 1919-20 she exhibited in Moscow. In 1927, Malevich exhibited the painting at exhibitions in Warsaw, and later in Berlin, where the painting remained after Casimir left for the USSR in June 1927. Later, the painting was transferred to the German architect Hugo Hering, who sold it to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it was kept for about 50 years.
Throughout the 20th century, the painting was repeatedly exhibited at various exhibitions, mainly European ones. The Amsterdam collection of works by Malevich - the largest outside the former USSR - was acquired in 1958 by the city authorities for a solid sum of 120 thousand guilders at that time from the heirs of the famous architect Hugo Haring. He took these paintings out of Nazi Germany, where they were to be destroyed as "degenerate art." Malevich's paintings fell into Haring's hands by accident: the artist left more than a hundred paintings under his supervision in 1927, when they were exhibited in Berlin, and the author himself was urgently summoned to his homeland.
When in 2003-2004 the museum exhibited Malevich's paintings in the United States, the artist's heirs challenged the rights of Haring (and, accordingly, the museum) to dispose of them. After a 4-year trial, the parties came to an amicable agreement, according to which the museum ceded five significant paintings from its collection to the heirs. After 17 years of litigation, the painting was returned to the artist's heirs.
On November 3, 2008, at Sotheby's in New York, the painting was sold to an unknown buyer for $60,002,500, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever painted by a Russian artist.
6. Winter landscape, 1930
Canvas, oil. 54x48.5 cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
The image of a winter day in this painting corresponds to the artist's desire to change traditions and use other means of expression than before. The style of writing is primitivist, the picture was painted as if by an inept child's hand, when there are still no skills in drawing complex objects, and an inexperienced artist draws what he sees with geometric figures. Malevich, an experienced artist, specifically applied this method to convey the feeling of a winter day. His trees are made up of circles, which are supposed to represent snow caps. The figurine in the background shows how deep the snow is. The artist uses clean, saturated colors that are unconventional for depicting winter.
7. Cow and violin, 1913
Oil on wood 48.8 x 25.8 cm.
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
In 1913, between trips to St. Petersburg, Malevich found himself in Kuntsevo, not far from Nemchinovka, where he and his family rented a dacha - it was much cheaper than renting an apartment in Moscow. The lack of money was chronic. Sometimes there was not enough money even for a canvas - and then furniture was used. Three shelves of an ordinary bookcase were destined to gain immortality, becoming three paintings by Malevich. "Toilet box", "Station without stopping", "Cow and violin" have the same dimensions, and at the corners of their wooden rectangles, closed round holes are noticeable, through which the posts connecting them once passed.
According to Malevich, the fundamental law of creativity was the “law of contrasts”, which he also called the “moment of struggle”. The first picture that clearly embodied the paradoxical nature of the open law was the Cow and the violin. It is noteworthy that the author considered it necessary to explain the outrageous meaning of the plot with a detailed inscription on the back: “An illogical comparison of two forms -“ a cow and a violin ”- as a moment of struggle with logic, naturalness, petty-bourgeois meaning and prejudices. K. Malevich”. In "The Cow and the Violin" Malevich deliberately combined two forms, two "quotes" symbolizing different areas of art.
8. Grinder, 1913
Oil on canvas 79.5x79.5 cm
Yale University Art Gallery
The painting "Grinder" was painted by Kazemir Malevich in 1913. The painting is currently in the Yale University Art Gallery. Currently, "Grinder" is a classic canvas of Russian cubo-futurism. Another name for the painting is "The Principle of Flickering". It is it that perfectly indicates the thought of the artist. In the picture, we see a repetition of countless crushing contours and silhouettes that are in a gray-blue color. When looking at the picture, the flickering of the knife sharpening process is perfectly felt. The grinder appears at the same time at different points in space.
9. Reaper, 1912
Oil on canvas 68x60 cm
Astrakhan Regional Art Gallery. B.M. Kustodieva, Astrakhan
Malevich's paintings are very famous, which are usually attributed to the first peasant series - these are canvases such as "Reaper", "Carpenter", "Harvesting Rye" and other paintings. These paintings clearly show the turning point in Malevich's vision of creativity. The figures of peasants, busy with vital concerns, are spread over the entire field of the picture, they are primitivistally simplified, deliberately enlarged and deformed in the name of greater expressiveness, iconographic in terms of the sound of color and strictly sustained flatness. Rural residents, their work and life are exalted and heroized. The peasants of Malevich, as if made up of curved sheets of hard material with a metallic sheen, for all their sketchiness, initially had recognizable forms of real male and female figures. Roughly carved heads and powerful bodies were most often placed in profile; the characters depicted in the front, impressive monumentality.
10. Self-portrait, 1933
Oil on canvas 73 x 66 cm
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
This unexpected realistic "Self-Portrait", created in 1933, became the creative testament of the great Russian avant-garde artist. By that time, he had already discovered a terrible disease, he had little time left to live. By the way, some researchers claim that the development of prostate cancer was provoked by specific methods of influence used on Malevich during interrogations in 1930. Be that as it may, the master left unbroken. And this portrait, clearly oriented towards high Renaissance examples, irrefutably proves this. Malevich does not renounce anything (the Suprematist background of the painting alone is worth something!), asserting the artist's right to free creativity, which was prohibited in a totalitarian state that was concerned about the creation of an earthly paradise. The very granite statuary pose, the very solemn gesture - all this is evidence that even on the verge of death, Malevich does not renounce his mission.
