Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Казимир Северинович Малевич, Polish Malewicz, Ukrainian transliteration Malevych, German Kasimir Malewitsch), (February 12, 1878 – May 15, 1935) was a painter and art theoretician, pioneer of geometric abstract art and one of the most important members of the so-called Russian avantgarde .

Malevich was born in Kiev, Imperial Russia (now Ukraine). He studied at the Kiev School of Art (1895 – 1896, the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1904 – 1910) and in the studio of Fedor Rerberg in Moscow (1904 – 1910).

After early experiments with various modernist styles including Cubism and Futurism, in 1915, in Petrograd, he introduced his abstract, non-objective geometric patterns in a style and artistic movement he called Suprematism; famous examples include Black Square (1915) and White on White (1918).

Malevich was 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); later on, he taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in 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. 1976) on his theories.

When the Stalinist regime turned against modernist "bourgeois" art, Malevich was persecuted. Many of his works were confiscated and/or destroyed, and he died in poverty and oblivion in Leningrad, Soviet Union (today Saint Petersburg, Russia).

See also: Alexander Brener

External links

• http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/malevich.html
• "Black Square"
• "White on White"