Kazimir Malevich: Founder of Suprematism and Creator of the Black Square

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich is one of the most revolutionary artists of the 20th century, whose name is forever inscribed in the history of world art. The creator of the legendary “Black Square” traveled a long path from Impressionism to the creation of his own artistic movement — Suprematism. His innovative ideas overturned traditional notions of painting and had an enormous impact on the development of avant-garde art, design, and architecture worldwide.

The Formation of the Artist: From Ukrainian Villages to Moscow Studios

Childhood Among the Colors of Rural Life

The future creator of Suprematism was born into a family of Polish origin. His father, Severin Antonovich Malevich, worked as a manager at sugar factories, a position that required constant relocation. Kazimir’s childhood passed in Ukrainian villages, where he absorbed the atmosphere of folk culture and observed peasants working on plantations. These impressions later found reflection in his famous peasant cycle of paintings. His first encounter with painting occurred in 1889 at a sugar producers’ fair in Kyiv, where his father took the ten-year-old boy. The canvases he saw there made such a powerful impression on young Kazimir that he immediately began to draw. His mother supported her son’s artistic aspirations and bought him paints, while his father dreamed of a more practical career for the eldest of eight children and enrolled him in an agronomy school.

The Path to a Profession

At seventeen, Malevich enrolled in the Nikolai Murashko Kyiv Drawing School, but studied there for only one year — the family moved to Kursk. In his new city, the young man took a job as a draftsman at the Moscow–Kursk Railway Administration, but painting remained his main passion. In Kursk, he became acquainted with local artists and even organized several exhibitions of his own work. However, provincial life could not satisfy the ambitions of the talented youth. In 1904, carefully calculating his modest savings, Malevich set off for Moscow. He dreamed of enrolling in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, but three times — in 1905, 1906, and 1907 — he was rejected. Undeterred by failure, the artist found an alternative path and from 1907 began attending the studio school of Fyodor Rerberg, where he studied art history and mastered various techniques.

The Search for a Personal Style: From Impressionism to the Avant-Garde

Early Experiments

The Moscow period became a time of intensive creative searching. Malevich tried different manners, imitating renowned masters and experimenting with styles. He created religious compositions such as “The Shroud” (1908) in the spirit of Byzantine icon painting, as well as Impressionist landscapes like “Landscape with a Yellow House.” A turning point came with the 1910 exhibition of the “Jack of Diamonds” group. After it, the artist produced his first avant-garde works — “The Bather,” “The Gardener,” “The Floor Polishers.” These paintings already revealed a striving for a new artistic language based on simplified forms and expressive color.

The Peasant Cycle and Cubo-Futurism

At the same time, Malevich began work on the peasant series, which became an important milestone in his career. Early canvases of the cycle — “The Reaper,” “The Mower,” “Peasant Woman with Buckets and a Child” — were executed in the style of Neo-Primitivism with deliberately enlarged and simplified figures. Later, in works such as “Morning After a Snowstorm in the Village” and “Harvesting Rye,” the artist turned to Cubo-Futurism, transforming peasant silhouettes into compositions of geometric shapes. Malevich himself described his path as follows: “I remained on the side of peasant art and began to paint pictures in a primitive spirit.” He distinguished four periods of his early work — from imitation of icon painting to urban subjects featuring floor polishers and maids.

The Birth of Suprematism: A Revolution in Art

The Path to Non-Objectivity

In 1913, Malevich joined the St. Petersburg artistic association “Union of Youth”. Despite severe financial hardship (at times he had to paint on shelving boards instead of canvas), the artist continued to experiment. He created a series of works in the style of “alogism” — a movement that challenged the traditional logic of art. The painting “Cow and Violin” combined objects incompatible under the laws of classical painting, emphasizing the interaction of colors and lines. That same year, Malevich designed the futurist opera “Victory over the Sun”, creating sets and costumes. It was during work on this production, according to the artist’s recollections, that the ideas for his future revolutionary paintings emerged.

The Triumph of the “Black Square”

In December 1915, at the Last Futurist Exhibition “0.10”, Malevich presented 39 paintings to the public in a completely new style, which he, together with poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh, called Suprematism (from the Latin supremus — “supreme,” “highest”). The central work of the exhibition was the “Black Square”, placed in the “red corner” of the hall — the spot traditionally reserved for icons in Russian homes. For the exhibition, the artist prepared a brochure titled “From Cubism to Suprematism. The New Painterly Realism”, in which he proclaimed the transition to non-objective creation and the dominance of pure color. Malevich asserted that the artist should not copy nature but create their own worlds based on three primary forms — the square, the cross, and the circle. The reaction of his colleagues was sharply negative — participants in the exhibition forbade Malevich to declare Suprematism a branch of Futurism. Critic Alexander Benois called the “Black Square” a “monstrosity of desolation.” But the artist himself was unyielding: “Those accustomed to warming themselves by a dear little face find it hard to warm themselves by the face of a square.”

The Development of Suprematism

At his first solo exhibition in 1919, “Kazimir Malevich. His Path from Impressionism to Suprematism”, the artist identified three stages of Suprematism: black, color, and white. The “black” period was represented by the famous triptych — “Black Square,” “Black Cross,” and “Black Circle.” The “color” period began with the “Red Square” and concluded with the “Supremus” series. The “white” period was marked by the revolutionary series of paintings “White on White”, where white geometric forms are barely discernible against a white background.

From Philosophy to Practice: UNOVIS and the Influence of Suprematism

Theoretical Works

Having created Suprematism, Malevich arrived at his own philosophical theory of art. He now sought to comprehend the universe “no longer with a brush, but with a pen.” In 1919, in Vitebsk, where the artist moved to teach, he wrote the treatise “On New Systems in Art”, and three years later the fundamental work “Suprematism. The World as Non-Objectivity.”

UNOVIS — The Affirmers of New Art

A circle of followers formed around Malevich, and in 1920 the association UNOVIS (Affirmers of New Art) was created. It included Lev Yudin, Lazar Lissitzky, Nikolai Suetin, Vera Ermolaeva, and other talented artists. Members of UNOVIS did not limit themselves to painting — they decorated city celebrations, designed furniture and tableware, created posters and signs, embodying the idea of a “utilitarian world of things” in the Suprematist style. However, the association existed only briefly — until 1922. Soviet art began turning toward Socialist Realism, and conditions for avant-garde work deteriorated sharply. Malevich and his students moved to Petrograd, where from 1924 to 1926 he headed the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK).

Trials of the Soviet Era

European Recognition and Return

In 1927, Malevich made his first and only trip abroad. Exhibitions of his works were held in Warsaw and Berlin, and meetings with Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, and other leaders of the European avant-garde brought the artist international recognition. However, Soviet authorities demanded his immediate return. Before leaving, Malevich entrusted most of his paintings to architect Hugo Häring — these works are now housed in museums in Europe and America.

Repression and Final Years

After returning to the USSR, the artist faced severe trials. In 1930, he was arrested on charges of espionage and anti-Soviet propaganda. Malevich spent three months in prison. After his release, he completed the second peasant cycle in the “post-Suprematist” style — the canvases depict flat, frontal peasant figures with white or black voids instead of faces. On the reverse of one work, the artist wrote: “The composition formed from elements, a feeling of emptiness, loneliness, the hopelessness of life.” From 1932, Malevich returned to portrait painting, combining the traditions of Suprematism, the Russian icon, and the Renaissance. In works such as “Head of a Modern Girl”, “The Worker,” and “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife,” instead of a signature the master placed a black square.

The Memory of a Great Innovator

Kazimir Malevich died on May 15, 1935, after a two-year battle with cancer. His body was cremated, and the ashes were buried in the village of Nemchinovka near Moscow. A cube with a black square, designed by his devoted student Nikolai Suetin, was installed over the grave. The farewell took place in the hall of the Leningrad Union of Artists, where an exhibition of the master’s works was organized, and the poet Daniil Kharms read a poem dedicated to his teacher. Malevich’s legacy is immense. His works are held in the world’s largest museums — the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2008, his “Suprematist Composition” was sold at Sotheby’s for 60 million dollars — a record price for a Russian artist. But most importantly, the ideas of Suprematism continue to inspire artists, designers, and architects around the world, proving that Kazimir Malevich’s revolution in art was genuine and enduring.