Kazimir Severinovich Malevich is an outstanding Russian artist, the creator of a new direction in painting - Suprematism - and a theorist of painting. The most famous work of Malevich is the painting "Black Square", the debate about which does not subside to this day.
Kazimir Malevich - the founder of Suprematism
The future artist was born in 1878 in Kiev in a family of immigrants from Poland. Malevich received his education first at the Kiev Drawing School, and then at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In addition, he attended the art studio of F. Rerberg for several years.
The first known mention of the works of Kazimir Malevich is associated with the 14th exhibition of the Moscow Association of Artists in 1907, where 2 sketches of the artist were presented. He also took part in exhibitions of "Jack of Diamonds", the First Moscow Salon, "Union of Youth", "Donkey's Tail", "Contemporary Painting".
In literally 10 years, from 1903 to 1913, the artist went from impressionism and symbolism to the Russian variety of fauvism - primitivism and then to cubo-futurism and suprematism.
Kazimir Malevich acted as a theorist of new trends in art in the brochure "From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism" (1915). In a short time, it went through 3 editions.
Since the 1910s, the work of Kazimir Malevich has become a kind of "testing ground" where new possibilities of painting were tested and honed. Searches went in different directions, but the main achievement of the artist during these years was the cycle of paintings, which brought Malevich great popularity. These are the well-known canvases "The Cow and the Violin", "The Aviator", "The Englishman in Moscow", "Portrait of Ivan Klyun". In them, the artist demonstrated a new way of organizing the space of the painting, unknown to the French cubists.
"Black Square" - a brilliant painting or quackery?
In the middle of 1915, having written more than 39 paintings, sustained in the principles of Cubism, but tending to non-objectiveness, Malevich gave the name of the new painting - Suprematism. The famous "Black Square", which was demonstrated in 1915 at the last exhibition of the futurists, became the manifesto of this artistic direction. It is this painting, according to the artist himself, should be the beginning of the end of "visible, object painting". In his brochure Malevich proclaimed Suprematism the beginning of a new culture.
"Black Square" and other Suprematist paintings by the artist are compositions where the main image is the image of geometric figures on a background neutral in color. In these works, even the slightest hint of materiality is completely absent. Nevertheless, Malevich's works are distinguished by a certain natural harmony, which appears at the "cosmic" level.
Currently, three versions of the painting "Black Square", painted by Kazimir Malevich, are known.
Writing the simplest geometric shape (square), using basic colors - black and white - has been exciting the minds for almost a hundred years, causing heated debate.
Many researchers have tried and are still trying to unravel the mystery of this picture. The interpretations of this painting by Malevich are extremely contradictory - from the gloomy revelation of a genius artist to an example of wretchedness, from an artificially inflated fetish behind which there is absolutely no mystery to a Jewish symbol, and even an act of self-affirmation of the satanic principle.
Be that as it may, Malevich created a great canvas, which, like a magnet, attracts lovers and specialists of painting.
