“Up until now there were no attempts at painting as such, without any attribute of real life…Painting was the aesthetic side of a thing, but never was original and an end in itself.”    ~Kazimir Malevich

A gloriously, insightful and refreshingly revelatory exhibition, presenting the work of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), has been the subject of a major exhibition, Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art, at Tate Modern, London. It is an expansive retrospective, charting his entire artistic career and presenting the first opportunity to see many of his iconic paintings, such as the infamous Black Square. When this work was first created in 1915, a very big year for Malevich as well as the course of modern art, it scandalised audiences due to rejection of the conventions of pictorialism. xxxxxx

The opening section of the exhibition is surprising as you are faced with the revelation of his early works. Many are loaded with colour and expression which demonstrate that Malevich was heavily influenced by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh. Works such as Assumption of a Saint (1907-8), and Shroud of Christ (1908), are steeped in religious mysticism and symbolism, while the brushwork and rich colour in Self-Portrait (1908-10), is reminiscent of Paul Gauguin and Fauvism.

Malevich’s career spanned an era of political upheaval that transformed Russia; when he started painting as a teenager, it was an autocratic state ruled by Tsar Nicholas II. In 1879, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born in Kiev, to Polish parents. He was the eldest of fourteen siblings, five of whom died in childhood. They had fled Poland to Ukraine in 1863 in the wake of the historical uprising against the Russian Empire.

Left:Kazimir Malevich, Self-portrait, (1908 or 1910-11), paper, water-colour, gouache, 27 ? 26.8 cm. Collection: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Becoming a Russian artist was a special accomplishment for Malevich. He first travelled to Moscow in 1904, visiting the Moscow School for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he was exposed to staged exhibitions of Western European artists, and two of the world’s finest collections of contemporary art—those of the merchants Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morosov. Seeing and absorbing French modern art greatly assisted Malevich’s first hand study of art, compressing the developments of several decades into a few years. The brushwork and subject matter that Malevich incorporates into his work is evocative of the political realities at the time, fashioned with a utopian desire.

Right:Morning in the Village after Snowstorm (Utro posle v’iugi v derevne), 1912. Oil on canvas, 31 ½  x 31 ½”. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Malevich, the talented painter, slowly established a name for himself and alongside young artists such as Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov. He strove to develop a unique Russian form of modernism, substituting Breton peasants for Russian farmworkers. A combination of simplified forms, expressive colours and religious icons that innovatively meshed with western avant-garde techniques are seen in Morning in the Village after the Snowstorm (1912) and Woman at the Tram Stop (1913-14).

Left: ‘Lady on Tram,’ 1913 o/c, 88 x88 cm. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Throughout the vast expanse of galleries we are guided down a memorable path of significant milestones of Malevich’s artistic journey. This includes seeing him become an artist in the true Russian style, as well as his experimentation with western European-influenced, Cubo-Futurism. This hybrid form of painting combined the dynamism associated with the Italian futurists and influences from Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The point where he decides to merge the boundaries of the abstract and representational are particularly visible in works such as Head of a Peasant Girl (1912).

The Russian Futurist era was fuelled by literary associations and a broad exchange of ideas. It was during this time that Malevich collaborated with the musician Mikhail Matyushin, and poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh on a futurist opera, Victory over the Sun in 1913. At this juncture, these artists demonstrated that the innovative treatment of language could abandon pictorial conventions, thus coining an approach to painting that was more purely allegorical. This philosophy allowed colour and form to be detached from the physical world—a move that allowed Malevich to shift into abstraction, readying him for the work that would produce examples of ‘modern’ art he is best known today.

On view is a series of sketches for this theatre project, featuring outandish costumes and backdrops, dominated by Suprematist principles. Included in the exhibition are Sketch for a Stage Curtain for the Opera Victory over the Sun by M. Matyushin and A. Kruchenykh, 1928 (left. Photograph:St. Petersburg Museum of Theater and Music).

The birth of Suprematism coincided with Duchamp’s creation of the Readymade. At the heart of Suprematism was colour in the body of geometric forms that had a rhythm and movement demonstrating order and chaos. Malevich declared, “Suprematism is the beginning of a new culture…Our world of art has become new, non-objective, pure. Everything has disappeared; a mass of material is left from which a new form will be built.” The term Suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on visual depiction of objects.

The iconic Black Square (1915), was first seen in a show with other Russian avant-garde artists in the newly-named city of Petrograd. This painting was a groundbreaking statement, presented as the ‘new realism.’ Within the Tate exhibition there is a recreation of that exhibition, The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0.10, (right: Tate exhibition, after original, below, right. Tate photo: Olivia Hemingway; 1915 photo, collection: Charlotte Douglas, New York), modelled on a small photograph—the only existing image of that show. The original Black Square did not travel, as it is now quite fragile. Malevich created four versions of this image; those from 1923 and 1929 are on display. Soon to follow were, Red Square (Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions), 1915, Cross (Black), 1915, Elongated Plane, 1915, White Supremacist Cross, 1920-21, and many other Suprematist compositions.

These works were created during a period of war, food shortages and overall despair just before Malevich was called up as a reservist in the Russian army, in July 1916. The 1917, collapse of the old regime and abdication of Tsar Nicholas II were greeted enthusiastically by the community of avant-garde artists. However, society questioned the purpose of art in the new egalitarian society. This sentiment affected Malevich, who said “Painting died, like an old regime, because it was an organic part of it.” He used this mood to design architectons as the natural progression for Suprematicism; these model buildings were imaginative concepts of what architecture might look like.

Malevich abandoned painting and taught from the early 1920’s until around 1929, during which time he also belonged to an artists’ collective called, Champions of New Art, or UNOVIS. His teaching charts which illustrate Malevich’s vision of the development of modern art are displayed. A selection of work by other members of his group, who embraced the utopian spirit and wished to bring suprematicism into the street, workplace and home are exhibited in this gallery.

Left: Red Square (Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions), 1915.

Malevich worked on paper throughout his artistic career. He used it as a tool for thinking. The gallery which houses a large body of this material includes sketches for his paintings and a series of anti-German propaganda postcards. Malevich started to paint again in 1929, however, experiments of the avant-garde were condemned as elitist and Social Realism established as the sole authorised style of the Soviet Union. His new works blended figuration and abstraction, many are rural scenes as well as Suprematicism-inspired, semi-geometric figures such as Head of a Peasant (1928-29).

The last two galleries of the exhibition demonstrate the variety of figurative styles that Malevich explored during the 1930’s. Many are reminiscent of his early years. The final room of the exhibition has a series of family portraits, including of his mother and daughter. They are painted in styles referencing 19th century Realism and Impressionism. He uses a Renaissance style for the larger portraits which are similar to many of the portraits that appear at the start of the show. They appear sadder somehow and belie the toll that social and political upheaval in the region had taken on the artist. This room leaves the viewer with a feeling of melancholy, especially as these works are painted just a few years before Malevich’s death.

Malevich had a difficult time in his last years. He was arrested and accused of espionage during his only overseas trip to Germany in 1930. Many of his manuscripts were destroyed by his fearful friends at the time. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1933, but was refused travel abroad to seek medical treatment.

Left: Head of a Peasant (1929), oil on wood, 71.7 x 53.8 cm. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Despite being ill, Malevich began a series of portraits that evoke early Italian Renaissance and Dutch painting. In Leningrad, aged fifty-six Malevich died on 15 May 1935. His funeral was a large affair with a procession of mourners holding flags adorned with black squares, which UNOVIS members had adopted as their collective signature.

Within a short time after his death, Malevich’s work disappeared from public view as the Socialist Realism adopted by Stalin became the official cultural doctrine. However, the State Russian Museum acquired several of Malevich’s works and awarded a pension to his family for services to Soviet figurative art. From the late 1950s, some of his less radical work was shown, however it was not until the 1980s that the Black Square was exhibited again.

The exhibition displays the important collections of Nikolai Khardzhiev (1903-1996) and George Costakis (1913-1990), both of whom collected Russian avant-garde art when it was banned in the Soviet Union. They were immensely committed to rescuing and preserving artworks that were discovered hidden away. Also included are important loans from collections in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.

This exhibition takes you on a full journey through Kazimir Malevich’s artistic career. It reinforces the point that, as an artist, Malevich is world renowned for introducing single colour in a spellbinding stillness through his doctrine of Suprematism. It is the first time ever that this material has been seen in the UK. Don’t miss it, especially Black Square, being heralded as “the Mona Lisa of Modernism” (The Times).

By Jennifer Francis, Contributing Writer

Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art, until October 26th 2014, Tate Modern, London