Kasimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich was born in Kiev, one of six children, to Russified Poles. He developed a passion for art during his teens, largely teaching himself while living in the Ukraine. In 1904, having saved money from his job as a railroad clerk, Malevich moved to Moscow to study art full-time at the school of Fedor Rerberg. While under his tutorship, Malevich produced Symbolist, Impressionist and Art Nouveau paintings and drawings. In 1907 he first took part in the Moscow Artists’ Society’s twice yearly exhibition along with such artists as David Burliuk, Aleksander Shevchenko and Natalia Goncharova. In 1909, with a broad knowledge of Western art, there was a move in Malevich’s work towards Post-Impressionism. With the influence of contemporary French art, however, and of the Russian avant-garde, Malevich’s style developed into one of Cubo-Futurism, for example ‘The Knife Grinder’ (1912)…

Kazimir Malevich studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1903. During the early years of his career, he experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, such as those of the Moscow Artists’ Association, which included Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow…

Works in the MOMA collection

MALEVICH, Kazimir Severinovich

Malevich’s abstract paintings belong to the intense period of artistic experimentation that coincided with the 1917 Revolution in Russia. He abandoned representative images in favour of what he called Suprematism in 1915…