Kazimir Malevich – get to know the mentor of suprematism

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Kazimir Malevich –  (Kiev,  1879– Saint Petersburg, 1935) was the creator of the abstract artistic movement: Suprematism.

Kazimir Malevich

Казимир Малевич (Kazimierz Malewicz)

kazimir malevich autorretrato web

Self portrait, Source: Wikiart

Kazimir Malevich and the suprematism

This movement, born in Russia between the years of 1915-16, had as main impeller the painter Kazimir Malevich.

Suprematism has a strong influence on Russian philosophy of the late nineteenth century and Malevich is moved, in particular, by Nietzsche’s nihilistic thoughts.

From the ideas gathered here, the Russian painter sought to create a pure and perfect painting in order to express the human spirit without showing any connection with the Real.

Black square Malevich
Black Square, Kazimir Malevich, 1924 (Saint Petersburg – Russia).

https://wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Black_Square.jpg


We must devote ourselves directly to the masses of color as such and look for the decisive forms in them. The movement of the red, green and blue masses can not be reproduced by the representative drawing. This dynamism is no more than a revolt of the pictorial masses to become independent of the object, to be freed from the forms that designate nothing, that is to say, to make purely pictorial forms predominate over rational forms, to arrive at Suprematism, new realism of painting. “

(Malevich – Suprematism, writings of 1914-20)


White on White

His intense search for pure painting made Malevich even go so far as to call into question the very existence of painting.

This ideology is reflected in the various studies entitled «White on White».

Kazimir Malevich white on whiteWhite on White, Malevich, 1918 (Museum of Modern Art of New York, EUA).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_on_White#/media/File:White_on_White_(Malevich,_1918).png

White on White is one of the most recognized examples of Suprematist Painting.

This piece was painted in the year following the October Revolution and is part of a series of works initiated by Malevich in 1916 with the same name.


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