Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was born on (11) 23 February 1878 near Kyiv. However, there are other accounts of the place and time of his birth. Malevich’s parents were of Polish origin. His father worked as a manager at the sugar plant of the well-known Ukrainian industrialist Tereshchenko (according to other sources, Malevich’s father was a Belarusian ethnographer and folklorist). His mother was a homemaker. The Malevich family had fourteen children, but only nine of them survived to adulthood. Kazimir was the first-born in the family.

He began to learn drawing on his own after his mother gave him a set of paints when he was 15. At the age of 17, he spent some time at the Kyiv Art School. In 1896, the Malevich family settled in Kursk. There Kazimir worked as a minor official, but he abandoned government service for a career as an artist. Malevich’s first works were painted in the style of Impressionism. Later, the artist became one of the active participants in Futurist exhibitions.

To us, K. Malevich’s life seems incredibly rich, full of contrasts, ups and downs. But in the master’s own view, it was not as long or as eventful as he had dreamed. For a long time Malevich dreamed of visiting Paris, but he never managed to do so. He went abroad only to Warsaw and Berlin. Malevich did not know any foreign languages, something he deeply regretted throughout his life. He never traveled farther than Zhytomyr. He was unable to experience many of the aesthetic and everyday pleasures available to his wealthier and better-educated colleagues.

Malevich independently traversed the entire path from a modest autodidact to a world-famous artist; he took part in two revolutions, wrote Futurist poems, reformed theater, spoke at scandalous debates, was fascinated by theosophy and astronomy, taught, wrote philosophical works, was imprisoned, served as director of a major institute, and was unemployed... Punin wrote that Malevich belonged to those people who were “charged with dynamite.” Not every famous artist was able to polarize public opinion so strongly. Malevich was always surrounded by devoted friends and passionate rivals; critics shower