There was an atmosphere of transformation in the beginning of the 20th century. The proletariat and bourgeoisie were fought for the socialist reorganization of society, the social system changed, the division due to anti-religious propaganda took place. People’s minds transformed. They started to think in completely different way.

All these events had found the reflection in the artistic styles of decadence, where artists strived to show a new, perfect, changed world with a positive attitude and meaningful disappointment at the same time, with shocking and nihilistic positions towards outdated values of culture and life. The past was interpreted as something frozen, and the future as a new necessary process. This row of social catastrophes produced then some doubts on the rationality of these events. Both artists and the creative intelligentsia became the prism of that time which projected the ideas of protest, expression, individuality, and defeat. Technological innovations gave birth to belief in their own power and independence.

So-called “Revolutionaries of the avant-garde” and the Bolsheviks took concerted action only in the first post-October years. Later Socialist realism became prevalent trend and that slowed down the process of modernization of artistic culture in our country, which was taking place in full swing in Europe, for half-century.

All these events influenced trends of painting, made it changeable and unstable. After 1930 the modernist tendencies of fiction, both Malevich’s name and his “Black Square” were banned almost until the end of the 20th century.

Kazimir Malevich became world famous after a half-century delay. In Russia it happened when the Soviet ideology collapsed. In Europe it started earlier because the artist had taken away his numerous works and canvases and they found its home in the private and public collections and in the Steidelik Museum, Amsterdam.

Not only artistic works but Malevich’s philosophical and literary ones are also of the high value. In this case Malevich’s art should be studied as a concept of dormitory (Malevich called human civilization “dormitory”) which is formed by artist’s style, theoretical conclusions and the “Black Square” as a logo. To evaluate Malevich’s legacy the study must be done in a holistic and voluminous manner with the identification of the most significant moments in the life and work of the artist-thinker.

Either the study of the secrets of creativity or the facts of Malevich’s life or the artist’s thoughts, the creation of a suprematist masterpiece form a plastic formula which makes it possible to find realization of Malevich’s artistic and written prophecies depending on time and to get closer to the artist’s intention.

Black Suprematistic Square, 1915

Oil on linen, 79,5 х 79,5 cm

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow 2

Kazimir Malevich was born in a family of a sugar cook and a housewife in Kiev in 1878. Kazimir was the first child. He had four brothers (Anton, Boleslav, Bronislav, Mechislav) and four sisters (Maria, Wanda, Severina, Victoria). Malevich spent his childhood in the Ukrainian countryside. There he watched how the painted stoves and the embroidered national patterns were made. Later he recalled that this folk culture had influenced his works. When Kasimir was 15 years old his mother bought him a set of paints in Kiev. From that moment his artistic path began. In 1896 the Malevich family moved to Kursk. In 1899 Kazimir married Kazimiera Zglejc (1883–1942), the daughter of a Kursk doctor. She was a paramedic. Kazimir and Kazimiera had a son Anatoly (1901–1915) and a daughter Galina (1905–1973). Malevich worked in the Office of the Kursk-Moscow Railway as a draftsman. It should be noted that professional activity and specifically work with architectural drawings had influenced the artist’s choice of geometric shapes in painting.

Together with like-minded people Malevich organized an art circle in one of the rooms of the Administration building where they came after the government service to draw both plaster figures and people from nature. “The Exhibition of Moscow and Nonresident Artists’ Paintings” (1905, Kursk) was the first for Malevich. After some years Malevich get bored with measured provincial life. His thought to move to Moscow became obsessive.

In Kursk the first stage of K. Malevich’s creative biography began. Later the researchers classified this period as the early impressionism. The Influence of the French artists was observed in early works such as “Spring Landscape” (mid-1900s, private collection, Paris) and “Church” (circa 1905, private collection). Here Malevich made color and light effects which ranged from discrete brush strokes to neo-impressionistic pointalism with evenly covering the canvas with fine dots. Impressionism was the first step towards the term simulacrum in the postmodern philosophy of our time. Virtual reality which did not exist in reality but was created with the help of technology allowed us to comprehend possible variations of the simulation concept.

When Malevich finally arrived in Moscow in the summer of 1905, he applied for admission to the “Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture”, but did not pass the exams. He stayed in Moscow and rented a room for a nominal fee in an art commune in Lefortovo where many artists lived. But in the spring of 1906 he returned to Kursk for the government service. A year later he again moved from Kursk to Moscow with his family and tried to enter the school for the second time. The attempt was unsuccessful.

It is worth noting that since the beginning of 20th century so-called home-grown boors (students) spated 3 on traditional, itinerant, naturalistic, classical art within the walls of the school where at that time the teaching was based on V. Serov’s, K. Korovin’s wonderful painting schools. They were often expelled problematically, and this process caused many scandals. These students were Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mikhail Larionov, Robert Falk, etc. This was a layer of innovators that were the so-called left painters. The same fate might have awaited Malevich.