Biography of Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism: Consolidation of Abstract Vision (Part 2)

In 1919, Malevich completed the manuscript of his new book, About New Systems in Art, in which he tried to apply the theoretical principles of Suprematism to the new state order, encouraging the implementation of avant-garde art in service to the State and its people.

However, the artist left the capital for the city of Vitebsk at the end of that year, where he was invited to join the faculty of the local art school directed by the illustrious Marc Chagall.

Malevich and Suprematism in Vitebsk

When Chagall left Vitebsk for Paris, Malevich remained as the influential leader of that Vitebsk school.

There, he organized the students into a group under the name of UNOVIS, an abbreviation that could be translated as Affirmers of New Art.

Particularly, the group was a collective where no individual signed a work with their own name, only with the name of the group.

No longer focused on painting per se, this group designed propaganda posters, textile patterns, ceramics, sign plates, and street decorations, reminiscent of the activities carried out at the Bauhaus School, in the Weimar Republic of Germany.

Malevich and the Legacy of Suprematism

Malevich continued to develop his Suprematist ideas in a series of architectural models for utopian cities called Architectona.

These models were composed of rectangular and cubic forms arranged to highlight their formal qualities and aesthetic potential.

In Soviet Russia, however, a different cultural paradigm was put in motion.

The artistic flourishing of the 1920s was reduced by the advent of state-sponsored socialist realism, which ultimately suppressed all other artistic styles. Malevich and his work were condemned to fall into obscurity in such bellicose and conservative sociocultural circumstances.

The Suppression of Malevich

In 1930, he was arrested and questioned about his political ideologies upon returning from a trip to the West.

As a precaution, his artist friends burned some of his writings.

In 1932, a major exhibition endorsed by the State commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution was held in Moscow and Leningrad.

Malevich was included, but now his paintings were accompanied by pejorative slogans, labeled as essentially "degenerate".

But history holds a bizarre detail: the artist continued to create, even under repression.

The Legacy of Malevich

To understand the rest of this journey, continue to our next article: Biography of Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism: Legacy, Works, and Rediscovery (Part 3).