Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde: Featuring Selections from the Khardziev and Costakis Collections

Linda Boersma, Bart Rutten, Aleksandra Shatskikh

In 1915, Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) radically transformed the course of twentieth-century art with his "Black Square" painting and his manifesto "From Cubism to Suprematism." These works espoused a new art of pure geometricism, intended to be universally comprehensible regardless of cultural origin. Although he is famed for his rigorous pursuit of the "non-objective," Malevich in fact explored many strands of painting, embracing at various stages Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism and Cubism, as well as traditional Russian folk art. Drawing on the collections of Nikolai Khardzhiev and Georges Costakis--the two leading collectors of Russian avant-garde art, whose collections were largely assembled at a time when abstract art was banned in the Soviet Union--this catalogue traces the breadth of Malevich's career through his oil paintings, gouaches, drawings, sculptures and designs for...