Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) was an avant-garde artist born in Kyiv, then part of the Russian Empire, to a family of Polish descent. Historians usually describe him as a Russian avant-garde painter, though his national identity is debated. He began in the circle of Cubo-Futurism and in 1915 founded Suprematism, an art of pure geometric forms. That year he showed Black Square at the 0,10 exhibition in Petrograd, together with his theoretical text. Other key works include Samovar (1913), An Englishman in Moscow (1914) and Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918). From 1918 to 1922 he taught at the art school in Vitebsk, where he founded the UNOVIS group in 1919. In 1927 he travelled to Warsaw and Berlin, his only trip outside the Soviet Union. Under pressure from official cultural policy in the 1930s he returned to figurative painting. Malevich died in Leningrad in 1935, aged 56. The Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a show of his work in 1936.