Secret of 'Black Square' and Other Masterpieces by Ukrainian Artist Kazimir Malevich

The world-famous Ukrainian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich, the author of the Black Square, who was born in Kyiv 145 years ago, on 23 February 1879, was a leading author of abstract art in the early 20th century. His works vividly demonstrate the transition from Cubist to Suprematist art. His paintings are exhibited in the world's best museums, and his work has deep ties to Ukrainian culture.

A lover of the Ukrainian countryside and a daring Suprematist, he was in search of new forms and was the first to depict the Holodomor for the world. 

For a long time, Malevich was considered a member of the Russian avant-garde, but recent research convincingly demonstrates that he was a Ukrainian artist, albeit in the Russian Empire.

At the beginning of his career, Malevich explored different aesthetics and movements, moving from post-impressionism to cubism and futurism until he found and created his own style: an artistic movement called Suprematism. This movement is characterised by the complete abstraction of things, promotes the dominance of pure sensuality and sees the world through geometric shapes and patterns. In this article, we recall ten of the artist's most fascinating paintings, from the famous Black Square to the Suprematist composition.

Malevich called Mykola Pymonenko his teacher in art. From 1895 to 1897, when Malevich lived in Kyiv, he studied at Pimonenko's art studio. "I was stunned by his studio," Malevych wrote in his memoirs, "His paintings depicted the life of Ukraine.

"A circle, a cross, a square - the first elements of folk art," says Malevich's researcher Dmytro Horbatiuk in the film Malevich. Born in Ukraine". It was folk art that influenced the formation of the avant-garde artist Malevich. In his childhood and youth, Malevych learnt embroidery - his mother Ludwig was very fond of embroidery. The artist painted houses together with peasants, crocheted, and worked with lace. It is the echoes of Ukrainian folk art, its rhythm and colour, that will later be found in Malevich's key avant-garde works.

Malevych was one of the few artists of that period who touched upon one of the most tragic pages of Ukrainian and world history - the Holodomor of the 1930s. His legacy includes the work "Where there is a hammer and sickle, there is death and hunger" - it depicts figures with sickle, hammer, cross and coffin instead of their faces. It is a laconic, eloquent and brilliant work.

It is believed that Malevich's sketches for the Black Square were first seen in the 1910s by embroiderers of the artel in Verbivka. At that time, Malevich collaborated with the artel of folk crafts of the then Kyiv province, in the village of Verbivka (today Cherkasy region), which was led by the famous artist Oleksandra Ekster. It was there that, on the initiative of Oleksandra Ekster and Nataliia Davydova, they combined Suprematism and folk art, as local embroiderers worked on Malevich's Suprematist sketches. In particular, these were his sketches for pillows and even scarves.

Later, the sketches and designs made for the artel in Verbivka formed the basis of the set for the play Victory over the Sun, which Malevich worked on in 1913. One of the sets included two coloured compositions, later covered with black paint. This was the first hint of the Black Square. Malevich completed Black Square for about two years and presented it to the public for the first time at the futuristic exhibition 0.10 in St. Petersburg. 

Malevich considered "Black Square" to be the ideal form of the beginning of all forms - and later this painting became the most famous avant-garde work in the world, changing all subsequent art forever.