Page 38 - Studio International - September 1967

Malevich on 'New Art'

Troels Andersen

Malevich's published writings fall into four fairly distinct groups: texts written in 1915-16, when he
was living in Moscow; short articles written during the Revolution; the Unovis period' of 1919-22,
when he worked and taught in Vitebsk; and, fourthly, articles written in Leningrad between 1922
and 1934, when illness more or less ended his activities (he did not, in fact, publish anything after
1930). This division seems valid for all the texts he himself saw through publication.
Troels Andersen deals largely with a group of articles—which he calls New Art—published in the
Ukraine in 1928-30, in which Malevich outlined his views on the development of modern art.
The previously-unreproduced drawings illustrated here come from a private collection in the
Soviet Union. The majority of Malevich drawings in the collection are sketches after existing
paintings; those reproduced, however, are free drawings. In his last years Malevich continued on
Suprematist lines and simultaneously worked towards a new figuration. One of his last group of
drawings is illustrated here.

Peasants c. 1910
pencil
7+ x 9 in.