Page 27 - Studio International - March April 1975

Mondrian, Malevich should have been
older than most of the artists whom one
immediately thinks of as being his
contemporaries (the Cubists, the Italian
Futurists, and the German
Expressionists), but that all three
abstractionists came to full artistic
maturity after their younger colleagues.
He arrived in Moscow possibly in 1902,
and we have an account of him
distributing illegal literature during the
December revolution of 1905 — a
revolution which Lenin was to describe
as a dress rehearsal for the great
revolution of 1917. He attended classes
at the School of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture until 191o. By this time he
was also frequenting the studio of
Roerberg and it was there that he came
into contact with Larionov, perhaps the
most dynamic if not necessarily the most
gifted young artist on the contemporary
Russian art scene. It was an encounter
that was to sweep Malevich into the
most truly progressive currents of artistic
activity in Russia at that time.
Malevich was invited by Larionov to
show at the Knave of Diamonds
exhibition which opened in Moscow in
December 1910, and which represented
an attempt to unite the avant-garde of the
day. The Knave of Diamonds group, as
their choice of title might suggest, were
characterized by their use of flat, bold, Malevich, White Square on White, 1918, 78.7 x 78.7 cm.
deliberately primitivistic forms. They Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York
were happy to acknowledge the influence
of Russian peasant art and of the Russian disdainfully as purely Munich painters), The impact of futurist aesthetic
icon, and their work was equally clearly and they expressed a certain contempt for theories was to be decisive for Malevich,
strongly touched by French post- French Cubism, although their canvases but most immediately his contacts with
impressionist painting, and by the most bear proof to the fact that they followed the Russian futurist milieu seem to have
recent developments in French art as each successive phase of the movement encouraged him in his determination to
they knew them in art journals which with bated breath. They were prepared formulate a more individual pictorial
were eagerly perused, and above all in to acknowledge an interest in futurist idiom. The most accomplished of his
the superb collection of the Moscow ideology, possibly because they had as works (and perhaps the most recently
merchant, Sergei Shchukin, possibly the yet seen little or no futurist painting. executed) shown at the first Donkey's
greatest patron of modern art of his time. Yet it was indeed in part at least the Tail exhibition in March 1912 was
It is just conceivable that Malevich's influence of the Italian futurist Taking in the Harvest (Stedelijk), which
Bather (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), programme, with its tumultuous rejection shows a new ability to manipulate
a work of this period, shows his of the art of the past, its exaltation of the simplified, volumetric forms arranged in
immediate reaction to Matisse's La Danse speed and dynamism of modern limited depth; the integrity of the picture
(Hermitage), although the exact date of mechanized life, and its passionate surface is further ensured by the way in
its arrival in Moscow is a little uncertain. espousal of the Bergsonian doctrine of which the entire surface of the canvas is
In any case the confrontation is revealing pure intuition, that was encouraging covered by forms of more or less equal
if only because the supreme pictorial radical Russian artists to adopt a more density and weight, by the elimination of
sophistication of Matisse's work throws aggressive attitude towards both their tonal or atmospheric recession, and by the
into relief the nature of Malevich's talent: subjects and their sources. Recent way in which forms are piled above each
it was a talent that was impetuous, still scholarship has tended to minimize the other, right up to the top of the canvas, in
crude, but full of life and power — and role played by Italian ideology in the such a way as to allow the spectator's eye
clearly given to extremes. Some of the formation of a purely Russian brand of no way of escape into depth.
distortions of the body of the bather, the Futurism; and it is true that in Russia Malevich's researches at this point
squat distended trunk, and the awkward, the futurist aesthetic fell on particularly parallel very closely those of Leger, who
bulging legs, may also owe something to fertile soil. The products of Russian was at the time already acquiring a
Malevich's having studied Braque's Futurism both in the visual arts and in following in Russia. Leger was a frequent
Grand Nu (Collection Alex Maguy, literature were more truly revolutionary, visitor at the painting studio run in Paris
Paris) of the winter 1907-08, a focal more daring, more lethally iconoclastic by Marie Vasilief, known as the
point of a large Franco-Russian exhibition than anything that the Italians achieved. Academie Russe; during 1913 and 1914
mounted early in 1909 by the Golden But the impact on Russia of futurist he was to deliver there two important
Fleece, and a work which showed Braque's propaganda (particularly on Russian lectures which were subsequently
first decisive step towards Cubism. literature) was to be incalculable. And published and which were certainly read
The years between 1910 and 1912 this was in large part because the Italian in Russia.6 Another link was the gifted
witnessed a split between the factions futurist manifestoes were almost Russian painter Alexandra Exter, in
that had composed the Knave of invariably blueprints for works of art some respects a pupil of Leger's, who
Diamonds, and this rupture became very that were about to be executed, rather divided her time during 19o9 and 1914,
overt in 1912 when Larionov and than expositions or justifications for between Paris, Kiev and Moscow, where
Goncharova formed a secession group, existing artistic achievements : it was this she was able to satisfy the curiosity of
The Donkey's Tail. They now quality of expectancy that made the young Muscovite painters avid to learn
proclaimed their independence from Italian message so exhilarating, so potent of recent developments in what was still
Western art (they attacked in particular to young artists all over the world — very much the artistic capital of the
the work of Kandinsky and his followers doubly so to those who were working in world. It is very likely that Malevich
whom they appear to have viewed comparatively isolated cultural contexts. knew Léger's work from photographs.
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