Page 28 - Studio International - March April 1975

Almost certainly he would have seen fragmentation of matter. (Above) Malevich,
Léger's Essai pour Trois Portraits of 1912 One authority casually mentions that Suprematist Painting, 1915-16,
when it was hung in the Knave of Malevich probably visited Paris for a 53 x 53 cm. Oil on canvas.
Diamonds exhibition that opened a month in 1912.7 Most recent scholarship Collection Peggy Guggenheim, Venice
month before the Donkey's Tail. Leger's has tended to discount or to dismiss the (Below) Tatlin,
work was to inspire a poem by possibility of a Parisian trip; and yet the Corner Relief, 1915. Destroyed ( ?)
Benedict Livshits that appeared in increased pictorial complexity and (Right) Malevich,
A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, a sophistication, and the growing Woman at a Poster Column, 1914,
document launched late in 1912 and one technical mastery shown in new works 71 x 64 cm. Oil on canvas with collage.
of the first fully integrated products of by Malevich exhibited during the course Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Russian Futurism. If Malevich turned to of 1913 would suggest that he had come
Léger for inspiration and help, as seems into very direct contact with a lot of the
likely, it would be a demonstration of his most recent and radical developments in
ability to identify instinctively with what French art, although it is possible that
held most truth for him in any given photographs and examples of French art
artistic situation: for of all artists in that found their way to Russia could have
Western Europe Léger more than any provided the necessary stimulus. If he
other was able to retain a French did indeed go to Paris — and this is of
sensibility for purely formal values (and course adding one speculation to another
these were to preoccupy Malevich — it is tempting to suggest that he might
throughout his career) and yet to have gone in the autumn of 1912 when
subscribe to the Futurists' vision of the he would have been able to visit the
modern, mechanized urban scene and to Section d'Or, an exhibition that
their insistence on the dynamic represented one of the climaxes of
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