Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art

Colourful exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and work of Kazimir Malevich, a Russian abstract artists whose work spanned the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin.

I will admit my favourite rooms were the more figurative ones at the start and end. I loved the early self-portrait in wonderful bright colours and his move into what he called Cubo-Futurism, with block like figures against geometrically presented backgrounds. At the end of his life he returned to those styles but it was hard to tell if this was through choice or because of Stalin’s banning of abstract art.

In the middle section I loved the recreation of an exhibition Malevich held in Petrograd called “The last exhibition of futurist painting 0.10”. It included 9 of the 12 pictures whose whereabouts are still known and hung them in the same slightly haphazard way. Malevich’s iconic picture is “Black Square” an a version of it was included in the same place it hung in the original show at ceiling level in the top corner.

Malevich called his type of abstraction Suprematism and he argue that “The artist can be a creator only when the forms in his picture have nothing in common with nature”. I can’t agree with him but this show did go a long way towards explaining abstraction to me even if I still didn’t come away liking it!

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