Kazimir Malevich’s painting Black Square is one of the twentieth century's emblematic paintings, the visual manifestation of a new period in world artistic culture at its inception. None of Malevich’s contemporary revolutionaries created a manifesto, an emblem, as capacious and in its own way unique as this work; it became both the quintessence of the Russian avant-gardist's own art—which he called Suprematism—and a milestone on the highway of world art. Writing about this single painting, Aleksandra Shatskikh sheds new light on Malevich, the Suprematist movement, and the Russian avant-garde. Malevich devoted his entire life to explicating Black Square's meanings. This process engendered a great legacy: the original abstract movement in painting and its theoretical grounding; philosophical treatises; architectural models; new art pedagogy; innovative approaches to theater, music, and poetry; and the creation of a new visual environment through the introduction of decorative applied designs. All of this together spoke to the tremendous potential for innovative shape and thought formation concentrated in Black Square. To this day, many circumstances and events of the origins of Suprematism have remained obscure and have sprouted arbitrary interpretations and fictions. Close study of archival materials and testimonies of contemporaries synchronous to the events described has allowed this author to establish the true genesis of Suprematism and its principal painting.

Kasimir Malevich's treatise on Suprematism was included in the Bauhausbücher series in 1927, as was Piet Mondrian's reflections on Russian Constructivism in 1925 (New Design, Bauhausbücher 5). Like Mondrian, who was never an official member of the Bauhaus, Malevich nevertheless has a close connection to the ideas of the school in terms of content. This volume, the eleventh, remains the only book publication in Germany to be produced during the life of the Russian avant-garde artist, and it laid the foundation for his late work: to wrest the mask of life from the true face of art.

Malevich's sudden and startling realization of a non-objective way of painting – which he termed Suprematism – stands as a seminal moment in the history of twentieth-century art. Rainer Crone and David Moos trace the artist's development from his beginnings in the Ukraine and early years in Moscow – where he was closely involved in the Futurist circle – through to the late 1920s and beyond. The authors of this book convincingly demonstrate that it is only through a close and sustained reading of Malevich's late – and still widely misunderstood – painterly oeuvre that his extraordinarily inventive stance can truly be comprehended. Crone and Moos trace the close relationship between Malevich's practice and other contemporary non-political revolutions in physics, linguistics and poetry. They present Malevich as a uniquely creative artist, embodying in his work many of the insights and discoveries that define the twentieth century and the condition of modern life.

Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) was Russia's foremost pioneer of geometric abstract art. This work gives a brief introduction to the life and work of this prolific painter, designer and writer.

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Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1st November 2013-2nd February 2014, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, 8th March-22nd June 2014, and the Tate Modern, London, 16th July-19th October 2014.

"The book begins with a re-evaluation of Malevich's most famous painting, Black Square, a work whose meaning and function was in constant flux. Through Black Square Malevich began to cross the bridge from the painting medium to mechanically generated production, ultimately influencing the post-revolutionary phase of his Suprematism and leading to his abandonment of abstraction in the late 1920s.