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Kazimir Malevich: 1878-1935

Born near Keiv, Ukraine on February 23 or 26, 1878 or 1879, depending on who you talk to, Kazimir (Kasimir) Malevich was a Russian painter, printmaker, decorative artist and writer. Though relatively forgotten until recently, Malevich is now recognized as a pioneer of geometric abstract art, an originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement, and one of the major artists of the 20th century.

Malevich began painting at age 12 and studied at the Kiev School of Art from 1895-96. He grew up in the Ukraine until the family moved to Kursk, Russia in 1896 where he and his father worked for the railway company. In 1903, Malevich studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1904, he studied a the Stroganov School in Moscow and privately with painter Ivan Rerberg.

At the beginning of his career, Malevich experimented with various Modernist styles and participated in avant-garde exhibitions, including the Moscow Artists’ Association alongside Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds exhibition of 1910 in Moscow.

In 1915, Malevich published his manifesto “From Cubism to Suprematism” and laid out the foundations of the Suprematist movement which focused on fundamental geometric forms, in particular the square and circle. In 1916-1917, he participated in exhibitions of the “Jack of Diamonds” group in Moscow with other Suprematist artists including Nathan Altman, David Burliuk and A. Ekster.

In 1919, Malevich joined the art school in Vitebsk (Viciebsk), directed by Marc Chagall. While there, he established a movement of his own called “Unovis” (Affirmers of New Art). The movement focused mainly on his ideas on Suprematism and produced a number of projects and publications that greatly influenced the avant-garde in Russia. After Chagall’s retirement in 1919/20 Malevich’s interest in theoretical and philosophical topics grew and he abandoned painting for several years,to concentrate on teaching and writing. He continued to develop his Suprematist ideas in his ‘architectural’ works, including cardboard models of Utopian towns.

From 1922 to 1927, Malevich taught at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Petrograd, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural models with his students. In 1927, he took up painting again and traveled with an exhibition of his work to Warsaw and Berlin. Malevich arranged to leave many of his paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union. “Malevich’s assumption that a shifting in the attitudes of the Soviet authorities towards the modernist art movement would take place after the death of Lenin and Trotsky’s fall from power, were proven correct when the Stalinist regime turned against forms of abstractism, considering them a type of “bourgeois” art, that could not express social realities. As a consequence, many of his works were confiscated and he was banned from creating and exhibiting similar art. Critics derided Malevich for reaching art by negating everything good and pure: love of life and love of nature. Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art’s sake alone, regardless of its pleasure: art does not need us, and it never needed us since stars first shone in the sky.”

In 1934, Malevich became seriously ill with cancer. The artist planned his own funeral, designed his own coffin which was decorated with a black square and circle. Malevich died on May 15, 1935. His coffin was carried through the streets of Leningrad on a truck followed by many artists and friends. After his cremation in Moscow, the urn was placed in the fields near Nemchinovka.

Up until the late 1950′s, Malevich’s work was remembered only by a small group of artists and collectors in the Soviet Union and in Europe. Between 1956 and 1958, a large group of his paintings, originally shown in Berlin in 1927, were acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. This led to renewed interest in his work. Since then, Malevich has been widely recognized as one of the major artists of the 20th century.

Sources: MoMA, Guggenheim, Kazimir Malevich.org, Wikipedia

Man Ray: 1890 – 1976

Born Emmanuel Radnitzky on August 27, 1890 in Philidelphia, PA, Man Ray was an influential artist, best known for his avant-garde photography. He was a leading figure (and the only American) to play a significant role in the Dada and Surrealist movements.

Ray grew up in Brooklyn, New York and showed artistic ability at an early age. He studied drawing under Robert Henri and George Bellows at the Francisco Ferrer Social Center (Modern School). Upon his completion of his classes, Ray lived in the art colony of Ridgefield, New Jersey. There, he illustrated, designed and produced small pamphlets (Ridgefield Gazook – 1915) and A Book of Diverse Writings.

Ray had his first solo show at the Daniel Gallery in New York in 1915 and shortly after became interested in photography. Around the same time, he became friends with Marcel Duchamp with whom he founded the Society of Independent Artists in 1916. In 1920, along with Duchamp, Katherine Dreier, Henry Hudson, and Andrew McLaren, Ray founded the Société Anonyme, a group that sponsored lectures, concerts, publications, and exhibitions of modern art.

In 1921, May Ray moved to Paris where he settled for twenty years. He became involved with Dada and Surrealist artists and writers such as Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, Dali, Eluard, Picasso, and others. While in Paris, Ray worked with different media and produced a variety of works. In 1922, he began experimenting with his version of a photogram which he called a “rayograph” – the process of creating images from placing objects on photo-sensitive paper. Ray likened his technique to painting saying that he was “painting with light”.

In the 1920′s and 30′s Ray earned a steady income as a portrait photographer and as one of the foremost fashion photographers for Harper’s Bazaar, Vu, and Vogue. In the late 1920′s Ray won recognition for his experiments with Sabattier (solarization process) and many of the Surrealists followed his example of using photography in their works.

Man Ray also made his mark in the avant-garde film circles in the 1920′s. In “Le Retour à la Raison”, he created his first “cine-rayographs’ – sequences of cameraless photographs. Other films including “Emak Bakia” (1926), L’Etoile de Mer” (1928), and Les Mystères du Château de Dé” (1929) are now classics of the Surrealist film genre.

At the beginning of World War II, Man Ray left Paris and moved to Los Angeles in 1940 where he focused on painting and creating objects. While there, he also met and married Juliet Browner, a dancer and artists’ model. He remained in LA until 1951 when he returned to his home in Paris where he continued working in a variety of mediums – his photography having the greatest impact on 20th century art. In 1963 he published his autobiography, “Self-Portrait”.

Man Ray died in Paris on November 18, 1976. His epitaph at the Cimetière du Montparnasse, reads: “unconcerned, but not indifferent”. Juliet Browner died in 1991 and she was interred in the Ray’s tomb. Her epitaph reads, “together again”. Browner set up a charitable trust and donated much of Ray’s work to museums.