Kazimir Malevich: Painting, Architecture and the Avant-Garde in Russia — A New History of Suprematism

In 1915, Kazimir Malevich painted The Black Square and began establishing the movement of Suprematism. Although it initially operated within the field of painting, from 1919 Suprematism entered the realm of architecture. The majority of Suprematist scholarship, however, has privileged the movement’s painterly phase. Scholarship has examined Malevich’s activities in close relation to many contemporary literary and theoretical ideas and linked the artist’s achievements on the canvas with his many spiritual or metaphysical statements. Suprematism’s later architectural thinking has received comparatively little scholarly attention and is often seen as an appendage to Malevich’s work on the canvas rather than examined on its own terms.
This thesis affords equal attention to Suprematism’s painterly and architectural phases and re-situates the movement in its historical context. Secondly, it examines how Malevich’s numerous interactions with other creative individuals played a major role in the emergence and further formulation of Suprematism. In its third ambition, this thesis analyses Malevich’s continued efforts towards building a professional legacy. This thesis combines analysis of visual imagery with various sources; however, this work draws from very recently published primary source material and explores biographical details in its examination of Malevich’s life and work. This historicist project argues that Malevich’s activities were far closer to the circumstances and conditions around him than scholarship has thus far suggested. It demonstrates that Malevich’s interactions with others, his friendships and his rivalries played a significant role in how Suprematism evolved. In this thesis, Malevich’s priorities regarding individual authorship and his concerns for the implications of copyright emerge. In what is a new history of Suprematism, this project demonstrates that Malevich’s utopianism, his idealism and his aspiration to establish Suprematism and construct a professional legacy were continually balanced by his pragmatism and, at times, his human impulse to simply survive.