I am not sure that if I asked any ordinary Ukrainians on the street what associations the name Kazymyr Malevych and the word combination Black Square call up, the vast majority of them would smile happily and give an exhaustive answer, “Kazymyr Severynovych Malevych was a Kyiv-born internationally renowned artist, and The Black Square is a world-famous work of his.” But let us assume that the answer is approximately of this kind and take advantage of the artist’s coming 125th birth anniversary to add a few touches to the portrait drawn by the imaginary rank-and-file Ukrainian.
It would be a good idea to start with a sensation. The point is that the whole cultural world marked Malevych’s 125th anniversary last year. This year it is being done for the second time because the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine hold the Roman Catholic Parish Church’s Record of Those Born in 1879 (i.e., a year later than was previously considered) with an entry that “a son was born to Severyn and Liudvika Malevych (Sewerin and Ludwika Malewicz), a gentry couple from Zhytomyr district, Volyn province, on February 11(23), 1879, and baptized Kazymyr (Kazimierz) at Kyiv’s Roman Catholic parish church. In witness thereof were Boleslaw Malewicz and Maria Orzechowska.” Incidentally, the future globally acclaimed avant-garde artist and founder of suprematism was born and spent the first years of his life precisely in the house of his aunt and godmother Maria Orzechowska at 13 Kostiolna (now Bozhenko) Street. The building itself has not survived: this place is now occupied by the Y. O. Paton Institute of Electrical Welding.
Let us return then to the life story of the artist himself. Kazymyr was the first of seven children in the family of Polish nobles Sewerin and Ljudwika Malewicz. The Kyiv Roman Catholic Cathedral keeps a 1878 record about the couple’s wedding ceremony. In addition, the Zhytomyr Oblast Archives have a truly unique document: the genealogical book of the Malewicz noble clan with the coat-of-arms and many documents related to the history of this quite old dynasty. The first entry in the record book notes privileges bestowed on an ancestor of Malevych by Polish King Sigismund III. The archival documents never mention that there were artists in the Malewicz clan, the overwhelming majority of men were military or clerical, as was the custom among the petty szlachta. At the turn of the eighteenth century, his great-grandfather Ivan served as artillery captain, while his cousins Ivan and Vasyl were parish priest and cathedral canon respectively. In the early nineteenth century, the Malewiczes’ list of professions included warrant officer, sub-deacon, dean, collegium registrar, junior doctor at Sevastopol’s military hospital, and titular councilor. Against the backdrop of this variety of occupations of his relatives, Kazymyr’s father Severyn occupied rather a modest position of sugar mill employee. Malevych recalled in his Autobiography, “The circumstances of my childhood life were as follows: my father worked at sugar beet-processing mills that were usually built deep in the hinterland, far away from cities big and small. There were vast sugar beet plantations. These plantations required a large predominantly peasant workforce. While the peasants, grown-ups and children alike, worked on the plantation all through the summer and fall, I, the future artist, feasted my eyes on the fields and ‘colored’ workers who were weeding or digging up the beets.
“The platoons of colorfully-dressed girls stepped in single file across the field. It was a war. The troops in multicolored dresses fought the weeds, preventing the beets from being smothered by harmful plants. I liked watching those fields in the morning, when the sun was still low and the warbling skylarks soared... There seemed to be no end to the sugar beet plantations which merged with the distant skyline, come down on small grain fields, or climb the hills, embracing villages with their green hands...” Kazymyr Malevych said the colored memories of his childhood were sort of negatives that lingered in his mind in order to find expression later in the deep and juicy colors of his paintings.
As the artist reminisced, he was first conscious of a desire to paint when he traveled with his father to Kyiv, “Father took me to Kyiv. The first thing I did was go to see hills on the banks of the Dnipro. Then I began window-shopping and saw a canvas with a scrumptious picture of a girl sitting on a bench and peeling potatoes. The potatoes and peelings looked so natural that this made a lasting impression on me, as did nature itself... So, to be able to stay in Kyiv, where, as I learned later, there were such ‘great’ artists as Pymonenko (Malevych’s future mentor — Ed.) and Murashko, I first went to no greater a town than Konotop, Chernihiv province, in which I began to strenuously and carefully paint landscapes with a stork and cows in the background. Only then did the family see there was a black sheep in it.” This in fact sealed the destiny of the future leader of the world avant-garde.
Malevych’s creative life was always connected with Kyiv and Ukraine. When he attended a Kyiv painting school in 1896, he was presumably taught by Pymonenko, a rural-theme painter. The theme of the countryside and farming remained high on the list of Malevych’s creative priorities. After studying in Moscow (1904-1905) in the period of “secession,” symbolism, cubism and dynamic futurism, Malevych finally introduced suprematism (“the painted model of a cosmos based on the coordinated movement of geometrically perfect figures”), a new trend that had a great effect on the development of art in the twentieth century. The artist’s objectless compositions were also used in Ukrainian applied folk art: lady masters from the village Verbivka, Kyiv oblast, led by artist N. Davydova embroidered blankets and pillows according to Malevych’s suprematist sketches.
Living in Russia, Malevych made several attempts to move to Kyiv. He first tried to do so in the early 1920s, when he worked at the art educational institutions of Moscow, Vitebsk, and Petrograd. It was at that time that the artist founded and headed the well-known art group UNOVIS (“champions of new art”) in Vitebsk. In 1926 Russia began to malign him as a “mystic and formalist.” He was even jailed for some time on the grounds that he allegedly spied for Germany where he had held a personal exhibition. Fleeing from persecution, Kazymyr Malevych came to Kyiv, where there was a more lenient attitude toward avant-garde artists. In 1928-1930 he was professor at the Kyiv Artistic Institute, where he worked side by side with Bohomazov and Palmov. At the same time the artist published a series of articles on the theory of avant-garde in the journals Nova Generatsiya (Kharkiv) and Almanakh-avanhard (Kyiv). Very soon, however, when the wave of repressions also reached Kyiv, Malevych was fired from the institute. That was the beginning of the terrible 1930s... Under the influence of collectivization and the Holodomor, the so-called “second rural cycle” of the master’s canvases portrayed the tragic figures of peasants foreboding the coming historical cataclysms.
Yet, in fact, there were inconveniences in the relationship between Malevych and his native Kyiv and the institute colleagues. It is known from Malevych’s letters to artist Lev Kramarenko that in 1930 the Kyiv Picture Gallery managed by Kumpan offered to stage an exhibition of Malevych’s works, following which the artist could not either get back or receive money for his pictures for several years. The letter says (to add bitter irony and humor, Malevych wrote this in farcical Russian- Ukrainian pidgin), “Dear Comrade Kramarenko, I’m fed up with being Ukrainian! It is a nation that has lost every shred of conscience, tactfulness, etc. What have you all and Coupon (i.e., Kumpan — Author) done to my exhibition? It took me three years to get back my pictures with the aid of our trade union. But this is not the end of it. The damned Coupon still holds back three pictures, and I can do nothing to make the Coupon’s bunch send them to me. He has pocketed and is going to keep them until the end of the world.” The next letter contains a scathing appraisal of Comrade Taran, a Kyiv Artistic Institute professor and a friend of Malevych’s and Kramarenko’s, “...and Taran, a true Ukrainian rags-to-riches lout, has not even answered my letter.”
An outstanding name is quite an ample reason to be proud of a country’s cultural achievements. Ukraine is now gradually gleaning its cultural heritage and shows the world the true worth of its assets. Restoring the good name of Kazymyr Malevych should be a step on this path.
