Malevich, Kazimir

Malevich, Kazimir (Severinovich)

(born , Feb. 23, 1878, near Kiev, Russia—died May 15, 1935, Leningrad) Russian painter and designer. He discovered Cubism on a trip to Paris in 1912 and returned to lead the Russian Cubist movement. In 1915 he exhibited paintings more abstractly geometrical than any seen before, consisting of simple geometrical forms painted in a limited palette, a style he called Suprematism. In 1917–18 he created his well-known White on White series, austere images of a white square floating on a white background. In 1919 he joined Marc Chagall at his revolutionary art school in Vitebsk, where he exerted a strong influence on El Lissitzky. In the 1920s he returned to representational painting but could not accede to the government's demand for Socialist Realism. Though his career was doomed, he greatly influenced Western art and design.