Lithograph, handmade velvet paper Arches, 75 x 54 cm, numbered in pencil 1097/2000,
Edition for the State Russian Museum of St. Petersburg, dry stamp of the museum under the composition, dry stamp of the publisher - Atelier Mourlot. Certificate of authenticity.
He came from a Polish Catholic noble family residing in Russia, with Belarusian roots on his father's side. He was born in Kiev, his parents Severin Antonovich and Lyudivka Alexandrovna Malevich were Polish, his father was a manager at a sugar factory owner. Kazimir was the first of 14 siblings, only nine of whom reached maturity. He was fluent in Polish and Russian, which were the artist's native languages. His family moved frequently and he spent his childhood in villages in the Podolia and Volyn governorates, where he also picked up Ukrainian. Malevich declared his Polish origin or nationality at various times.
He was initially influenced by Paul Cézanne, the Russian Post-Impressionists, Fauvism, Expressionism and Cubism. In 1915, in Petrograd, he announced a program of suprematism, the most radical direction of abstractionism. He rejected the iconography of representational art, recognizing the straight line and the square, not found anywhere in nature, as symbols of man's supremacy over chaos.
In June 1915 Malevich painted a picture featuring a single painting object on a white background: a black quadrangle.
Malevich called this type of art non-objective and referred to the system of pure color supremacy he invented as suprematism. The first exhibition of suprematist works took place in Petrograd, in December 1915, and was held as part of the Last Futurist Exhibition.
