Inspiring Women Magazine November 2023

Malevich's Man between a
Cross and a Sword
Page 29
Ukrainian folk costumes (top)
Ukrainian embroidery
inspiring White on White
painting (bottom)
For instance, Ukraine’s most noted avant-garde
artist, Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), was almost
always presented as a Russian. Malevich was
not just born in Ukraine, but also began his
art studies there, kept close contacts with his
Ukrainian family and colleagues, and cherished
Ukrainian culture. He came from a humble
family in the countryside around Kyiv. He spoke
and wrote in Ukrainian, loved to sing Ukrainian
songs, and was deeply fascinated by and knew
Ukrainian folk culture well.
During the mid-1890s, Malevich started to study
art. His teacher at the Kyiv Drawing School was
Mykola Pymonenko, a famous Ukrainian realist
painter. Developing his theory of Suprematism,
a movement focused on the interaction of flat
geometric forms and colors, Malevich closely
cooperated with Ukrainian artists and analyzed
Ukrainian folk art, especially embroidery, with
its hundreds of styles and enormous variety
of patterns. One of the most popular methods
of Ukrainian embroidery is cross-stitching,
which undoubtedly influenced Malevich’s
geometric fantasies.
Malevich's Two Peasants
Malevich’s famous painting White on White (1918)
was likely influenced by the "white on white"
embroidery technique, which has been very
popular in Ukraine. In this painting, a barely
differentiated off-white square is superimposed
on an off-white ground. Malevich’s preoccupation
with embroidery stems from his early exposure
to Ukrainian patterns and symbols on peasant
outfits, Ukrainian folk dolls, Easter eggs, and
icon painting.
Malevich’s paintings of the 1930s, such as the
Peasant Between a Cross and a Sword (or
Running Man), depict the realities of Soviet
Ukraine during the 1932-33 Holodomor
(man-made famine). One of the last photos
of Malevich, taken with his third wife, Natalia,
before his death from cancer in Leningrad,
shows a Ukrainian “kylym,” or woven carpet and
a blanket, which he probably brought with him
from Ukraine. The simplicity of design of
Ukrainian carpets influenced a number of
Malevich’s works (Red Cavalry,1932; The Red
House, c.1930; Composition 3, 1932). His works
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