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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr Aleksandra Shatskikh, art historian, for her assistance in cataloguing the present lots and for providing this note.
In 1915, the renowned avant-gardist Kazimir Malevich made the breakthrough in abstract geometric art; in June, he painted the famous Black Square (1915, State Tretyakov Gallery). Malevich named his movement in art "Suprematism," using the Latin word supremus (meaning "supreme" or "dominant"). According to the artist, Suprematism signified the dominance of color energy in painting, subordinating all other properties to it.
The energy of color manifested itself in the coloristic structure of Malevich's paintings, but this energy also defines his graphic compositions, determining the saturation of the tone from black to light in figures and constructions. Drawings, as a whole, became an experimental laboratory for Malevich: his plastic ideas, recorded in hundreds of sheets, astonish with their inventiveness and quantity with only a small portion of these ideas realized in paintings.
The four drawings offered here before the viewer serve as textbook examples of the Suprematist and post-Suprematist works of the great avant-gardist.
After creating the Black Square, Malevich turned to compositions of a minimalist nature, with a sparse set of geometric elements, but with the obligatory introduction of a dynamic beginning. The drawing Suprematist Composition—Projected Plane (lot 113) executed in 1915, belongs to this group. The author considered "weightlessness" to be one of the main categories of Suprematism—the elimination of orientation determined by the Earth's gravity; the word "weightlessness" was his own neologism, which, in the era of space exploration, has since come to be known as ‘zero gravity’. In Suprematism, "weightlessness" manifested in the way Malevich hung his Suprematist paintings at exhibitions, rotating them differently to have no fixed top or bottom, left or right side - each orientation was equally valid.
Unlike his paintings, Malevich's drawings, especially those he kept constantly before his eyes, indicate how the artist himself oriented them: he would pin the sheets to the wall of his studio, leaving a pinhole in the top center of the sheet. The pinhole in Projected Plane reveals that the author's main task was to convey the dynamics of the composition: a large black trapezoid ‘flies’ downward, and a black triangle with a sharp vertex cuts through space, with geometric strips shooting out from it.
The drawing Protomagnetic Construction (lot 114), circa 1916, is especially noteworthy as it represents a distinctive discovery and is an addition to the body of authenticated Malevich drawings compiled by the outstanding Danish scholar and a pioneer in the study of Malevich's legacy, Troels Andersen (1940-2021). The Danish scholar solved the mystery of specific markings on a number of drawings, where Latin letters with numbers are inscribed on the reverse side. Andersen established that in the 1920s, Malevich began classifying his works on paper, grouping them into cycles united by a leading plastic concept. This concept was usually formulated verbally and denoted by a Latin letter; the drawings of the cycle were marked with this letter and an Arabic numeral. The notations were made in green ink by the artist Anna Leporskaya (1900-1982), under the guidance of Malevich; she also inscribed the envelopes in which the sheets of each series were stored and noted their number.
On the reverse side of this drawing, there is an inscription in faded green ink, ‘9 R,’ indicating that it belonged to the R cycle, Suprematist Compositions with Externally Added Forms. There are 21 drawings in the R cycle (Andersen ibid. p. 127-130). Andersen reproduces compositions 8R (#300) and 10R (#301), and this drawing, unknown to Andersen, should rightly take its place as number 9 in the R cycle.
The last of the Suprematist drawing by Malevich, Magnetic Construction (lot 115), also created around 1916, shows the artist's preoccupation with forces governing cosmic space, one of which was magnetism. In Magnetic Construction, magnetic attraction binds a cluster of geometric strips and elements fanned out over each other.
In his book, Troels Andersen reproduced this drawing on p. 148, #368, and named it Suprematist Construction, noting that it is related to works from the Z cycle, stored in an envelope marked Suprematism (The Shaping of the Magnetic Field (Completed), 11 Drawings (Andersen ibid., pp. 140-142). Malevich considered transferring the composition of Magnetic Construction into a painting, as indicated by his notes on color beneath the drawing.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, enriched by the formative techniques of abstract creativity, Malevich returned to figurative art. This period in art history is called post-Suprematism; the avant-gardist himself regarded these works as derivatives of his abstract system, as he wrote on the back of his painting Woman with Rakes (1930-1931, State Tretyakov Gallery), Suprematism in the contour of a peasant woman, and on the back of the canvas Athletes (1930-1931, State Russian Museum), he indicated, "Suprematism in the outlines of athletes."
The drawing Standing Woman (lot 116), circa 1930, also known as Female Figure (Andersen: Standing Woman), demonstrates "Suprematism in the outline of a peasant woman," and represents a perfect example of Malevich's post-Suprematism.
In 1915, the renowned avant-gardist Kazimir Malevich made the breakthrough in abstract geometric art; in June, he painted the famous Black Square (1915, State Tretyakov Gallery). Malevich named his movement in art "Suprematism," using the Latin word supremus (meaning "supreme" or "dominant"). According to the artist, Suprematism signified the dominance of color energy in painting, subordinating all other properties to it.
The energy of color manifested itself in the coloristic structure of Malevich's paintings, but this energy also defines his graphic compositions, determining the saturation of the tone from black to light in figures and constructions. Drawings, as a whole, became an experimental laboratory for Malevich: his plastic ideas, recorded in hundreds of sheets, astonish with their inventiveness and quantity with only a small portion of these ideas realized in paintings.
The four drawings offered here before the viewer serve as textbook examples of the Suprematist and post-Suprematist works of the great avant-gardist.
After creating the Black Square, Malevich turned to compositions of a minimalist nature, with a sparse set of geometric elements, but with the obligatory introduction of a dynamic beginning. The drawing Suprematist Composition—Projected Plane (lot 113) executed in 1915, belongs to this group. The author considered "weightlessness" to be one of the main categories of Suprematism—the elimination of orientation determined by the Earth's gravity; the word "weightlessness" was his own neologism, which, in the era of space exploration, has since come to be known as ‘zero gravity’. In Suprematism, "weightlessness" manifested in the way Malevich hung his Suprematist paintings at exhibitions, rotating them differently to have no fixed top or bottom, left or right side - each orientation was equally valid.
Unlike his paintings, Malevich's drawings, especially those he kept constantly before his eyes, indicate how the artist himself oriented them: he would pin the sheets to the wall of his studio, leaving a pinhole in the top center of the sheet. The pinhole in Projected Plane reveals that the author's main task was to convey the dynamics of the composition: a large black trapezoid ‘flies’ downward, and a black triangle with a sharp vertex cuts through space, with geometric strips shooting out from it.
The drawing Protomagnetic Construction (lot 114), circa 1916, is especially noteworthy as it represents a distinctive discovery and is an addition to the body of authenticated Malevich drawings compiled by the outstanding Danish scholar and a pioneer in the study of Malevich's legacy, Troels Andersen (1940-2021). The Danish scholar solved the mystery of specific markings on a number of drawings, where Latin letters with numbers are inscribed on the reverse side. Andersen established that in the 1920s, Malevich began classifying his works on paper, grouping them into cycles united by a leading plastic concept. This concept was usually formulated verbally and denoted by a Latin letter; the drawings of the cycle were marked with this letter and an Arabic numeral. The notations were made in green ink by the artist Anna Leporskaya (1900-1982), under the guidance of Malevich; she also inscribed the envelopes in which the sheets of each series were stored and noted their number.
On the reverse side of this drawing, there is an inscription in faded green ink, ‘9 R,’ indicating that it belonged to the R cycle, Suprematist Compositions with Externally Added Forms. There are 21 drawings in the R cycle (Andersen ibid. p. 127-130). Andersen reproduces compositions 8R (#300) and 10R (#301), and this drawing, unknown to Andersen, should rightly take its place as number 9 in the R cycle.
The last of the Suprematist drawing by Malevich, Magnetic Construction (lot 115), also created around 1916, shows the artist's preoccupation with forces governing cosmic space, one of which was magnetism. In Magnetic Construction, magnetic attraction binds a cluster of geometric strips and elements fanned out over each other.
In his book, Troels Andersen reproduced this drawing on p. 148, #368, and named it Suprematist Construction, noting that it is related to works from the Z cycle, stored in an envelope marked Suprematism (The Shaping of the Magnetic Field (Completed), 11 Drawings (Andersen ibid., pp. 140-142). Malevich considered transferring the composition of Magnetic Construction into a painting, as indicated by his notes on color beneath the drawing.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, enriched by the formative techniques of abstract creativity, Malevich returned to figurative art. This period in art history is called post-Suprematism; the avant-gardist himself regarded these works as derivatives of his abstract system, as he wrote on the back of his painting Woman with Rakes (1930-1931, State Tretyakov Gallery), Suprematism in the contour of a peasant woman, and on the back of the canvas Athletes (1930-1931, State Russian Museum), he indicated, "Suprematism in the outlines of athletes."
The drawing Standing Woman (lot 116), circa 1930, also known as Female Figure (Andersen: Standing Woman), demonstrates "Suprematism in the outline of a peasant woman," and represents a perfect example of Malevich's post-Suprematism.