Malevich in numbers: the amount of his first sale, the last "Square", the number of days that he spent on "Crosses", and the cost of his funeral

Severin Antonovich and Ludviga Aleksandrovna Malevich had 14 children. Kazimir was the senior one.

There were 54 colors in the first set of paints, mother’s gift for Kazimir’s fifteenth birthday.

5 roubles was Malevich’s first fee. His painting The moon night was sold in a stationary shop on Nevsky boulevard — the main street of the town of Konotop in 1894.

2 years of five-year agricultural college was the only regular education of Kazimir Malevich.

4 times Kazimir Malevich tried to enter Moscow school of painting, sculpture and architecture. 5 times, if we count the year when his father hid his petition in table drawer, saying to the teenager, that there were no vacant places at the school.

79,5×79,5 cm was size of the first and the most famous "Black square" painted by Malevich in 1915.

Three more "Black squares" were created by Kazimir Malevich later on. The second one was painted in 1923 — as part of triptych (together with The Circle and The Cross) for Venice biennale. His third square was created in 1929 for the personal exhibition in Tretyakov gallery right there in the hall of the museum. The last one was painted in 1932, and pinned to the truck, it followed the funeral procession of his author (see all "Black squares" by Malevich).

80 million dollars — that is the auctioneers estimate of the latest version of The Black Square, if it would appear at the international market.

317 and 365 — these numbers were considered by Velimir Khlebnikov as crucial in Malevich’s oeuvre as per mathematical correlations measurements in his pictures. "The numbers found by Khlebnikov, — Malevich wrote in a letter to the avant-gardist Mikhail Matyushin, — can prove that there is something larger behind the supremus having its direct law, or even the one of the universe creation. That I transmit that power and General harmony of creative laws that rules everything…"

23 years was the difference in age of Kazimir Malevich and his third wife Natalia Manchenko.

It costed him 40 roubles to go to Warsaw for his personal exhibition in 1927. By the way, Malevich thought he had payed too much.
"I go on Monday, I got a ticket to Warsaw, the whole trip with luggage is 40 roubles. By the way to get to Negorelogo-Stolbtsov it takes 20 roubles, and from there to Warsaw — 10 roubles", — he took on in the letter.

36 hours, according to popular legend, lasted an interrogation that Malevich had at the corresponding authorities after his return from Germany in 1927.

80 days were spent in "The Crosses", being arrested in 1930 on the charge of espionage.

For the sum of 2000 roubles Malevich managed to sell his painting The morning after a blizzard in the village.

The anonymous buyer purchased Suprematic composition (dark blue rectangle over the red ray) for 60 million dollars at Sotheby’s in 2008. Malevich brought it together with his triumphally sold work The morning after a blizzard in the village to Berlin in 1927.

2500 roubles were issued by The Union of Leningrad Artists for the funerals of Kazimir Malevich. The sum was really impressive — two and a half times more than the salary of a Stakhanovite driller.

457 thousand pages are offered by Google for the search "What is the meaning of The Black Square?" and 222 thousand pages — for "masterpiece black square" (August 2016).