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Whatever they say: admirers and critics of Kazimir Malevich about his fanaticism, innovation and boots

Malevich, as well as his work, didn’t leave anyone untouched. If he was spoken of, then it was done with awsome aspiration or with unconcealed hostility. It was so in his lifetime, and the decades after his death it remains the same.
Whatever they say: admirers and critics of Kazimir Malevich about his fanaticism, innovation and boots
His awkwardness and demeanor were, probably, a kind of a fur coat over an extraordinarily livly spirit and unbelievable cheerfulness operating very purposefully.
Hans Richter, German artist, avant-garde
Avant-garde is how modern art critics refer the general trend of new artistic directions that arose in world art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A very thin line separates it from the concept of “modernism”. Read more
stage-director
The First Russian Futurist Congress. From left to right: Mikhail Matyushin, Kazimir Malevich, Alekse
The First Russian Futurist Congress. From left to right: Mikhail Matyushin, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksey Kruchenykh. Uusikirkko, 1913.
Malevich … was fond of demonstrations, declarations, disputes, new axioms; he asserted and reckoned, hanging with slogans over his pictures; he gladly participated in live performances, by 1915 he already started to bump into his listeners with the boomerangs of the squares, he began to preach. There was noise and bustle around him; he had many followers and fanatic students; these were his assault brigades, and he sent them forward… Malevich was able to suggest irresistable faith to himself, his students deified him like Napoleon’s army.
Nikolay Punin, art historian, art critic

In the early years he earned nothing, as nobody purchased his suprematic "experiments", and he lived on the earnings of his wife. Every year they moved to their summer residence in the suburbs of Moscow. This was a funny sight. Two floats were loaded up with his stretchers, and later in autumn these two floats carried his "masterpieces" back to Moscow, it was the same story several years at a row. He was putting the works with brillianc'è in his eyes, with fanaticism, with hope for "a sudden happiness". And suddenly happiness has found him. After the October revolution poor Malevich became a leader, one of the brightest figures of Soviet art, although there was nothing Soviet about him. However, it was similarly with his comrades.
Evgheny Katsman, an artist, Kazimir Malevich’s brother-in-law

Old ideas. Exhausting cleanness. He hitches up. We slip down into dirt and triviality. Into the streets.
Lev Yudin, an artist, Malevich’s student
Malevich in Kursk, c.1900

Malevich in Kursk, c.1900

He was a short, stocky, heavy-faced man. His general culture could have been much better…
Mikhail Larionov, avant-garde
Avant-garde is how modern art critics refer the general trend of new artistic directions that arose in world art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A very thin line separates it from the concept of “modernism”. Read more
artist


They do not write about Malevich here. Probably, because our conservative art historians have not come to the unanimous decision about his black square on a white background: is it the decay of bourgeoisie or, vice versa, the ascent of young proletariat class? You can’t be like that. The new types of artistic labour require another productive approach to criticism.
"Modern architecture" newspaper, 1927
Kazimir Malevich. Aviator
Aviator
1914, 125×65 cm
When an artist is talked about as the master of provocation, — for me it is not the master’s determination. To paint like Titian, one should know and be able to do much. And to pickle fish or to put a cage full of hens onto the bust of Tolstoy, you don’t have to be able to do anything. It is not necessary to study in order to paint The Black Square!
Andrey Konchalovsky, film director (at round table of "The Russian newspaper")

He was a stout man with a peck face. He spoke with the Polish accent. He had small, though lustrous eyes, looking like a village catholic priest. He was always poorly dressed and liked to teach how to save one’s shoes from rubbing them off to one side, suggesting to walk on the stones and the road unevennes.
Evgheny Katsman

I am a not a specialist and not a judge — there’s something that I like, there’s something I don’t. Much of it is stiffed and secondary. The Black Square by Malevich is a genius innovation, but when such squares appear in dozens, then it is definitely boring. I thin that gradually academic painting with strickter norms and canons will recover: people have already been surfeited with conceptual, but technically weak art. The same can be said and about blank verse, for example. The first experiments with the free form of poetry were a breach, but in 2016 it causes rather bewilderment and boredom, therefore rap with its clear rhyme is so popular nowadays.
Oxxxymiron, Russian rap-performer, publicist (The Interview magazine)

Malevich, though not defining himself as suprematist, was faithful to the true of life — there is almost no light in Russian sky. And there is nothing left for the soul, but for producing invisible stars from oneself — that is the idea of the canvas.
Victor Pelevin, "Werewolf's sacred book"
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Natalia Priputnikova. Dragonfly 2
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When they shut down the Institute of artistic culture, Malevich already was a kind of a leper. He was inactive, but the students attended him, and he was still very influential. But when he died and was buried by his favourite students Suyetin, Rozhdestvensky and others, all of them had some gladness of liberation on their faces, because he had been seizing them considerably. His presence changed their lives and biographies. Certainly, they grieved much, but they were not children any more, and this was freedom from him.
Nikolay Khardzhiev, writer, historian, collector
Title illustration: Self-portrait by Kazimir Malevich
Gathered by Andrew Zimoglyadov