Kazimir Malevich (1879, Kyiv – 1935, Saint Petersburg), Portrait of a Woman, 1980s

Biography
Russian painter, educator, art theorist, and communist philosopher of Polish origin. A leading avant-garde artist. Founder of Suprematism, a movement advocating the complete detachment of art from reality and the pursuit of maximum simplification of forms. One of the most important representatives of official Russian and Soviet culture from 1917 to 1935. His work had a significant influence on the development of the international avant-garde, including the Polish avant-garde of the 1920s. He came from a Polish noble family living in Russia. He took drawing lessons in Kyiv. From 1905 to 1910, he studied painting at Ivan Rerberg’s studio in Moscow. In 1927, he stayed in Warsaw, where his first solo exhibition abroad took place at the Hotel Polonia in Warsaw.