The artist is Malevich
In the late works of the artist, especially in portraits, an obviously growing tendency to figurativeness, at first glance, forced, in fact, Malevich’s attitude internally does not contradict the attitude of Malevich, which “at heart always remained a classic”. Malevich portrays himself in the Italian Doje costume in the Auto Portrait. Picturesque techniques address us to the frescoes of the Renaissance and the icon traditions of Ancient Rus’. The artist emphasizes the restrained expression on the face, the majesty of the posture and the unusual gesture of the hand, more natural in the image of the icon -painting saint than in the self -portrait. All these details are deliberate, they exalt the image. It is no accident that Malevich on the back of the canvas made an inscription – "Artist". (O. Sh.).
Russian portrait. XX century: St. Petersburg, 2001. With. 220.
At the 1933 self -portrait with the author’s name “artist” Malevich portrayed himself in a costume of Italian docture – a reformer’s robe with a geometric structure and a characteristic alternation of white, black, red and green flowers.
The gesture of the hand, as if holding an invisible geometric volume in the palm of the palm, is the Testament to the descendants, the key to understanding the Suprematism that recognizes the world emptied from objects as a genuine reality.
“The artist opens the world and reveals it to man … It is necessary to be an artist among things, for a new vision, a new symmetry of nature opens through him, he finds (as is commonly called) beauty …”, Malevich proclaimed in the solemn lines of his ode “Artist” written In the early 1920s.
That is how he portrays himself in the last self -portrait – the Creator, the bearer of higher knowledge and higher will, the demiurge, dictating his law, an artist, the unprofitable unreasonable forces of historical time, which fell to his earthly share. He, as if contrary to internal creative doubts and contradictions, human imperfection and life troubles, affirms his right to posthumous, addressed to the descendants of the myth.
Malevich passed away in May 1935. Farewell and funerals organized by his students and friends were the last public action of Suprematism in Soviet Russia. In the hall of the Leningrad Association of the Union of Soviet Artists, during farewell, an exhibition was organized, and Harms read verses. A mourning procession passed along Nevsky Prospekt (then Avenue on October 25): a Suprematic sarcophagus was installed on the open platform of the truck with a black square on the hood. After cremation in Moscow, the urn with the ashes of Malevich buried in the villages of Nemchinovka, near a lonely oak.
A monument designed by Nikolai Suetin was erected over the burial of the Casimir the Great, the Chairman of the World Space – a cube with a black square.
