An in-depth exploration of Malevich’s pivotal painting, its context and its significance

This book examines the artistic life of Vitebsk during the years 1917-1922, when a great burst of creative experimentation transformed the modest Russian town into one of the most influential gateways to the art of the twentieth century. Spurred by native son Marc Chagall, who returned home after the October Revolution in 1917 to take the position of art commissioner, Vitebsk rose to a pinnacle of fame as an artistic laboratory for the avant-garde. It was here that such luminaries as El Lissitzky, Yuri Pen, Kazimir Malevich, Nikolai Suetin, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others worked, inspired one another, and made distinctive contributions to modernism. Art historian Aleksandra Shatskikh surveys the entire 'Vitebsk phenomenon', drawing on an array of archives in Russia and Amsterdam, many of which have never been open to Western scholars. She discusses Chagall's Academy of Art and its major teachers and students; the founding of the artists' group, UNOVIS; Malevich's architectural experiments; Bakhtin's circle; and important developments in theater and music in Vitebsk. With more than two hundred outstanding illustrations, the book brings Vitebsk to life at a fascinating and transformative moment in art history.

"Published on the occasion of the opening of a groundbreaking exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York, this volume presents a splendid collection of sixty early paintings, drawings, and murals by Marc Chagall, dating from the artist's years in Russia up to 1910 and again from 1914 to 1922. The latter period, which followed Chagall's departure from Paris, and return to his native Vitebsk, was of particular importance in the development of his major themes and ideas."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This extensively illustrated volume examines the work of the Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich and his influence on American art. Malevich, one of the pioneers of non-objective art, developed Suprematism as an art of pure form. He envisioned his paintings as geometry stripped of any attachment to the representation of real objects--an elemental alphabet of a pictorial language. A key figure in the early Soviet avant-garde, he was severely criticized during the Stalin era but embraced by the West in the postwar era. This book brings together a selection of Malevich's most important works with ones by modern and contemporary American artists whose work is shaped by Malevich's legacy, including Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Alexander Calder, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, James Turrell, and Cy Twombly. Essays by leading scholars and interviews with key postwar artists make this volume essential documentation of the history of twentieth century abstraction.