Черный квадрат

1926–1927

Munich: “The Non-Objective World”

In 1926–27 Malevich’s book “The Non-Objective World”, in which he set out his Suprematist theories, was published in Munich.

8 – 29 March 1927

Warsaw: a solo exhibition and a lecture

In March 1927 Malevich travelled abroad on an official trip: in Warsaw his solo exhibition was held at the Polish Arts Club in the Polonia Hotel. He met Polish artists, among them former pupils — Władysław Strzemiński, the sculptor Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski; he was mostly greeted with enthusiasm, though Mieczysław Szczuka reproached him as a Romantic who loved painterly means for their own sake.

29 March – 5 June 1927

Berlin and the Bauhaus: the Great Berlin Art Exhibition

At the end of March 1927 Malevich left Warsaw for Berlin with the Polish poet and critic Tadeusz Peiper; on 7 April they visited the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he met Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy. At the Great Berlin Art Exhibition (7 May – 30 September) he was given a hall — over seventy works spanning his whole oeuvre; the show has been called a defining moment in the Western reception of Malevich.

June 1927

His archive and paintings stay in Germany

On returning to the USSR Malevich left the paintings he had brought in Germany — with the architect Hugo Häring for temporary safekeeping — together with the whole archive accumulated up to March 1927, a kind of “time capsule” with a note in case of his death or hopeless imprisonment; the pictures never came back to his homeland. In Berlin, after Warsaw, he applied for a French visa, giving his nationality as “Polish”, but the visa was refused.

1 November 1929

A solo exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery

On 1 November 1929 the “Exhibition of Paintings and Graphic Works by K. S. Malevich” opened at the State Tretyakov Gallery. In 1930 an abridged version of the exhibition was shown in Kiev (February–May), and the artist’s works were exhibited in Berlin and Vienna.

20 September – December 1930

Arrested by the OGPU on a charge of espionage

In the autumn of 1930 Malevich was arrested by the OGPU on a charge of espionage: he was interrogated in Leningrad and threatened with execution, and released in early December — the investigator V. A. Kishkin showed no fanaticism. Shortly before, he had lost his job: the department he headed at the Institute of Art History had been closed.