Samovar

1912

Meeting Mikhail Matyushin

In 1912 Malevich met the composer Mikhail Matyushin, the future composer of “Victory over the Sun” and publisher of his first Suprematist texts.

March – April 1912

The “Donkey’s Tail”: neo-primitivism

In March 1912 Malevich showed more than twenty neo-primitivist works at the “Donkey’s Tail” exhibition in Moscow (it ran until April), among them the peasant-inspired gouaches “Floor Polishers” and “Washerwoman”. That same year he took part in the exhibitions of the “Union of Youth” and the “Blue Rider” in Munich.

1913

“Target”, debates and “transrational realism”

In 1913 Malevich took part in the “Debate on Contemporary Painting” in St Petersburg and in the “First Evening of Speech-Makers in Russia” in Moscow, designed a number of Futurist publications and in March showed “Morning in the Country after Snowstorm” and “Knifegrinder” with Goncharova and Larionov at the “Target” exhibition; at the last “Union of Youth” exhibition he showed, next to neo-primitivist works, paintings he himself called “transrational realism” and “Cubo-Futurist realism”. In the spring he wrote to Matyushin that he had rejected reason because a different kind of reason — transrational — had arisen in him, with its own law, construction and meaning.

March 1914

The Paris Salon des Indépendants

In March 1914, at Nikolai Kubin’s invitation, Malevich sent works, among them the Cubist “Samovar” (1913), to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.