Major retrospective of an artist whose work was banned in the Soviet Union and who heavily influenced the modernist movement
In a faded photograph of May 1935, a funeral procession winds through the streets of Leningrad. It’s a strange, almost military-looking cortège with the coffin mounted on a pickup truck and an emblem attached the radiator grille. The emblem, consisting of a black square on a white background, is not the flag of any known country. It is, in fact, a painting by Kazimir Malevich, dead from cancer at the age of 56. In the 20 years since its creation, Malevich’s Black Square had become a badge of identity for Russian modernists, but its funeral parade through Leningrad on that grey May day would be its last appearance in public for half a century. The
07 August 2014, The Tablet
After the fall
Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art, Tate Modern, London
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