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Kazimir Malevich was born in Kiev on February 11, 1878 (old-style February 23) to Seweryn and Ludwika Malewicz. According to his memoirs, his father was a specialist in sugar-beet processing machinery, and since sugar-beet processing plants were usually built away from large cities, the family moved often while Malevich was a child. In about 1890, the father was transferred to the plant in the village of Parhomovka, situated between Kiev and Kursk, and Malevich was sent to the village’s 5-year school, which he finished in 1894. He later wrote: “The villagers […] were making art (I did not know the word for this yet) […] I was very excited to watch the peasants paint; I helped them cover the floors of their houses with clay and paint motifs onto the stoves.”
In 1896, the family moved to Kursk, where his father began to work in a railroad management office as a clerk. Among his father’s colleagues, there were a few people who admired art and a couple of amateur painters. Malevich made friends with them quickly and they organized a small art circle, with two professional artists joining in eventually. Malevich began to paint in an Impressionist style. To earn money for a Moscow education, he began working in the same office as his father as a draftsman.
In the autumn of 1904, Kazimir visited Moscow for the first time. His aim was to enter the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He attempted to enroll several times but was never admitted. In spring, he returned to Kursk, where he continued to work. His paintings from this period are executed in a Neo-Impressionist manner. Next autumn, he returned to Moscow, where he studied religious icons with great interest. He wrote: "Moscow icons turned over all my theories and brought me to my third stage of development. Through icon painting, I began to understand the emotional art of peasants, which I had loved before, but the meaning of which I could not grasp until I studied the icons."
From 1906, he studied in the studio of F. I. Rerberg, who helped prepare his students for the entry exams into the Moscow College. In 1907, he exhibited two sketches at the 14th Exhibition of the Moscow Community of Painters. He would participate in the 15th and 16th Exhibitions, as well, before moving on. The gouache work Rest dates from this period (it was painted in 1908) and reflects his interest in icons and folk art.
In 1909, he met Sophia Mikhailovna Rafalovich and married her (this was his second marriage). In December 1910, he would participate in several exhibitions organized by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, exhibiting Bathers (1908) and two canvases with fruits.
In 1911, he participated in the exhibition Donkey's Tail, where he showed many works in the neo-primitive style. That same year, he met Mikhail Matyushin (1861-1934); they would become life-long friends. Towards the end of the year, he took part in the fifth exhibition of the Union of Youth, in St. Petersburg, where he showed Woman with Buckets and Child (1912), Harvester, Scythe-Man and Head of a Peasant. He would become a member of the Union of Youth in 1912.
In early 1913, he started to become interested in cubo-futurism, writing to Matyushin in February that "it was the only right way to paint". In March and April, he participated in the exhibition Target, organized by Mikhail Larionov in Moscow. Influenced by Larionov's interpretation of futurism ("abstruse realism"), he created a number of works that included shapes that appeared to be covered in metal, such as Morning after a Snowstorm in a Village (1913), Peasant Woman with Buckets (1913), The Knife Grinder (1913) and Woodcutter (1913).
In July 1913, Matyushin invited Kazimir and the writers Velemir Khlebnikov and Alexander Kruchenikh to create an opera. The result of their mutual efforts was the opera Victory over the Sun. Malevich was responsible for the costumes and stage decorations. These works marked the beginning of his Suprematist period. During this time, the trio of Malevich, Matyushin and Kruchenikh would publish the "Futurist Manifesto", where they called for the destruction of the concept of a pure Russian language; of outdated methods of thinking based on causal laws; and of "the air-headedness and beauty of cheap painters and writers, who keep on producing new works of art".
That same year, Malevich participated in the seventh and last exhibition organized by the Union of Youth, where he exhibited works in the abstruse realist and cubo-futurist styles. In February 1914, he would quit the Union of Youth.
In the March of 1914, by invitation of N. K. Kulbin, he exhibited three of his works at the Salon des Independents in Paris.
1914 saw the outbreak of WWI. Malevich would create six anti-German propaganda posters in the Russian folk style (so-called "lubok"). He wrote the slogans for posters drawn by other artists.
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