Malevich. Gerry Souter
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A River in the Forest, motif: c. 1910–1911, version: 1928–1929.
Oil on canvas, 53 × 41.8 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
“Tubes, palettes, brushes, umbrellas and a folding-chair from Belopolya never left my mind in peace. I was sixteen years old. I already drew everything, cows, horses, and people and I did it, as it seemed to me, as well as artists drew in magazines. At sixteen, I went to Kiev with my mother where she bought me everything that a salesman at the art shop told her to buy.
I spent my time then in Konotop. Oh, a lovely city Konotop; it all shone like slabs of pig fat (salo). On markets and near the train station behind the long lines of tables sat women, whom people called salnitsy. The smell of garlic spread from them. Those tables were overloaded with different kinds of meat and salo, smoked and not smoked, with good crust. There laid rings of sausages: Krakow sausages stuffed with large pieces of meat and pig fat, blood sausages, other sausages with an unusual aroma excited all glands which any person has. Also those tables were piled up with ham with a little fat on the edges, rolls of round porridge mixed with lamb fat (salniky) and variety of round headcheese. The women who sold those delicacies glistened with the grease and their clothes reflected the beams of the sun.
I bought a ring of sausage for five kopeks and then I broke it in pieces and ate like other people did while they walked around the markets. I did not even look at meat or lamb which cost one and a half kopeks for a pound. Pork was my favourite dish, that and fish. Particularly, I liked dry-cured fish, two kopeks apiece, big and fatty, with caviar. I loved to eat pork and fish with white bread. Or, sometimes, I purchased from the salnitsy a whole piglet for forty kopeks, roasted with brown crust which was saturated with fat. The roasted crust crackled in the teeth and I ate the whole piglet, keeping it a secret from my family.”
Kasimir Malevich indulged his senses and made the most of his separation from the restrictions and drabness of the factory towns where his father laboured. That his later recollections seemed to centre around rich food and the abundant markets where tables groaned under these delicacies hints that at the time of writing his own larder was thinly stocked. As a thirsty man can only think of water, so a hungry man feeds his fantasies with imagined and remembered plenty.
But if his gastronomic excesses bordered on gluttony, his observations of the countryside did not ignore some of the downsides to country living.
“I grew up among all that Ukrainian salo and garlic in Konotop. It was one, very pleasant side of Konotop. The other characteristic of Konotop was an impassable swamp when it rained and extreme dust during dry time. When a telega (a long narrow wagon with sides that sloped up and out from the flat bed) went along the street during the dry season, it lifted such dust that neither horses nor houses would visible.”
There were stories told about when Ekaterina II (a familiar nickname of Catherine the Great 1729–1796) passed through this town, her horses sank in a bog of streets. From then, the city became known as Konotop – a swampy landscape or a horse-ford where horses drowned. The main street, as always in cities, was named Nevsky Prospect (after the medieval Russian warrior prince, Alexander Nevsky).
“Wood planks were placed on the both sides of Konotop’s Nevsky Prospect,” he continues his narrative, “just in case of rain. When chernozem (black earth) dissolved to an arshin (28 inches) in depth, people walked on these boards. Pigs with their piglets lay in the middle of Nevsky Prospect, rooting up the ground or rummaging in slops which were poured out from courtyards directly into the street. I lived far away from the Prospect in a very pretty small Ukrainian house which was surrounded by a garden.”
He painted his first picture Moonlight Night by drawing from his imagination, his “impression” as he had done in Belopolya. He drew from memory rather than from nature, because he did not yet have the means or skill to match nature’s colours with his paints. During the shopping trip with his mother, a prudent salesman sold them a book written by Professor F. Lennike that had been translated into Russian in 1895, Practical Guidance of Painting on Porcelain, Faience and So Forth, which stated how to draw portraits and landscapes. According to Lennike, it was necessary to use no less than fifty-four “bodily” paints to paint a portrait and no fewer colours to achieve a “grassy” landscape. Malevich could not understand why that quantity of colours was necessary, and continued to paint as he had with his limited palette that “…matched his impression”.
Two Sisters II, motif: 1910, version: 1928–1929.
Oil on canvas, 76 × 101 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
The Unemployed Girl, motif: 1904, version: end of 1920s.
Oil on canvas, 80 × 66 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
The Flower Girl III, motif: 1904–1905, version: end of 1920s. Oil on canvas, 80 × 100 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Kasimir remembered, “My first painting on a canvas, a size of one and three quarter arshin, was titled Moonlight Night. It was a landscape with a river, stones and a moored little boat. The reflection of beams of the moon in the picture, as I’ve been told, was like reality. This picture made a really big impression on all of my friends. One of them, with a commercial vein, urged me to display this picture in stationer’s shop on Nevsky Prospect, but I was against it because I was terribly over-modest. That was a strange condition – I, if it is possible to say, was ashamed to show my work which I had made with great pleasure. But my comrade took away my Moonlight Night without my permission. The owner of the shop was amazed by this picture. With pleasure, he took my work and, as my friend said, displayed it in a window of the shop. I went to take a look at my first exhibition too, but I was afraid that others might find out that I was the artist. Officials stopped, looked and looked… The picture was not displayed for long; it was purchased for five roubles. It was a fortune: it was possible to eat sausages – a ring daily – for a whole month. The owner of the shop asked me to bring another Moonlight Night but this time with a windmill. Actually, I painted a different picture, double the size of my first one. It represented a grove with storks. It was sold too.”
It is interesting to watch Malevich come out of his shell and be less defensive about his peasant status. Through his own talent, he managed to raise his self-esteem to the level of the artists he admired. He had painted for people he did not know, who were not relatives, and had admired and paid good roubles for his efforts. His success only fired his need to learn more.
By 1896, Severyn Malevich moved his sizeable family to even more permanent quarters in Kursk and went to work for the railway as a clerk in the management office. While there, he made a journey to Kiev and Kasimir accompanied him, remembering the trip later.
“Once a year all sugar factories met in Kiev. At the same time a great fair was arranged and merchants from all countries came there. Sugar-factory owners or managing directors came to the fair to make new contracts and hire different specialists or experts in sugar refining. That is why among barracks dwellers and famers the fair was important to receive future contracts. My father, as a highly skilled sugar maker, came to get these contracts too and took me with him. Consequently, I got acquainted with the city and its life as well as with art which was shown in show-windows of stationery shops.”
Kasimir wasn’t much interested in the fair although it was a remarkable event. While his father tended to business, Kasimir hurried from shop to shop and looked for hours at pictures. Thus, little by little, Kiev became a new environment that influenced him and opened a new appreciation of art.
He understood nothing then about the difference between the art of the Kiev painters and the folk art of the villagers, but emotionally he accepted them both – with excitement and a great desire to draw the same skilfully-done