in Vitebsk (‘Affirmers of new forms in art’). ‘Let the abolition of the old world be written in the palm of our hands’, this was the motto under which the works of the Unovis were published and their debates organised. The core of this new group, directed by Malevich, was composed of Vera Ermolaeva, Lazar Lissitzky, Nikolai Suetin, Lev Yudin, Ilya Shashnik, Nina Kogan, Lazar Khidekel and Evguenia Magaril. The Unovis group presented a vast transformation programme for all types of visual arts.
The active artistic life at the school was shaking the dozy atmosphere of the town; conferences, debates on the new art, evening drawing demonstrations with lectures on the principles of Cubism, Futurism and Suprematism, and of course exhibitions were taking place. After Vitebsk, Unovis groups were created all over the country: in Smolensk, Kharkov, Moscow, Petrograd, Samara, Saratov, Perm and other places. In Vitebsk, Malevich was much involved in the study of architectonics and became deeply interested in applied Suprematism. Some sketches of women’s clothing, fabric designs and even a fragment of printed fabric still remain. Suprematism submits coloured and geometric forms, in interaction between one and another, to the laws of contrast and harmony, each element of form being part, inevitably and logically, of one unique structure.
Almost none of Malevich’s students became Suprematists, although the school of Vitebsk and the Suprematist curriculum gave each student a charge of energy that would last for his or her life. Starting from this experience, Lissitzsky became a layout artist. Yudin developed into a graphic designer, bearing in mind the lessons of Cubism, which influenced him deeply at Vitebsk. Malevich gave them all a solid basis, a culture from the form, to the anarchy of colour for which Ermolaeva had always been passionate. The sketches for shop signs in Vitebsk made by Suetin are conserved at the Russian Museum. Contrary to the large number of students who worked with Malevich and merely assimilated the decorative side of Suprematism, Suetin made his the inner and philosophical principles of the new movement.
When numerous followers of Malevich moved away from their master at the beginning of the 1930s, Suetin remained loyal to him until the end of his life, continuing to develop the visual structures of Suprematism. At Vitebsk, Malevich had for the first time to deal with talented painters, allowing him to tackle teaching, which had always attracted him. These young painters literally impregnated themselves with the precepts and principles of the new art. His teaching was based on the practical assimilation of Cubism, Futurism and Suprematism.
Pyotr Konchalovsky, San Giminiano, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 92 × 72 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
Olga Rozanova, Fire in the Town (Urban Landscape), 1914.
Oil on metal, 71 × 71 cm.
Private collection.
Lyubov Popova, Composition with Figures, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 160 × 124.3 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Alexandra Exter, The Bridge (Sèvres), 1912.
Oil on canvas, 145 × 115 cm.
National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kiev.
The Unovis group in Vitebsk produced several plays. On 6 February 1920, the Suprematist Ballet was performed, with set designs by Nina Kogan; the opera by Alexei Krutchenykh and Mikhail Matiushin, Victory over the Sun, (a dramatic interpretation) was put on with sets designed by Vera Ermolaeva. On 17th September of that same year, thanks to the Unovis group, the productions of Mayakovsky’s Mystère-Bouffe and War and Peace were performed. Several exhibitions of the Unovis group took place in Vitebsk. Twice, in 1920 and 1921, the school of Vitebsk exhibited its work in Moscow at the Cezanne club of VKhUTEMAS. The work of Malevich, Ermolaeva, Lissitzky, and that of a group of students from the school of Vitebsk, was also shown in a Russian exhibition organised in 1922 in Berlin by the Soviet agency Narkompros. David Sterenberg, ‘curator’ of the exhibition, observed: ‘The work of the students from the VKhUTEMAS, the Vitebsk workshop and the Sytine’s school has been well received.’[29] The ‘Suprematist renaissance’ ended as quickly as it started. In 1922, Malevich left for Petrograd and with him the main members of the Unovis group. The Unovis group was the beginnings of the INKhUK group in Petrograd.
Later, the idea of organising a museum for the new art in order to show the best work to the general public developed among the innovative painters soon after the Revolution. By the time the works were exhibited in official exhibitions, they had often lost their novelty and relevance. The organisation commission of the Museum of Artistic Culture, which included Nathan Altman, Alexei Karev and Alexander Matveiev, met on 5 December 1918. The Art of the Community (Iskusstvo Kommuny) newspaper published a list of painters whose work would be acquired by the Museum. Among the one hundred and forty three names representing the Russian Avant-Garde were: Malevich, Tatlin, Filonov, Rozanova, Larionov, Goncharova, Altman, Le Dantyu, Matiushin, Mansurov and Ermolaeva. The painting department of the Museum of Artistic Culture was set up in the Miatlev House in Saint-Isaac square, at the former location of the Commission on People’s Education, and opened to the public on 3 April 1921.
Drawing, icon painting and industrial aesthetics departments were created afterwards. The Museum of Artistic Culture was the first Avant-Garde museum in the world to exhibit contemporary works of living painters, works that, if events had followed their usual course, could only have been exhibited years later. The Museum survived a few years. Its collections, admirably chosen and reflecting the whole spectre of the Russian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s, were then transferred to the Russian Museum in Leningrad where Nikolai Punin and Vera Anikieva organised a Department for the new movements in art, inaugurated for the sixth anniversary of the Revolution.
David Burliuk, Bridge (Landscape from Four Different Points of View), 1911.
Oil on canvas, 97 × 131 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
II. Schools and Movements
Kazimir Malevich, The Aviator, 1914.
Oil on canvas, 125 × 65 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
The Institute of Artistic Culture
Research work was carried out in the Museum of Artistic Culture as early as 1921. Malevich gave lectures there: (‘Light and colour’, ‘The New Proof in Art’), by Matiushin (‘On the new space for the painter’) and by Ermolaeva (‘The System of Cubism’). This was how the idea of creating a research centre to study the new issues in art came about. On 9 June 1923, during the conference of the Museum taking place in Petrograd, Filonov made a report in which he proposed, in the name of the ‘group of left-wing painters’, to transform the museum into a Research Institute on the culture of contemporary art. But why did the creators themselves also want to play the role of researchers? To answer this question, one must highlight several points. Traditional art critics appeared helpless regarding the issues raised by the new art. For twenty years they had mocked the Russian Avant-Garde, making even deeper the divide created between the public and the painters. Even the most open-minded critics, such as Alexander
‘Russian exhibition in Berlin. Extract of the conversation with D. Sterenberg’,
