It was not necessary to reload it. The soldiers found us out and began to shoot at us from passageways. Despite their firing, the bullets didn’t hurt anybody at our post, only plaster was strewed about. We retreated to the barricades, but the soldiers, drawing up into an extended line, continued to shoot at us. We answered them eagerly; bullets whistled around. After each volley from their side, I, for some reason, wanted to jump up, as though bullets could fly at legs.
The Floor Polishers, 1911.
Gouache on cardboard, 77.7 × 71 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The Bather, 1911.
Gouache on cardboard, 105 × 69 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The skirmish was short because many of us scattered in different directions. Now, there were some wounded and dead men everywhere. Our group, while firing back, retreated to the courtyard of a house. After that, we closed a gate, took a ladder in the courtyard and started to climb over a fence to the courtyard of a neighbouring house. Our barricade was occupied by soldiers, but our group, almost all of us, passed through another courtyard and made a decision to go to Sretenka and the rear of the solders. In a minute, they entered the courtyard. Those who didn’t have time to climb over the fence rushed away. I entered into the first porch of the house with the idea of getting up onto the roof and then climbing down a drainpipe to the street.
When I reached the third floor, I read a door card with one of my friends’ names on it. But what should I do? Knock on the door or search for the attic? I decided to search for the attic, but it seemed that there was none. I stood on the stairs and listened to hear if somebody was coming. I counted my remaining bullets – there were five or six. Finally, I decided to knock. The door opened.
‘Is that you?’ my friend asked. ‘How did you manage to come through? Do you have a revolver?’
‘Yes, I have,’ I answered.
‘That is really bad, there’ll soon be a search. OK, undress and put the revolver under the rug in the hallway at the threshold. Take off your coat and shirt and put on a vest.’
I obeyed; there was no time to quibble. He took off his jacket too and remained in a vest. Then, he got tobacco and lit it up. It was done on purpose to have plenty of smoke. The impression was made that we had been sitting all day long smoking and drinking. He brought out vodka, sausages, and cucumber.
I drank; it went well, and soon I was “up to heels” – I was hungry and in cases like this vodka always goes “up to heels” and a person becomes drunk quickly. My friend started singing and I joined him.
‘Sing at the top of your voice!’ he shouted.
Then came a knock at the door. He said loudly from his place, ‘Enter!’ A corporal with a revolver in his hand and two soldiers entered.
‘Are any runaways in here?’ the corporal asked.
‘What runaway? Would you like to have a glass of vodka? It’s my birthday today, so my friend and I, you know…’
At once the corporal changed his anger to goodwill, drank and asked for more. My friend had to pour another glass for him. I sat, having stretched on a chair, mumbled a song and gesticulated slightly.
‘You see?’ my friend explained, ‘He got drunk…’
The corporal was not worried at all; everything was all right. He wiped his lips and, leaving, shouted to the soldiers, ‘To the exit!’
So we held this pose all night long, expecting more visitors.
In the morning, I followed a young girl who went to a shop carrying a basket. We left the courtyard without any problems.”
Malevich continually commuted to Moscow but also spent time to studying icons, and in 1906 he joined Fedor Rerberg’s studio, taking lessons in painting through to 1910.
Three Bathers, motif: c. 1910, version: 1928–1929.
Oil on canvas, 59 × 48 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Bather Seen from Behind, 1911.
Gouache on cardboard, 48.4 × 47.8 cm. Private Collection.
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.” These Moscow years had a double value for Malevich, allowing him to study both the deeper meanings of his beloved icons and learning new painting techniques and principles.
Rerberg was one of those multi-faceted teachers who, though he preferred to work in the Impressionist manner, did not force that style on his students. His primary claim to fame was preparing students to enter the Moscow College. While Malevich failed to take advantage of this preparation, his studies with Rerberg between 1905 and 1910 grounded him in composition and colour. Rerberg was a master technician and wrote books about the chemical content of various brands of oil paint. Together with a deep appreciation of physiology and psychology, he pressured his students to translate technical facility into the expression of their own feelings.
In effect Fedor Rerberg was Malevich’s only real intellectually-based teacher other than the osmosis derived from working alongside and being exposed to the works of beginners like himself and academic masters such as Pymonenko. From Rerberg, however, Kasimir received one unique gift, the chance to exhibit his work. In 1907 he exhibited two sketches at the 14th “Exhibition of the Moscow Community of “. He participated in the 15th and 16th Exhibitions, as well, before moving on.
Personally, this period covering the first ten years of the new century was unsettling for Malevich. With his father’s death he became responsible for his mother and younger siblings. Combining his failure to gain a place in the Moscow College with the insecurity of his teetering self-confidence forced him into direct action to ease the pressure. To maintain connection with the core of the fine art movements, he moved his mother and family to Moscow while he commuted back to Kursk in the summers to work and paint. The strain on his marriage caused him to divorce his first wife and marry Sofia Mikhailovna Rafalovich. She was the daughter of a psychiatrist and wrote children’s stories.
To keep the wolf from the door, Malevich and his new bride lived with other poor artists in a commune where everyone chipped in and shared chores. He took commercial art jobs and one in particular, sketches for publication of a controversial symbolist play, Anathema by Leonid Andreev, launched him among the “shock troops” of the avant-garde Moscow art movement. The Moscow Art Theatre that mounted the production gathered his lithographs into a rather elegant portfolio featuring scenes from the play and portraits of the actors in costume.
Malevich did not take this brief immersion in the maudlin excesses of Russian Symbolist poetry and theatre very seriously, but the vitality of the reaction to their productions must have excited him. An even greater influence on his work at this time was colliding with some of the best of French and other European Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Because Reberg was one of the founders of the Moscow Artists Society, Malevich was able to exhibit in the twice yearly shows beginning
