"Soldier in the Woods" (1908-09) by Mikhail Larionov. Example of Russian Neo-Primitivism, whose features are bright colors, rough lines, a distorted perspective, and flatness. The Russian Neo-Primitivists looked to Russia's traditional art forms, such as the lubok [a popular woodcut] and the icon. Another leader of Neo-Primitivism in the Russian avant-garde was Natalia Goncharova, who explained, "I shook off the dust of the West. I turned away from the West because for me personally it had dried up and because my sympathies lie with the East." Although Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova are known as the most prominent promoters of Neo-Primitivism, many of their artistic peers passed through a Neo-Primitivist stage.

"The Woodcutter" (1912). Malevich integrated the machines of the modern world with the still-primitive life of the Russian people.

"Blue Rayonism" (1912) by Mikhail Larionov. Larionov introduced Rayonism in 1913. Although it lasted only about a year, Rayonism was a crucial step in the development of abstract art. Rayonism portrays the crossing of reflected rays from various objects. According to Larionov "We perceive a sum of rays proceeding from a source of light; these are reflected from the object and enter our field of vision."

In the World of Art movement and the Russian avant-garde, artists worked collaboratively with musicians, dancers, directors, and writers in creating productions that would show off the alchemy of the arts. One such collaborative effort was "Victory Over the Sun" (1913), a cubo-futurist opera with sets and costumes by Malevich, discordant music by Mikhail Matiushin, and a libretto by Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchonykh. People were transformed into "moving machines" by costumes of cardboard and wire.

Malevich's drawing for the Enemy for the 1913 production of "Victory Over the Sun."

A costume of a worker in Malevich's design for "Victory Over the Sun."

Retrospectively, Malevich declared that his backdrop for the second act, fifth scene of "Victory Over the Sun" was the first public display of Suprematism. Certainly, the large square divided diagonally recalls his painting "Black Square." Still it is possible, in the context of the play, to see this design as symbolic of the split between night and day, and therefore as representational rather than purely abstract.

The libretto of "Victory Over the Sun" explored new aesthetic ideas such as zaum: transrational language. Some actors spoke only with vowels, others only with consonants, while blinding lights and ear-splitting sounds rocked through the theater in an effort to give man "victory over the sun"--freedom from all dependence on the traditional order of the world.

Another example of artistic collaboration can be seen in Natalia Goncharova's stage sets for Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera "The Golden Cockerel" based on a tale by Pushkin. (1914).

"Black Square" (1915) by Kazimir Malevich. Over time, Malevich transformed the cylindrical metallic figures of his woodcutters and peasants into shapes: ovals, circles, rhombuses, triangles, rectangles, and squares. "The Square," Malevich wrote "is the face of the new art and the first step of pure creation in art. Now our world of art has become new, non-objective, and pure."He reduced the three-dimensionality of his earlier work to the verge of two, and initiated Suprematism. Malevich discussed Suprematism in a 1916 letter: "Suprematism provides me with the keys to the still imperceived. My new painting does not pertain to the earth alone. The earth has been abandoned like a termite-ridden house. And man really does consciously seek space, he longs to 'break loose from the earth'." The components of the Russian icon left a profound visual effect on the artists of the Russian avant-garde. When Malevich first displayed his "Black Square" (his most radical painting) at the 0.10 exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, he placed it in the "beautiful corner" traditionally reserved for the icon in a Russian Orthodox household.

Similarly, his 1913 painting "Black Cross" it has been suggested, recalls the cross patterns in the vestments of iconographic portrayals of St. Nicholas.

"White on White" (1918). Malevich's "white on white" series of 1918 followed his black square on a white ground and shows the extent to which he had developed his ideas on Suprematism.

Updated 9/18/2002