Kazimir Malevich

Born in 1879 in Kyiv to a family of Polish origin, he studied briefly at the Stroganov School in Moscow and later at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1915 he exhibited Black Square at the Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 in Petrograd, placing it in the corner position traditionally reserved for religious icons. The painting became the founding declaration of Suprematism, his theory of pure geometric abstraction as a spiritual and revolutionary form. He visited the West in 1927, exhibiting at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He died in Leningrad in 1935.