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In the search by www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service for artwork
related to the crimes of communism against Ukraine and especially the
genocidal famine in Soviet Ukraine during 1932-1933 we are very
interested in what some authorities say about the famous painting by the
world renowned Ukrainian artist Kasimir Malevich [Kazymyr Malevych]
[Kasimir Malevitch] given the name "The Running Man, " or "Peasant
Between Cross and Sword."
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PEASANT BETWEEN A CROSS AND A SWORD. 1932-1933. Oil, canvas
George Pompidou Art Centre, Paris
A peasant, his hands and feet black, as though badly scorched,
is running through deserted land; at the horizon loom a cross and
a sword covered with blood. The painting echoed the horrors of
the famine that struck Ukraine in 1932-1933 when millions of peasants
died in this man-made disaster
(Click on image to enlarge it)
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"THE RUNNING MAN", 1933-1934
"The Ukrainians-Unexpected Nation"
The book "The Ukrainians-Unexpected Nation" by Andrew Wilson,
second edition, paperback, c. 2000 & 2002, Yale Nota Bene, Yale
University Press, New Haven and London, between pages 174 &
175, Plate 34 shows in color this famous painting by Kasimir Malevich
[the way his name is spelled in this book].
The caption in the book under the painting says: "Kasimir Malevich's
haunting 'The Running Man,' 1933-1934, here interpreted as an
indictment of the Great Famine." On page 352 of the book are the
Notes to pages 143-149. Note number 71 states, "This is the
interpretation of the painting given in Horbachov, 'Ukrains'kyi
avan-hard,' page 383."
The book says "The Running Man" painting is part of the collection
of the Musee National d'Art Moderne, in Paris.
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Author Andrew Wilson in chapter seven, "The Twentieth Century:
Peasants into Ukrainians?", states:
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"Two great shadows threatened the mythology of 'Socialist
achievement', however. One was the bloody Purges of the 1930's.
The other was the Great Famine, which engulfed Soviet Ukraine
in 1932-3 and which is now accepted to have left up to seven
million dead, in addition to those who died in two other famines
in 1921-23 and 1946 (hence a certain poignancy to Yablonska's
'Bread' [painting] --the predominance of female labour in 1949
would not have been just a matter of custom). [70] Whole
villages were wiped out, people ate domestic pets, grass, even
next year's corn (notoriously defined as 'the theft of Socialist
property' and made punishable by death), and cannibalism was
widespread. Internal passports were introduced to prevent the
starving leaving their villages in search of food. Kasimir Malevich's
haunting 'The Running Man' (1933-34), showing a peasant fleeing
across a deserted landscape, is eloquent testimony to the disaster
(see plate 34). [71]"
"PEASANT BETWEEN CROSS AND SWORD" 1932
"Ukrainian Avant-Garde Art, 1910-1930"
This painting by Ukrainian artist Kazymyr Malevych [the way his name
is spelled in this book] is also shown in the book, "Ukrainian Avant-Garde
Art, 1910-1930" published in Kyiv in 1996, as illustration 261. Instead
of the name "The Running Man" the book lists the name of the painting as
"Peasant Between Cross and Sword," and says it was painted in 1932,
not in 1933-1934, as stated in the other book mentioned above.
The painting is shown in the section of the book entitled, "Constructivism
& Electroorganism." The book published in Kyiv says the painting is held
at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, France. There are fourteen paintings
by Ukrainian artist Kazymyr Malevych shown in the book.
The book was compiled and introduced by Professor Dmytro
Horbachov, a leading Ukrainian art critic who has devoted many
years of research to Ukrainian Avant-garde art.
The avant-garde book contains 400 reproductions of the finest works
of Ukrainian Avant-garde artists which can be found now in museums
and private collections of many countries.
MALEVICH: THE FULLEST EXPRESSION OF PURE FEELING
UKRAINIAN ARTIST KASIMIR MALEVICH
[Kazimir Malevich, Kazymyr Malevych, Kasimir Malevitch]
By Dmytry Horbachov, Ukrainian Art Critic
Welcome to Ukraine magazine, Kyiv, Ukraine, 1998, Issue One
Editor.....Dmytro Horbachov, the Ukrainian avante-garde critic who
compiled the book listed above wrote an article for the Welcome to
Ukraine magazine in the spring of 1998 where he states is own thinking
and beliefs about the painting by Kazimir Malevich.
Horbachov had this to say about the painting: "His series of paintings
and drawings Peasant between a Cross and a Sword, created in 1932-
1933, echoed the horrors of forced collectivisation of Ukrainian farmers
and wide-spread famine of the early thirties that took a very heavy toll
in human lives."
Here is the text that Horbachov wrote to go with the picture of the
painting that was in the Welcome to Ukraine magazine, "A peasant,
his hands and feet black, as though badly scorched, is running through
deserted land; at the horizon loom a cross and a sword covered with
blood. The painting echoed the horrors of the famine that struck Ukraine
in 1932-1933 when millions of peasants died in this man-made disaster.
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Here is the complete text of the Welcome to Ukraine magazine article
by Dmytro Horbachov published in the spring of 1998:
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"The representation of an object in itself (the objectivity as the aim of
expression), is something that has nothing to do with art, although the use
of representation in a work of art does not rule out the possibility of
being of a high artistic order. For the suprematist, therefore, the proper
means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and
ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless
to him; and the idea of the conscious mind is worthless. Feeling is the
decisive factor...and thus art arrives at non-objective representation - at
suprematism." Kasimir Malevich
Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935), one of the daring pioneers of the
twentieth-century art, founded a new movement which he called Suprematism.
Malevich had clear insight and a logical mind, and he went straight to the
point which other artists reached by cautious evolution. Basing himself on
current aesthetic theories, he asserted that the reality in art was the
sensational effect of colour itself. As an illustration he exhibited,
already in 1915, a picture of a black square on a white ground, and claimed
that the feeling this contrast evoked was the basis of all art.
Kasimir Malevich was born 120 years ago in Kyiv. His childhood and youth
were spent in Ukraine. His parents and he moved from place to place, living
for stretches of time in villages and small towns of the areas of Podillya,
Chernihyvshchina and Kharkivshchina. It was during his life in the
countryside that he developed an interest towards peasants' ornamental art.
In 1896 Malevich went to study at Mykola Murashko School of Painting where
he was trained by Mykola Pymonenko who was a painter of the naturalistic
line. Early in the 20th century Malevich found himself in Moscow and in his
artistic development went successively through the stages of Impressionism,
Symbolism, Primitivism and Cubism.
A new trend in art of Geometric Abstractionism which he founded and
called Suprematism was to exercise a profound influence upon painting,
architecture and design of the 20th century.
In a certain way Suprematism and Ukrainian folk ornamental and
decorative painting have something in common - non-representational
composition, elementary shapes, bright primal colours, cosmic symbolism.
Later Malevich worked in art schools of Moscow, Petrograd (now St.
Petersburg) and Vitebsk.
At the end of the twenties he returned to Ukraine and taught art at Kyiv Art
Institute, published articles in Kyiv magazines on theory of art, created
designs for a small embroidery co-operative in the village of Verbivka (in
the vicinity of Kyiv).
His series of paintings and drawings Peasant between a Cross and a Sword,
created in 1932-1933, echoed the horrors of forced collectivisation of
Ukrainian farmers and wide-spread famine of the early thirties that took a
very heavy toll in human lives.
Ethnically Malevich was of Polish descent but spiritually he was Ukrainian.
He insisted he was Ukrainian, and derived his artistic inspiration from many
sources, Ukrainian in particular. [Dmytro HORBACHOV, art critic]
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Editor: The entire Welcome to Ukraine article by Dmytro Horbachov can
be seen with the photographs of the paintings included with the article at:
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http://www.artukraine.com/paintings/malevich3.htm
KAZIMIR MALEVICH, UKRAINIAN PAINTER
b. 1878, near Kyiv; d. 1935, Leningrad
Painter, Designed and Theorist
Biographical Information
Kazimir Malevich was born February 26, 1878, near Kyiv. He studied at
the Kyiv Art School (1895-7) and studied at the Moscow Institute of
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1903 [1904-5?] and F. Rerberg's
studio in Moscow (1905-1910).
During the early years of his career, he experimented with various Modernist
styles, by the Impressionists and Fauvists, and participated in avant-garde
exhibitions, such as those of the Moscow Artists' Association, which
included Vasily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, and the Jack of Diamonds
exhibition of 1910 in Moscow.
Malevich showed his Primitivist paintings of peasants at the exhibition
Donkey's Tail in 1912. After this exhibition, he broke with Larionov's
group. In 1913, with composer Mikhail Matiushin and writer Alexei
Kruchenykh, Malevich drafted a manifesto for the First Futurist Congress.
That same year, he designed the sets and costumes for the opera Victory
over the Sun by Matiushin and Kruchenykh. Malevich showed at the Salon
des IndÈpendants in Paris in 1914.
At the 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, Malevich
introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings. In 1919, he
began to explore the three-dimensional applications of Suprematism in
architectural models.
He was the first modern painter to work in a purely gometric, cerebral,
nonfigurative manner (eg, his paintings "Black Square" [1913] and
"White on White" [1918]. In 1916 he published the journal "Supremus."
Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Malevich and other advanced
artists were encouraged by the Soviet government and attained prominent
administrative and teaching positions. He was a member of the Division of
Visual Arts of the Russian Commissariat of Enlightenment; taught at
the Vitebsk Popular Art School in Belarus (1919-22); he soon became its
director.
In 1919-20, he was given a solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in
Moscow, which focused on Suprematism and other non-objective styles.
Malevich and his students at Vitebsk formed the Suprematist group Unovis.
From 1922 to 1927, he directed the Institute of Artistic Culture in
Petrograd, and between 1924 and 1926 he worked primarily on architectural
models with his students. From 1927-1929 he also taught at the Kiev State
Art Institute.
In the 1920's he began working in a sonstsructivist style, in which he
produced urban architectural models and furniture, textile, and china
designs.
He was a prolific writer and produced various theoretical works, notably
"The World as Non-Objectivity" (English trans 1976), developed new
educational methods, and established original theoretical frameworks for
the analysis of paintings.
His works and theories influenced a number of Soviet avant-garde artists,
including the Russians I. Chasnik and El Lisitsky and the Ukrainians
V. Yermilov, V. Meller, and A. Petrytsky.
In 1927, Malevich traveled with an exhibition of his paintings to Warsaw and
also went to Berlin, where his work was shown at the Grosse Berliner
Kunstausstellung. In Germany, he met Jean Arp, Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier,
and Kurt Schwitters and visited the Bauhaus, where he met Walter Gropius.
The Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow gave Malevich a solo exhibition in 1929.
In the late 1920's because of growing opposition on the part of the
central government to the avant-garde, Malevich was able to publish 13
articles of his theories only in the Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, journal "Nova
generatsiia (1929-1929). He was forced to return to a figurative style of
painting in 1929.
Because of his connections with German artists, he was arrested in 1930 and
many of his manuscripts were destroyed. In his final period, he painted in a
representational style. Malevich died May 15, 1935, in Leningrad in poverty
and oblivion.
[Bio material developed from several sources including the article by N.
Mykytyn found on page 290 in Encyclopedia of Ukraine, edited by
Danylo Husar Struk, University of Toronto Press, 1993.]
This material has been complied and edited by the www.ArtUkraine.com
Information Service (ARTUIS). It can be used but only with proper credits
to the www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service (ARTUIS), Kyiv, Ukraine
and Washington, D.C.
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