Andrei Nakov – Forms in Dissolution / Kazimir Malevich, Carré rouge / El Lissitzky, Proun

ZAHA HADID
AND
SUPREMATISM
GALERIE GMURZYNSKA

Andrei Nakov
Forms in Dissolution
Following the first phase of Suprematism which had, above all, been about
the affirmation of non-objective elements, Kazimir Malevich would focus
on the philosophical exploration of the idea of a non-objective form. On
this path toward a kind of existentialism of the Suprematist “being”
(according to his own definition), he very rapidly succeeded in conceiving a
sort of osmosis between non-objective form and space. Projected with a
great kinetic energy toward infinite space, the Suprematist plans were to
be lost in this space; in other words, to identify and thus to merge with
(infinite) space. Extremely innovating works resulted from this concept,
where the idea of a forme fixe, a form with defined limits (frames) found
itself taken to the next level by the painter’s philosophical verve. The
creator of Suprematism thus defined the conditions of a new aesthetic,
where the idea of form itself was conceived in a totally different way than
thought of before. This revolutionary idea of an open form would inevitably
lead to the monochrome or, following Malevich’s definition, to the painting
of the “colorless” (see his 1918 manifesto; the first paintings of this series
were exhibited in Moscow in April 1919).

By going through the practical aspects of certain of his nearest
Russian comrades (Ivan Kliun and, above all, Olga Rozanova), the
advocator of this revolutionary idea would be imitated regularly throughout
the twentieth century. We find some of the first and most brilliant
affirmations made by his Polish student Vladislav Strzheminsky (see his
theory on the “Unism”). In the United States, from the 1940s onward,
Barnett Newman was to go beyond Malevich’s ideas with his grand,
abstract Color Field compositions. With his monochromes, Yves Klein
gave this lyrical verve an existentialist dimension unparalleled to this day.
We can thus clearly say that Malevich’s formes en dissolution are a
capital moment in the history of modern painting.
91

Andrei Nakov
Kazimir Malevich, Carré rouge
Presented at Petrograd in December 1915 at the first Suprematism
exhibition (0.10), Carré rouge (Red Square) was to become one of the
works that most surprised a public already moved deeply by this first
presentation of non-objective (abstract) works, which showed a way of
doing things never before seen in the history of our civilization. Entitled
Réalisme pictural d’une paysanne en deux dimensions (Pictorial Realism of
a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions), this painting is merely comprised
of a simple red quadrilateral inscribed on a white background. Indeed, this
was something to shock the public. A revolutionary work in the best sense
of the word—similar to the famous Carré noir (Black Square), which was
part of the same exhibition under the laconic title Quadrilatère
(Quadrilateral)—Carré rouge illustrates better than any other Suprematist
work of this exhibition the concept of non-objective (Suprematist) painting
itself. This audacious composition also has the advantage of enlightening
the viewer on the path Kazimir Malevich took to reach his goal.

The reference to the rustic theme thrusts the present-day interpreter
and even more so the spectator of the epoch into a series of expressionist
images of peasants created by Malevich four years earlier. Beginning with
these images of peasants, Malevich would focus on working on their
Cubist, then Cubo-Futuristic transformation. In 1915, he achieved a
painting that expresses, in a declamatory way, the title Réalisme pictural
(Pictorial Realism). We are thus dealing here with realism in painting as an
ideal and as a way of picturing imagined in the categories of the absolute,
and not the illustration of any extra-pictorial fact. The new painting
asserts itself free of any link, of any submission to another system of
values (literature, philosophy, etc.).
The color red, quintessence of (pictorial) emotion, was glorified in
the form of a simple, slightly irregular quadrilateral whose absolutely
monumental simplicity spectacularly enhanced the ideality of the concept
of pure painting. From the first (black) quadrilateral, then the red one,
Malevich would very rapidly develop a real theater of non-objective forms.
At the beginning of the 1920s, the importance of Carré rouge, taken as a
sign, would be underlined by El Lissitzky, who, under the impulse of
Malevich, created the first Conte suprématiste pour enfants (Suprematist
Children’s Tale) in Vitebsk, Belarus. Entitled Histoire de deux carrés
(History of Two Squares), this extraordinarily abstract narration sports a
red square and the number two on its cover, notifying children (to whom
this Suprematist comic strip was dedicated) that this was about a tale of
two squares, of which only the red one, considered to be the victor against
the “Old World” (symbolized by the Carré noir), made it onto the cover.
95

Andrei Nakov
El Lissitzky, Proun
The cosmic visions of Suprematism, the new way of painting introduced
by Kazimir Malevich in 1915, led to architectural projects by 1916. Thus, at
the public speech he had given following the important analytic presentation
of his coloristic evolution (in Moscow in November 1917), he had
already included the subject of a Suprematist architecture. In 1919, when
he had achieved his journey in pictorial Suprematism, Malevich would
focus on the concrete elaboration of a Suprematist architecture only upon
setting up in Vitebsk in November 1919. At this moment, a new phase
began in his concept of Suprematism, as well as in the application of his
Suprematist ideas “in real life.” Thus, when he organized his teaching
courses at the Vitebsk Art School, he immediately included an important
architectural section. The young Lazar (El) Lissitzky was the artist
who, in 1920, seconded him in this task. Enraptured with Malevich’s
Suprematist ideas, Lissitzky would go head over heels into Suprematist
architectural creation. Under the direct impact of Malevich and in a state
of almost total osmosis with the ideas of his master, Lissitzky conceived
architectural projects at the end of 1919 which he would later call Prouns.
The term “Proun” on its own came to Lissitzky at the beginning of 1920
when the Suprematist circle at Vitebsk Art School adopted the acronym
“UNOVIS” (from Utverditeli Novogo Iskusstva or Champions of the New
Art). Derived directly from UNOVIS, the term “Proun” sounded like a sort
of fanfare for the UNOVIS camp.

Lissitzky defined his Prouns as fantastic compositions realized with
Suprematist (non-objective) elements “in volume,” as “intermediary
stations between painting and world architecture.” In his first Suprematist
text in 1920, he clearly indicated that his “constructions” were “exits
from the surface of the painting” in order to launch into “architectural
prospective.” He thus asserted openly that Malevich’s Suprematist
painting was the origin of his creation of the Proun. Benefitting from
an education in architecture he had acquired at school in Darmstadt,
Germany (1909–14) and, following this, at Moscow Civil Engineering
School (1916–17), Lissitzky had the technical means to realize Malevich’s
wild ideas. It is important to note that Malevich had then said that in the
person of Lissitzky he had “found the means that will realize my
architectural ideas.”
The first Prouns were united by Lissitzky in a lithographic portfolio
he produced himself in 1920 when he left Vitebsk to go to Moscow.
This portfolio reunited the eleven first and strongest Proun projects,
which mainly distinguish themselves by their “constructive” exuberance.
For several of his works, we know the princeps versions, i.e. the definite
paintings, several of which were produced on wooden supports
(sometimes following the lithographs): Proun 1 C and Proun 1 E (“Town”),
both circa 1920; whereas Proun 23, No. 6 (of the former Estorick
Collection, London), one of the first works in the Proun series, was
painted on canvas before the end of 1919. Undoubtedly, Lissitzky’s first
Proun series, made in Russia before his departure to Germany where he
would reside from 1922 onward, was a crucial moment in the history of
Suprematism as well as twentieth-century architectural thinking. Being
a follow-up to the grand idealist verve of utopian architecture of the years
1910–20 (Antonio Sant’Elia, Hermann Finsterlin, and the other members
of the movement Die Gläserne Kette), Lissitzky added the imaginary,
utopian dimension of Suprematism; in short, he strongly reinforced
its visionary force.
Lissitzky’s Suprematist enthusiasm would lead him to develop the
Proun series during his second stay in Germany (1922–24). Installed in
135

136
Hannover for the Kestnergesellschaft, of which he was cashier, he created
a second Proun portfolio in 1923. Composed of six compositions, this
Kestnermappe was much more elegant and lavish than the 1920 series,
but had not quite the visionary force of the first set. The Proun
compositions created during this era contributed greatly to Lissitzky’s
international reputation and were, so to say, Suprematism’s spearhead
beyond the Russian border. They were greatly appreciated by the German
architects and first collectors of non-objective Russian art, such as
Katherine Dreier in the United States. In her role as director of the Société
Anonyme, Dreier would present to the American public (at the Brooklyn
Museum) Lissitzky’s Proun series in 1926.
In 1923, Lissitzky created a Proun space in three dimensions at the
Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung which was an immediate success. In
1925, the Kühl & Kühn gallery in Dresden presented an important
Lissitzky exhibition where the Prouns were up front. We can safely say
that this exhibition was the trigger for the only neo-plastic space planned
by Piet Mondrian, an almost mythical installation today that was created
one year later (1926) in the same city of Dresden for a private collector.
It was destroyed during the tragic 1945 bombardments.
In 1927, Lissitzky received from Alexander Dorner, the audacious
custodian of Landesmuseum Hannover, the commission to create an
abstract interior, a museum installation destined to present solely abstract
art and which referred manifestly to the Berlin Prounenraum of 1923.
Called Cabinet des Abstraits, this installation, destroyed by the Nazis and
reconstructed today at the same place, is one of the truly unavoidable
witnesses to the inscription of abstract art within European society of
the twentieth century.
Being a protean creator and of great emotional, thus existential, fragility,
Lissitzky would dedicate a good deal of his strength to the field of architectural
prospective all through the 1920s up to the beginning of the 1930s.
Owing to his German contacts (the Hannover Kestnergesellschaft), the
first and only foreign Malevich retrospective would see the light of day—an
event organized in 1927 by the Kartell der Vereinigten Verbände

Bildender Künstler in Berlin. At this time, thanks to his presence in Berlin
and his journey to the Dessau Bauhaus, Malevich suddenly emerged as
the initiator and grand visionary of Suprematist architecture in Germany,
or even of modern architecture altogether. But we should never forget
that Lissitzky opened this path in Germany. At that time, in the mid
1920s, a certain confusion had resulted between Lissitzky and Malevich’s
creations, which lucid critics (such as Ernst Kallai) didn’t fail to remark
upon. Malevich’s visit to the Dessau Bauhaus in April 1927 and the one he
paid to Mies van der Rohe upon his arrival in Berlin remain crucial events
for the evolution of architecture in the twentieth century, since, from this
moment on, a humanist and really neo-Platonic inflection can be noted in
the work of Mies which would change the image of modern architecture.
Similar to the new visions of a “Constructivist” Giovanni Battista Piranesi,
Lissitzky’s Prouns, compositions of a highly technical, neo-romantic
imaginary, had already prepared the path for this disruption several years
before the meeting between Malevich and Mies in Berlin.
137