Provenance Anna Aleksandrovna Leporskaya, Leningrad Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne Galerie Piltzer, Paris Private Collection, Paris Edelman Arts, New York Private Collection, New York
Literature Galerie Gmurzynska, Malevich, Suetin, Chashnik, Cologne, 1992, No. 28, illustrated p. 76 A. B. Nakov, Kazimir Malewicz Catalogue Raisonné, Paris, 2002, No. S-647-a, illustrated p. 329 A. Nakov, Kazimir Malewicz: Le Peintre Absolu Volume 3. Thalia Edition, Paris, 2007, illustrated p. 316 L. Sperti, ‘Kazimir Malewicz: Le Peintre Absolu.’ Art Passions 12, 2007 illustrated pp. 83-87
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This important Suprematist sketch fully embodies Kazimir Malevich’s embrace of that ideology in the mid- 1920s, and its power to create new, vital space analogous to the artist’s notion of contemporary society. This ink drawing - his 1931 design for the ceiling of the Krasny Theatre in Novosibirsk, Soviet Russia - was a commission affording Malevich the opportunity to conform the influence of geometric non-objectivity in the New Order of architecture. The design was never realized due to a fire which destroyed the building. Before the Revolution, the eclectic building had been a cathedral, built at the end of the 19th century. In Malevich’s Suprematist redesign, the overlapping symmetrical rectilinear forms, as arranged on the ceiling, allowed for individual vaulted segments. Usurped from the Bolshevik ideologues, Malevich used the color red - energetic and filled with power - as he did black and white, the three colors corresponding to his theory of three levels of Suprematist development.