cover image Malevich

Malevich

Serge Fauchereau. Rizzoli International Publications, $27.5 (128pp) ISBN 978-0-8478-1738-2

Russian painter Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935), who created a universe out of flat geometrical forms, is often viewed as a victim of Stalinism whose artistic freedom was silenced by a brutal regime. In this compact survey of his career, Fauchereau ( Moscow 1900-1930 ) argues unpersuasively that the radical painter was not stifled by communism and never toed the official line of socialist realism. Malevich's disquieting pictures of armless or faceless peasants, made between 1928 and 1932, evoke for many critics the bewilderment and agony of collectivization, but Fauchereau lamely suggests that these images do not conceal anti-Soviet feelings but instead reflect the artist's neo-figurative impulses. Illustrated with 139 plates (89 in color), the book includes many fine examples of Malevich's fauve, symbolist, primitivist and cubist paintings along with his geometrical Suprematist works. (June)