An exhibition of a single painting by Casimir Malevich (1878-1935) titled "SUPREMUS. KOMPOZYCJA BEZPRZEDMIOTOWA / SUPREMUS - A NON-THEMATIC COMPOSITION" (1915), from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Ekaterinburg. The exhibition begins a broad presentation of Polish-Russian artistic links and the achievements of both cultures during the 20th century. The program for this international project will consist of a full array of cultural events. Highlights will include an exhibition titled WARSAW - MOSCOW / MOSCOW - WARSAW 1900-2000 at Warsaw's "Zacheta" Gallery and a presentation of the newest in Russian art titled "ZA CZERWONYM HORYZONTEM / BEYOND THE RED HORIZON", to be hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. The Museum of Art in Lodz will mount an exhibition devoted to Wladyslaw Strzeminski's idea of creating a Museum of Artistic Culture in the 1920s in the city of Smolensk. Also in the program, a number of theatrical and literary projects, several dozen concerts of contemporary Russian music, a series of chamber music concerts titled ROSYJSKA AWANGARDA MUZYCZNA W XX WIEKU / THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL AVANT-GARDE IN THE 20TH CENTURY, and a review of Russian avant-garde films of the 1920s and 1930s.

Russian painter and art theoretician Casimir Malevich was the creator of Suprematism and significantly influenced the development of art during the 20th century. Malevich was born to a Polish family that had been deported to Ukraine after the fall of the January Insurrection of 1863. He spent his childhood immersed in a home atmosphere that was imbued with Polish culture. His initial output as an artist, which was influenced by Realism and late Romantic landscape painting, is largely unknown. The artist burned all of his works from this period in 1906, when he relocated from Kursk to Moscow. His gaze then focused on the main directions of western European painting at the time, including Symbolism, Fauvism, and Cubism, and the artist ultimately proposed his own variation on principles established by representatives of the newest tendencies in art. Malevich exhibited for the first time as a representative of the Fauvist-Expressionist avant-garde in December of 1910. He subsequently became engrossed by other experiments in painting, many of which involved a complete rejection of the objective world. In June of 1915, Malevich painted a canvas titled "CZARNY KWADRAT NA BIALYM TLE / BLACK SQUARE ON A WHITE FIELD", which consists of a white background on which the artist has painted a single object: a black quadrilateral. This quadrilateral became a painterly being, even containing movement within it. The first works the artist created immediately afterwards were manifestations of pure color, which appeared under the guise of two-dimensional colored planes. The artist referred to this type of art as "non-thematic" and dubbed the artistic system he devised Suprematism. The purpose of Suprematism was art itself, i.e. free of all naturalistic references, focused on its own possibilities. The first exhibition of Suprematist works was held in Saint Petersburg in December of 1915. Malevich's Suprematist art found its fullest expression in the monochrome composition "BIALY KWADRAT NA BIALYM TLE / WHITE SQUARE ON A WHITE FIELD" of 1918. The work of Casimir Malevich was a harbinger of the minimalist painting of the 1960s and 1970s.

Exhibition opening: February 9, 2004, at 6 p.m.

The National Museum in Warsaw
Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie
Aleje Jerozolimskie 3, 00-495 Warszawa
Director: prof. Piotr Piotrowski
tel. (+48 22) 621 10 31, 629 30 93
fax (+48 22) 622 85 59
www.mnw.art.pl

Browsing history