# The Ukrainian Sky is Dark Like Nowhere in Russia: Malevich's Artistic Expression of Ukrainianness April 03, 2025 Nathalie Cen - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) > *\[…\] I listened with great pleasure, studying the Ukrainian sky against which stars burned like candles. For **the Ukrainian sky is dark, dark like nowhere in Russia**.* > > ——Kazimir Malevich “*Chapters from an Artist’s Autobiography*” ![Reservist in the First Divison](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-04/W1siZiIsIjE4NTU3MyJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDIwMDB4MjAwMFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?itok=jHLGho5x) Figure 1: Malevich's painting "Reservist of the First Division" in MoMAIf someone asked you to name a representative of the Russian avant-garde, whose name would you yell out off the top of your head? For many, including the legendary art historian Camilla Gray, the answer might be “Kazimir Malevich.” Indeed, Malevich has been considered a prominent figure in the Russian avant-garde by scholars for a long time. The public, too, had accepted the common sense that Malevich exclusively and undoubtedly belonged to the genre of Russian avant-garde before 2022. In March 2022, Malevich’s works appeared in MoMA’s special exhibition “In Solidarity” in response to the invasion, alongside those of Burliuk, Archipenko, and Kabakov, as representatives of Ukrainian art. Since then, the museum has revised his nationality to “Russian, born Ukraine.” However, the complexity of Malevich’s Ukrainian identity and his expression of Ukrainianness in his artworks extend far beyond the label of “Russian, born Ukraine.” In this essay, I will summarize the expression of Ukrainianness in Malevich’s art practices. First, I will discuss the impact of Ukrainian rural culture on Malevich’s mentality and artistic philosophy. Then, I will analyze how elements of Ukrainian peasant art have been adopted in Malevich’s art practices. Finally, I will describe Malevich’s responses to the Soviet industrialization project and the destruction of the Ukrainian rural world. ### Before 1905: Childhood in Ukraine ![Study for a portrait of a peasant](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-04/image%202.png?itok=l1em9Fou) Figure 2: Study for a Portrait of a Peasant, Kazimir Malevich, 1912, from *Delphi Complete Paintings of Kazimir Malevich*Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, born into a Polish Catholic family in Kyiv as Kazimierz Malewicz, spent most of his childhood in small Ukrainian towns because his father ran a sugar refining factory there. However, young Malevich preferred the countryside over the towns. His unfinished autobiographies passionately express nostalgia for his early life in rural Ukraine. The contrast between tranquil, idyllic rural life and the high-speed, “predatory” machinery is evident throughout these memoirs. According to Malevich, Ukrainian peasant art—including colorful folk dresses, peasant drawings, needlework, and lacemaking—was his first inspiration for art. Primitivist peasant painting and iconographic art particularly impressed him among these art forms. As Malevich comments, folk painting in Ukrainian rural areas “contains the whole mystery of my \[his\] sympathies with the peasants.” The drawings of roosters, horses, and flowers were so magnetic to the young Malevich that he “tried to transport this culture onto the stoves in my \[his\] own house” but failed. Icon Arts also impressed young Malevich a lot. As he described in 1923-25, “hung more for the sake of tradition and society, than from some religious feeling.” Later, Malevich noted the correlation between peasant painting and icon art in his 1933 autobiography: “I sensed some bond between peasants through icons, saw their faces not as saints, but as ordinary people\[…\]I came to understand the peasants through icons, saw their faces not as saints, but as ordinary people.” The folk and primitivist characteristics of Ukrainian peasant arts influenced not only Malevich’s perception of the world but also his mentality and, ultimately, his artistic philosophy. In his later years, Malevich outlined three stages of his artistic journey: in Kyiv, he encountered realist paintings and shifted from “primitivist representation” to the styles of Repin and Shishkin; then, he was inspired by nature and turned to impressionism; finally, Malevich returned to the expression of icon art, “the emotional art of peasants” that he had loved from the beginning. ### 1905-1918: Peasant Primitivism ![Kazimir Malevich MoMA painting](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-04/W1siZiIsIjE4NTU3MyJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDIwMDB4MjAwMFx1MDAzZSJdXQ_0.jpg?itok=7CpsV7aM) Figure 3: The Red Cross on a Black Circle, Kazimir Malevich, from *Delphi Complete Paintings of Kazimir Malevich*The expression of Ukrainianness can be observed in Malevich’s peasant primitivist art practices. Dmytro Horbachov comments on Malevich’s suprematist conception: “The closest analogy to his Suprematism are the geometrical forms of wall paintings in the homes of Podillia. \[…\] The paintings of Malevich, in which sharply delineated patterns are scattered on a white background, capture the spirit of folk art and folk cosmology.” Indeed, peasant primitivism is a motif throughout Malevich's artistic career. Figures of peasants predominated in Malevich’s early artworks. In 1908, he started to work on a series of large gouache paintings based on rural peasant lives. Gray argues that these paintings were inspired by Larionov and Goncharova’s “Agricultural” series, but in my opinion, scenes in these works are surprisingly coincidental with Malevich’s childhood memories in Ukraine. In 1911, Malevich started to study the techniques of the Ukrainian folk arts. Peasant Women at Church and Study for a Portrait of a Peasant precisely display the visual analogy between the figures of peasants and folk icons in Malevich’s art philosophy. Rural embroidery and mural art characteristics can also be discovered in Malevich’s other works with bold color and geometric composition, such as The Carpenter and Heymaking. The era of Suprematist experiments marks Malevich’s highest artistic achievement. Many argue that Suprematism is primarily inspired by cubism from the West, but cultural historian Shkandrij captures the remnants of Ukrainian folk art in Malevich’s Suprematist paintings. He particularly emphasizes Malevich’s obsession with the pattern of the cross. According to him, “short, stone crosses and tall, light wooden ones” are special products of the lampil region of Podillia. These distinctively-shaped crosses occur frequently in Malevich’s Suprematist artworks, for instance, The Red Cross on a Black Circle in 1915 and The Black Cross on a Red Oval in 1918. ### The 1930s: The Artist’s Response to Destruction of the Ukrainian Rural World ![The Running Man](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-04/image%204.png?itok=nVoKZgpa) Figure 4: The Running Man, Kazimir Malevich, 1932-1933, from *Delphi Complete Paintings of Kazemir Malevich*After vigorous experiments on Suprematism, Malevich returned to figuration in his last years. Peasants with unique Ukrainian characteristics again became protagonists of his paintings. However, this time, Malevich used these figures to denounce the absurdity of Soviet projects of industrialization and collectivization. Many of these works were antedated to avoid censorship and oppression. These paintings reflect the destruction of the rhythm of rural life by the Soviet Five-Year Plan and the brutal repression of Ukrainian peasants. Black crosses with Podillia features appear unevenly and constantly on Malevich’s canvas. His famous piece, *The Running Man*(early 1930s), illustrates a peasant man running toward a tall, light wooden cross from a sword. The message in the work is salient: the cross represents salvation and rural tradition, while the sword stands for repression, terror, and death. These crosses also interweave with Malevich’s characters’ bodies. For example, a chalk sketch on paper, *The Mystic*, produced in the post-1930 era, depicts a figure with a huge black cross on his face. Another work produced in the same period, *Figure with Arms Raised in a Cross*, shows a peasant with arms spread out as a crucifixion. This series of paintings reveals the dissatisfaction and even resistance to the destruction of the rhythm of Ukrainian rural lives and criticizes Soviet institutions for repressing, arresting, and deporting Ukrainian peasants (Shkandrij). ![A Man, a Coffin, and a Horse](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-04/image%205.png?itok=airKNsRc) Figure 5: A Man, a Coffin, and a Horse, Kazimir Malevich, date unknown, from *Delphi Complete Paintings of Kazimir Malevich*Apart from the cross, Malevich also utilized patterns of coffins and hammers, and sickles to convey a more intensive oppositional sentiment. According to Shkandrij, these images, along with the cross, echoed Ukrainian peasants’ rebel movements against the brutality of the communist regime, such as the prevailing “Kalynivka Miracle,” an instance of how the power of religion had overcome the ruthless Soviet police force. Malevich, in this case, had illustrated these tensions with the most understandable symbols: the coffin, the hammer and sickle, and the Orthodox cross represented death, salvation, and the anti-Christ. For example, the coffin's image can be seen in an undated pencil sketch titled A Man, a Coffin, and a Horse, in which a downcast peasant man stands with his back to a coffin laid on the ground. The pattern of the hammer and sickle, at the same time, is shown in a sketch with four peasant men standing side-by-side, each with a stigma of the hammer and sickle on their clothes. By drawing these figures, Malevich extracted anxiety, grief, and fear of death among Ukrainian peasants as universal emotions. ### Conclusion ![Four Pieces with the Hammer and Sickle](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-04/image%206.png?itok=RP_QZ8A_) Figure 6: Four Pieces with the Hammer and Sickle, Kazimir Malevich, date unknown, from *Delphi Complete Paintings of Kazimir Malevich*The explosion of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2022 has prompted scholars and general audiences to reevaluate the national identity of many Soviet or Russian artists. Not only did Malevich undergo this reevaluation process, but Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksandra Ekster, the Burliuk brothers, and other prominent early Soviet avant-garde artists also experienced the campaign of rediscovering Ukrainianness. However, Malevich’s example, among all of them, is distinctive because he has long been regarded as the vanguard of Soviet ideology and Soviet aesthetics. Discovering Ukrainianness in Malevich, therefore, is a practice that subverts the conventional Russian narrative over Soviet art history and dismantles the Russian chauvinist explanation of Soviet legacies. After researching the Ukrainianness in Malevich’s psychological landscape and art practices, I conclude that Ukrainian peasant culture is one of the dominant motifs in Malevich’s experiments throughout his life. Additionally, his artistry also became a tool for protesting the Soviet government’s violence against Ukrainian peasants and their rural culture. ### Further resources: Gilles Néret, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, and Chris Miller. *Kazimir Malevich 1878-1935 and Suprematism.* Köln: Taschen, 2017. Irena Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz, *Jubilant Experimentation: Modernism in Kyiv*. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Myroslav Shkandrij, *Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910–1930: Contested Memory.* Myroslav Shkandrij, *Reinterpreting Malevich: Biography, Autobiography, Art.* Canadian American Slavic Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 405–20. Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)