Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935) rose to instant prominence among the Russian avant-garde when, in December 1915, he contributed thirty-nine paintings to an exhibition in Leningrad which were of such a reduced and sophisticated abstract quality that even today they seem to possess a luminous conceptual power. Malevich’s sudden and startling realization of a non-objective way of painting – which he termed Suprematism – stands as a seminal moment in the history of 20th-century art.

In Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure, now available in a compact pocket format, Rainer Crone and David Moos trace the artist’s development from his beginnings in Ukraine and early years in Moscow – where he was closely involved in the Futurist circle – through to the late 1920s and beyond. The authors demonstrate that it is only through a close and sustained reading of Malevich’s late – and still widely misunderstood – painterly œuvre that his extraordinarily inventive stance can truly be comprehended. Crone and Moos trace the close relationship between Malevich’s practice and other contemporary non-political revolutions in physics, linguistics and poetry. They present Malevich as a uniquely creative artist, embodying in his work many of the insights and discoveries that define the twentieth century and the condition of modern life.