The unexpected Malevich: Arskaya, Karasik, Kozyreva

The drawings and watercolors published in this Russian Museum catalogue come from a 2017 gift to the museum - an archive of over 100 graphic works by Kasimir Malevich that were preserved by Anna Leporskaya, a student of Malevich in the 1920s at Ginkhuk (State Institute of Artistic Culture). Leporskaya and Nikolai Suetin, who together with Leporskaya studied with Malevich, were instrumental in preserving the archive after Malevich's arrest in 1930 - they apparently saved them from being burnt by fearful colleagues. After Leporskaya's death, the work were held by her foster daughter Nina Suetina, and her bequest allotted them to the Russian Museum. The works dazzle by their variety: done at various moments during Malevich's entire life as an artist from the early 1900s to the 1930s, they include portraits of family members n more or less realistic style, works in a symbolist vein, caricatures done in student years, suprematist sketches, post suprematist plans for unrealized murals. The second part of the catalogue publishes writings by Malevich that were also part of the Leporskaya/Suetina archive.