Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Russian: Êàçèìèð Ñåâåðèíîâè÷ Ìàëåâè÷, Polish: Kazimierz Malewicz, Ukrainian Êàçèì³ð Ñåâåðèíîâè÷ Ìàëåâè÷, German: Kasimir Malewitsch), (February 23, 1878 – May 15, 1935) was a painter and art theoretician of Polish descent, pioneer of geometric abstract art and one of the most important members of the Russian avant-garde and Suprematist movement.
Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev, Ukraine. His parents, Seweryn and Ludwika Malewicz, were ethnic Poles, and he was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church. His father was the manager of a sugar factory. Kazimir was the first of fourteen children, although only nine of the children survived into adulthood. His family moved often and he spent most of his childhood in the villages of Ukraine beside sugar-beet plantations, far from centers of culture. Until age 12 or 13 he knew nothing of professional artists, though peasant art had surrounded him in childhood. He delighted in peasant embroidery, and in decorated walls and stoves. He himself was able to paint in the peasant style. He studied drawing in Kiev from 1895 to 1896.
In 1904, after the death of his father, he moved to Moscow. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1904 to 1910 and in the studio of Fedor Rerberg in Moscow (1904–1910). In 1911 he participated in the second exhibition of the group Soyuz Molodyozhi (Union of Youth) in St. Petersburg, together with Vladimir Tatlin and, in 1912, the group held its third exhibition, including works by Aleksandra Ekster, Tatlin and others. In the same year he participated in exhibition of the collective Donkey's Tail in Moscow. By that time his works were influenced by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Russian avant-guarde painters who were particularly interested in Russian folk art called lubok. In March 1913 in Moscow was opened a major exhibition of Aristarkh Lentulov's paintings. The effect of this exhibition was comparable with the one of Paul Cezanne in Paris in 1907, as all the main Russian avant-garde artists of the time including Malevich immediately absorbed the cubist principles and started using them in his works. Already in the same year Cubo-Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun with Malevich's stage-set became a great success. In 1914 Malevich exhibited his works in the Salon des Independants in Paris together with Alexander Archipenko, Sonia Delaunay, Aleksandra Ekster and Vadim Meller, among others. (Wikipedia.org).