Malevich’s Black Square: Symbol of Russian Anarchism?

Kazimir Malevich is one of the artists that I find most inspirational. It is not a secret that the design of Yacht House has been influenced by his Architektons.

Malevich was a regular contributor to the publication “Anarkhiia”. In the last of these articles of the 20th June 1918, writing about how to interpret his Suprematist paintings, Malevich wrote:

I am an anarchist in my very own essence

It is not a huge step from there to deduce that the Black Square which was originally conceived in 1915, may have been in itself influenced by, or a representation of the main symbol of anarchism: the black flag.

This was the last time that Malevich wrote about anarchism. Anarchists had mobilitated to attempt a third Russian revolution yet many of their leaders were arrested or killed by the Cheka at around the same time that this Malevich article went to print. The anarchists moved to an underground movement as they were not longer able to openly declare their allegiances.

Upon Stalin’s death in 1953 many prisoners of the gulags staged a large insurrection. In one of these camps, the Norilsk camp, the black flag was hoisted to the top of the flag pole.

Read more about the Russian avant garde and the Moscow Anarchists: Architecture and revolution

Bibliography

Cooke, C.”Sources of a radical mission in the early Soviet profession: Alexei Gan and the Moscow Anarchists” in Leach, N. (1999). Architecture and revolution. 1st ed. London: Routledge, p.27.