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(Davidovich)

(b Kharkiv, Ukraine, July 21, 1882; d Southampton, Long Island, NJ, Jan 15, 1967).

Ukrainian painter and writer. He studied art in Kazan’ and Odessa from 1899 to 1901, when he left for Munich to study with Anton Ažbé. In 1904 he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Fernand Cormon. Returning to Russia, he settled in Moscow but again studied at the Odessa School of Art from 1910 to 1911 and then entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, from which he was expelled in 1914.

From 1908 David had been active in organizing exhibitions promoting the new art that was emerging in Russia. In that year he published his first polemical article, ‘Golos impressionista: V zashchitu zhivopisi’ (‘The voice of an Impressionist: in defence of painting’). In this article he rejected the realistic style of the Wanderers, the outmoded rules of the Academy of Art in St Petersburg and the retrospection of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) group, in favour of the styles of the Western Post-Impressionists (whom he here called Impressionists), especially Cézanne and van Gogh. He helped organize and contributed to the controversial ...

(Severinovich)

(b Kiev, Feb 26, 1878; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], May 15, 1935).

Russian painter, printmaker, decorative artist and writer of Ukranian birth. One of the pioneers of abstract art, Malevich was a central figure in a succession of avant-garde movements during the period of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and immediately after. The style of severe geometric abstraction with which he is most closely associated, Suprematism (see fig.), was a leading force in the development of Constructivism, the repercussions of which continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. His work was suppressed in Soviet Russia in the 1930s and remained little known during the following two decades. The reassessment of his reputation in the West from the mid-1950s was matched by the renewed influence of his work on the paintings of Ad Reinhardt and on developments such as Zero, Hard-edge painting and Minimalism.

(Vasil’yevich)

(b Nizhny Novgorod, 1861; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], Oct 14, 1934).

Russian painter, patron, musician, writer and publisher. He pursued a highly original line of artistic thought and practice and developed an organic perception of the world, deriving his inspiration from nature rather than machines, unlike many of his Russian Constructivist contemporaries.

Matyushin trained initially as a musician at the Moscow Conservatory (1878–81) and played the violin in the Court orchestra in St Petersburg from 1881 to 1913. In 1889 he began to attend the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St Petersburg, where he studied painting with Yan Tsionglinsky (d 1914). In Tsionglinsky’s studio he met the artist and writer Yelena Guro, whom he married. Later (1906–8) he studied with the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) painters Léon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at the Zvantseva School of Art in St Petersburg.

In 1909 Matyushin briefly joined the circle around Nikolay Kul’bin and the following year he founded the ...

(b Rignano sull’Arno, nr Florence, April 7, 1879; d Forte dei Marmi, Lucca, Aug 18, 1964).

Italian painter, critic and writer. He spent his early childhood in the Florentine countryside and showed a precocious interest in drawing and literature. At school in Florence he deepened his knowledge of the Classics and also developed an interest in the new French poetry (from Laforgue to Rimbaud). At the Accademia in Florence he met Giovanni Fattori and Telemaco Signorini; in 1897, at the Arte e fiori exhibition, he admired paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Giovanni Segantini.

Interest aroused by the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 persuaded Soffici to travel to the French capital in November 1900 with his friends the painters Giovanni Costetti (1878–1949) and Umberto Brunelleschi (1879–1949). His living conditions, which included a period in Ruche, La, were difficult. In order to make money he worked on popular satirical magazines such as La Plume, Sans-gêne and Assiette au beurre...