Kazimir Malevich

In 1927, the Bauhaus’s publishing arm brought out a book in which Kazimir Malevich, whose Black Square has long been an icon of modernism, laid out his vision of the "World as Objectlessness". It remained the artist’s only piece of writing to be published in a Western language in his lifetime; the title of this edition, a somewhat inaccurate translation, was "Die gegenstandslose Welt", or "The Non-Objective World". For the first time in a long while, the Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings) presents the drawings from its collections that served as masters for the book. The accompanying catalogue in English and German includes new translations of the artist’s illustrated essay and meticulously reconstructs the history of the work’s genesis: when and where did Male vich create the illustrations and texts, and which moment in his evolution as an artist do they reflect? Malevich’s "World as Objectlessness" is thus revealed to be a snapshot in time of a boundless artistic universe.