Masters of Art

In the last five or six years of his life, Malevich turned to a style with echoes of Holbein and Southern Renaissance artists, but Douglas also has ferreted out Malevich's relationship with the contemporary Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. With this startling information, first published here, Douglas leads us to a profound reassessment of this towering figure. Throughout his personal crises, Malevich continued to teach and to influence many leading figures in the Soviet art world of his time and later. His writings and lectures still have vital resonance for our generation - as is evident from several of his own pedagogical charts reproduced here and from his letters, some of which are used here for the first time.