The exhibition “Kazimir Malevich -Outliving History”, opened at the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania, brings to the public three works attributed to Kazimir Malevich, publicly exhibited for the first time.
Following a extraordinary journey from Ukraine to Israel and then to Romania, the three paintings, dating from the 1912–1916 period, mark Kazimir Malevich’s transition from Cubo-Futurism to the founding of Suprematism, while also reflecting his search for a new abstract visual language specific to the Russian avant-garde, which would go on to profoundly influence the development of modern art on an international scale.
As part of a private collection, the works were brought to Romania following a journey that began in Odesa in 1929. Hidden away for decades, they were later moved from Ukraine to Israel: “The three paintings by Kazimir Malevich presented within this exhibition have survived in the face of Sovietic Formalism thanks to Benzion Livando, who acquired them at Odesa in 1929 and 1930, when the Bolshevik terror was in full swing, and to his daughter, Eva Livando, who, after emigrating to Israel, retained the sole wish of publicly exhibiting these artworks.” — Mariana Dragu, curator
The exhibition also provides a new perspective on the impact of Suprematism within the Romanian artistic landscape, proving that, despite 40 years of dictatorship, there were acts of resistance against the official line of production, seeking to affirm individual artistic beliefs – examples of survival resonating with the main currents of universal art. The Outliving History exhibition is one of the rare occasions where various personalities who advocated the same aesthetic creed are brought together, beyond time and space.
The commitment of developing a new abstract language is significantly illustrated through works from the MNAC Collection by Horia Bernea, Radu Comșa, Roman Cotoșman, Ingo Glass, Viorica Iacob, Iulian Mereuță, Virgil Preda, Diet Sayler, Ștefan Sevastre, and Liviu Stoicoviciu.
The exhibition can be visited until August 31, 2025.
