Espoo Museum of Modern Art

Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) was a major art reformer and theorist of the 20th century and the developer of geometric abstractism. Malevich was born near Kiev, but at the beginning of the 20th century, moved to Moscow, then in the throes of violent upheaval, where he soon became the leader of the Russian avant-garde.

The Knave of Diamonds was an avant-garde artist group founded in Russia in 1910. The birth of the group was linked with Primitivism which emerged in western art at the beginning of the 20th century from which a new dynamism was sought for art. At that time Russia too displayed a strong interest in foreign cultures. However, Russian avant-garde artists also began to seek their inspiration closer to home, in Russian folk culture as a counter-measure to western Modernism.