The Revolutionary Abstract That Set Kasimir Malevich's Auction Record, Twice

Kasimir Malevich's Suprematist Composition (1916) sold for $85.81m at Christie's in New York on May 15, 2018. The sale beat Malevich's previous auction record by $25.81m, a 43% rise.

The oil on canvas work had been traded 4 times in the past, setting the artist's auction record ten years earlier.

Malevich included his radical, geometric abstract work in every major exhibition during his lifetime, including a fateful show in Berlin in 1927. The Suprematist canvas remained in Germany, while the artist, who had a Ukrainian passport, returned to the Soviet Union, where he died in 1935 of cancer. A Black Square was placed on his coffin, a reference to another revolutionary abstract work by the artist, who had fallen out of favor with the Soviet regime.

The avant-garde works shown in Berlin formed the basis of the Malevich collection in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, and also MoMA New York. Its director, Alfred H. Barr, paid tribute to Malevich's legacy in its landmark 1936 show "Cubism and Abstract Art".

Suprematist Composition survived the 1930s hidden in Germany. Acquired by the Stedelijk in around 1958, it was one of its star works until it was restituted to Malevich's heirs. They consigned it to auction at Sotheby's New York the same year, when it sold for $60m.

The sale beat Malevich's previous auction record by $25.81m, a 43% rise. The artist’s previous auction record was set by the same work, when it sold for $60m at Sotheby's on November 3, 2008.

A Brief History of Malevich at Auction