Nikolai Suetin, 1897–1954

Kazimir Malevich, progenitor of Suprematism, had three favourite students who were his cofounders of the UNOVIS group in Vitebsk and later in Petrograd helped him expand Suprematism from plane into volume. The students — Nikolai Suetin, Lazar Khidekel and llya Chashnik — belonged to Malevich's senior Vitebsk group. Each one of them contributed to the evolution of Suprematism into decorative and applied art and architecture. It so happened that late in Malevich's life Suetin was the closest to him in terms of creativity. Chashnik died in 1929. Khidekel turned to architecture (graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Civil Engineers in 1930). Much in Malevich's oeuvre of 1927-35 seems inexplicable if you leave out the fact that all those years Nikolai Suetin was beside him. It was Suetin who made a major contribution to Suprematism: developed new forms and patterns of paintwork. It was Suetin who tried to discover interrelations between experiments on porcelain and working out of a new Suprematist decor (“ornament”) on vertical architectons. It was Suetin who discovered his own way of introducing Suprematism into volume and then into architecture through development of formal methods of arranging exhibition interiors. In all those quests and findings it is easy to trace Suetin's individual conception of form creation, though, inseparable from Malevich's Suprematism. It also had its own impact on Malevich's evolutionary conception of form. Most of the alterations in creative quests of Malevich in 1927-35 (return to figurative compositions, search for Suprematist “ornament”) are inexplicable if you leave out personal conception of form with Suetin who was not only beside Malevich all those years but tangibly influenced the development of volumetric Suprematism on the whole.