Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism

Although a few other members of UNOVIS organically absorbed the Suprematist system, most never managed to cross the threshold of abstraction, as did Khidekel. As stated in his completed UNOVIS questionnaire, Khidekel studied with Malevich himself – the only student taking Malevich’s course on Dynamics.

The study and publication of Khidekel’s Suprematist legacy followed several decades of Stalinist prohibition, coinciding with the gradual rediscovery of the Russian avant-garde and its creators during the Khrushchev thaw. This process, which began in the late 1960s, was the result of the efforts of a group of Soviet and international scholars, two of whom were especially important: Larissa Zhadova and Selim Khan-Magomedov.

Zhadova asserted that “Khidekel was Malevich’s principal assistant in his architectural experiments of 1924–25,” an assertion that today is fully corroborated by documents from the GINKhUK and GIII (State Institute of Art History) archives – many appearing in print for the first time in Irina Karasik’s contribution to “Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism” (Prestel Publishing, 2014).

For Khan-Magomedov, meeting Khidekel was one of the highlights of his scholarly career. By Khan-Magomedov’s own account, in the course of working on his landmark volume “Pioneers of Soviet Architecture,” for which he explored more than 150 institutional and private archives, the second shock, after being introduced to El Lissitzky’s Prouns, was his realization of “Khidekel’s works’ relevance to the breakthrough of Suprematism to architecture.”

Looking at and analyzing Khidekel’s Vitebsk works, Khan-Magomedov observed the characteristic features that led to Suprematism’s development by artists of the next generation, most notably the “shifting to volume and space.”

Khan-Magomedov also noted in Khidekel’s work the presence of “extremely minimal structures . . . where a cross and a square intricately interacted: for instance, a square split by a cross,” in addition to such motifs as the yellow cross and echoes of Malevich’s white on white series – iconic images that determined Khidekel’s subsequent development of Suprematism.

Given Khidekel’s unique talents and status as an art school graduate and representative of UNOVIS, “while he was still a first-year student [at PIGI], professors consulted with him and he lectured other students on Suprematist principles of architectural composition.”

Khidekel’s legacy would never have been resurrected without the pioneering work of Khan-Magomedov, whose scholarly integrity and absence of any political or commercial vested interests made him unique. He did what he deeply believed. This is what makes especially meaningful his inclusion of ten of Khidekel’s designs in his 2005 book “Sto shedevrov sovetskogo architekturnogo avangarda” (100 Masterpieces of Soviet Avant-Garde Architecture).

It is important to note that publications about Khidekel, including a monographic study by Khan-Magomedov, were solely focused on Khidekel’s early experimental works of the 1920s. Like many scholars in the 1970s, Khan-Magomedov was interested only in experimental works, firmly refusing to consider anything created later than 1932, which was widely considered the endpoint of the Soviet avant-garde.

He identified the subjects of his abstractions and created a special file for his Suprematist works – works that he regarded as his unique contribution to the plastic development of painterly Suprematism.

He began to dream about a show of his work, and, indeed, among his 1970s manuscripts is one bearing the title “Toward My Exhibition” that still serves as a guide for presentations that he was unable to realize during his lifetime.

Khidekel belonged to the core of that group of artists who managed to break through from one time to another, and from inner, earthly space to outer, cosmic space, a space that continues to provide inexhaustible possibilities for discovering new worlds in art.