Self portrait (1908-1910)
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was the oldest of 14 children of whom only eight survived. He was born in 1879 in Kiev. His parents were polish. His love for art started when he fell in love with Ukrainian embroidery and folk art. He first went to Kiev School of Art, the Stroganov School in Moscow and finally the Moscow School of Painting. He became related with many of Russia's avant-garde elite. After a trip to Paris he became intersted in Cubism inspired by Pablo Picasso. Back in Russia he became a member and leader of the Jack of Diamonds group who were Cubist painters. 

Morning in the Country after Snowstorm (1912)

In 1913 Malevich created abstract geometrical patterns in a manner he called Suprematism (a term relating to superior).

Lady on a Tram Station (1913)

An Englishman in Moscow (1914)

From 1919 to 1921 he taught painting in Moscow and Leningrad, where he lived the rest of his life.

Black Square (1915)

In 1915 he made his famous "Black Square" painting (the most radically abstract painting known to have been created so far). "White on White" (1918) would take his ideal of pure abstraction to its logical conclusion. 

White on White (1918)

He has written down his theories for suprematism and released 2 books:
"From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism" (1915) and "The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism" (1926).

Mystic Suprematism (1920-1922) 
Hieratic Suprematist Cross (1920-1921)

In 1935 he died at the age of 57. He was burried as he wished near an oak tree in Nemchinovka (near Moscow). His fellow artists and other friends marked his grave with a black square. Which was representitive for his life and death. He never felt  russian of ukranian but polish. During World War II his grave was destroyed.

Winter landscape (1930)
2 Figures in a landscape (1932)
Grave of Malevich with his Black Square