The National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania recently opened the exhibition Kazimir Malevich: Outliving History. The show includes three previously unseen canvases attributed to Kazimir Malevich, alongside a selection of fourteen abstract works by contemporary Romanian artists. In the exhibition announcement published in e-flux, museum officials stated that “through this exhibition, MNAC is challenging several clichés.”
And challenge them they did. For instance, MNAC presented an alternative biography of Malevich, informing readers that, “In 1930… Malevich was arrested and interrogated, being suspected of ‘deviationism.’ ‘Banned’ in the USSR art world, he was forced to flee Leningrad for Kiev and then Kharkiv.”
In reality, Malevich was arrested and imprisoned for two months in 1930 on suspicion of espionage, following his trip to Poland and Germany in 1927. However, after his release, he was not “banned” from artistic life. In 1931, he worked on sketches for the mural decoration of the Red Theater in Leningrad. In 1932, he was appointed head of the Experimental Laboratory at the Russian Museum. That same year, his works were included in the exhibition Art of the Era of Imperialism, and he participated in the anniversary show Artists of the RSFSR Over 15 Years, where he exhibited the fourth version of his legendary Black Square.
Contrary to MNAC’s claim, Malevich was not “forced to flee” to Kyiv (notably, the museum uses the Russian spelling of the city’s name). He taught at the Kyiv Art Institute from 1927 until early 1930. While he published articles in the Kharkiv-based journal Nova Heneratsiia, he neither relocated to the then-capital of Soviet Ukraine nor ever visited the city in his lifetime.
The announcement also states that the three previously unknown paintings exhibited at MNAC “survived in the face of Soviet Formalism.” However, it appears the museum officials misunderstood the term. Malevich’s works did not survive in opposition to Soviet Formalism—they were, in fact, labeled by Soviet authorities as examples of Formalism itself, a pejorative used to denounce modernist experimentation.
These historical misinterpretations suggest a lack of expertise not only in the biography of Malevich but also in the broader context of Soviet modernism. Nevertheless, the museum saw fit to exhibit three canvases attributed to Malevich, despite their incomplete and unverifiable provenance—and despite the absence of any documentation from the artist’s lifetime confirming their authenticity.
Funnily enough, the curators attempted to shield themselves from criticism by asserting that “the preconception that the art world operates with a general and unique set of standards: cultural expertise and curatorial strategies are operating today in nuanced environments, where the behavioral patterns of the (former) colonial West should be used with caution.”
This rhetorical move appears designed to deflect legitimate concerns by framing skepticism toward the exhibition’s scholarly rigor as a symptom of outdated Western curatorial norms. However, invoking postcolonial discourse in this context does little to justify the presentation of works with questionable provenance—or to excuse the curators’ evident unfamiliarity with their subject matter.
This attempt at “decolonization” is especially ironic—not only because the name of Dmytro Horbachev, the Ukrainian art historian who attributed the newly surfaced canvases to Malevich, is spelled in the Russian manner, but also because he is described in the catalogue as an expert on the “Russian avant-garde”—a designation that is, at best, problematic in the context of contemporary Ukrainian discourse.
The curators at MNAC appear not to grasp that the opinion of a single aging Ukrainian art historian is insufficient to establish the authenticity of works attributed to Malevich—especially in the absence of consensus from internationally recognized experts.
The Bucharest museum has also shown impressive boldness in challenging another “behavioral pattern of the (former) colonial West”: the notion of conflict of interest. Kazimir Malevich: Outliving History is, after all, sponsored by a dental clinic owned by the collector who possesses the three paintings attributed to Malevich.
In rejecting the “outdated” conventions of curatorial practice—such as rigorous research into provenance and authenticity—the curators at MNAC seem to have overlooked the fact that showcasing “unknown masterpieces” does not necessarily enhance a museum’s credibility. One need only recall the 2018 exhibition of twenty Russian avant-garde works at the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) in Ghent, which resulted in the dismissal of director Catherine de Zegher, the confiscation of the exhibited paintings, and the launch of a criminal investigation.
