"I am completely starved"

Malevich, Kazimir, Russian painter and art theoretician (1879-1935). Autograph letter signed.

Moscow, 14. IX. 1933.

4to. 3½ pp. on 2 ff. With autogr. envelope.

 65,000.00

In Russian, to his third wife, Natalya Andreevna (née Manchenka, 1902-90), about a day he and Ivan Vassilyevitch Kljun spent together attending an exhibition of the Red Workers' and Peasants' Army with visiting officials. Kljun urged him to have his hair cut, as Malevich resembled a "savage". They failed to meet Lobanov, who wanted a landscape. "[...] You cannot imagine my sentiments. What else should I do, and how wait? I am completely starved, and although I have eaten quite well these two days at Ivan Vassilyevitch's, there is no way I might be satiated, and after all, I cannot live at his place, and there is nowhere for me to go. I still have no money to go to Nemchinovka and stay there overnight [...] It's simply a nightmare when the thought turns up that something might happen to me, a severe mental illness might afflict me. Tomorrow I will try to see mother, maybe I can raise some money there [...]". Malevich goes on to discuss his difficult relationship with his brother, and that he avoids seeing him: "That's what it amounts to, when a man has not a penny, everyone starts to lecture you and call you a fool [...]".

References

Malewitsch über sich. Zeitgenossen über Malewitsch. Briefe. Dokumente. Erinnerungen. Kritik. Vol. 1, Moscow 2004, no. 43.

Stock Code: BN#32596 Tag: