Kasimir Malevich

DEUTSCHE GUGGENHEIM BERLIN

The Guggenheim's delayed survey of the career of Kasimir Malevich, curated by Matthew Drutt (late of the Guggenheim and now with the Menil Collection, Houston), promises to be the most revealing show to date of the wizard of the Russian avant-garde. Some izo paintings, drawings, and objects, from breakthrough works like Black Square and Black Cross to the portraits of the '30s, illustrate the evolution, achievements, and disintegration of the founder of Suprematism. If some of Malevich's sociopolitical aspirations for his Soviet-period abstraction seem headily ambitious, there's no doubting his intellectual rigor and pervasive influence. New archival research should give the multiauthor catalogue a long shelf life. Jan. 18-Apr. 27; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June-Sept. 7; Menil Collection, Houston, Oct. 3-Jan. 11, 2004. -RS