1902 -1929 · Vitebsk, UNOVIS, Petrograd and suprematism

Black planes, red axes, circles and crosses make Ilia Tchachnik one of the most rigorous interpreters of suprematism, from canvas to porcelain and architecture.

Ilia Grigorievich Tchachnik was born in 1902 in Lucyn, in the Russian Empire. At a very young age, he trained in Vitebsk, a city that had become an avant-garde laboratory after the Revolution. At the People's School of Art, he met Kazimir Malevich and joined UNOVIS, the group of "Affirmators of the New Art". Suprematism is not considered a simple decorative style: geometric shapes, visual weight, color and space must participate in a general transformation of the modern world. Tchachnik becomes one of Malevich's closest students and collaborators. In his compositions, blacks, whites and reds are balanced on open backgrounds; crosses, rectangles, circles and diagonals seem subject to forces of attraction, fall or rotation. After Vitebsk, he continued his work in Petrograd then Leningrad. He collaborates in the research of the State Institute of Artistic Culture, where painting, theory, design and architecture are studied together. His "architectones" and space projects translate suprematist relationships into volumes. At the National Porcelain Manufacture, he adapts this vocabulary to everyday objects: plates, cups and white shapes become dynamic surfaces where abstract signs dialogue with the curve of the support. This circulation between painting, object and architectural project distinguishes his work. The Suprematist Cross or the Red Circle on a black surface does not describe any external motif; they depict relationships of density, contrast and space. Died prematurely in 1929 at the age of twenty-seven, Tchachnik leaves a brief but decisive work in the history of Russian abstraction. The "Ilia Tchachnik" selection notably compares Red Circle on a Black Surface and Suprematist Composition. His reading favors figures.

Tchachnik does not paint objects: he regulates forces, masses and distances until giving the void the same intensity as color.