Suprematism

Kliment Nikolaevich Redko (Khelm, October 15th, 1897; Moscow, February 18th, 1956) started attending lessons at the School for icon painters of the Kievo-Pechersk Monastery under A. Chizhevskii; there he met Vasilii Chekrygin. In the years 1914 to 1915 he attended the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Petrograd and in 1915 he joined the Imperial Air Force as a volunteer; there he was trained as a pilot (1916-1917). In 1918 he moved to Kiev, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ukraine and contributed to the decoration of the city for the celebrations of the Revolutionary. He was a friend of Pavel Tchelitchev and Solomon Nikritin. In 1920, he settled in Moscow, where he studied at the Higher State Art-Technical Studios (VKHUTEMAS) until 1922. After a short period of painting in the Suprematist style (till 1921) he made a transition and adopted “engineer organisms” in his painting. He was the main initiator of the “Electroorganism” group, which held an exhibition at the Museum of Painterly Culture in Moscow, in 1922. He participated in the First Russian Art Exhibition (“Galerie van Diemen”, Berlin, 1922; Amsterdam, 1923). Luminism was the definition of his style during the years 1923 to 1924. In 1924 he participated in the First Discussional Exhibition of the Associations of Revolutionary Art in Moscow and he signed the declaration of the Projectionists group, in the catalogue of the exhibition. In 1926 he was given a one-man show in Moscow. From January 1927 till October 1935 he lived in Paris. He was a member of the Parisian group of Ukrainian artists and a member of the Association of Revolutionary Artists of France. From 1935 onwards he lived in Moscow. He worked as a designer for the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (1938-1940) and he continued painting in a realistic style.