Going for $1 Million, One Black Square

Nine years ago, a young man walked into a branch of Inkombank in Samara looking for a $30,000 loan to develop his business. As collateral, he brought with him a 53.5-by-53.5-centimeter canvas on which was painted a simple black square on a white background.

This weekend, the same black square is due to be brought under the hammer at an eagerly awaited auction in Moscow, where bidding for it will start at more than $1 million.

"The results of this auction will act as a reference point for the whole of the Russian antiques market," said Oleg Stetsyura, economic adviser at the Gelos auction house, which is selling the painting as part of a sell-off of bankrupted Inkombank's extensive art collection.

"Everyone in the Russian art world will be paying attention to the price that the 'Black Square' gets," Stetsyura said.

The reason for the excitement is that the "Black Square" from Samara turned out to be a long-lost work by Kazimir Malevich, a leading figure in the Russian avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century. Malevich is best known for founding the Suprematist art movement, of which the black square is the central symbol.

Since his death in 1935, Malevich has built up a huge international reputation and is now the most expensive Russian artist in the West, Stetsyura said.

Last spring, a Malevich painting titled "Suprematist Composition" sold for $17.8 million at the Phillips auction house in New York, and Stetsyura speculated that the more famous "Black Square" would fetch an even higher price if it were auctioned in the West.

"It's impossible to say exactly how much it would go for, but I think it would be about $50 million," he said. "In Russia, the price will, of course, be lower."

The painting cannot be auctioned in the West because Russian law prevents culturally important works of art from leaving the country.

Stetsyura said that the starting price at the auction Saturday will be between $1 million and $1.5 million, subject to a final valuation of the painting that is being carried out at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg this week.

Gelos Auction House The Samara "Black Square" has taken the art world by surprise.		Gelos Auction House The back reads, "Suprematism, 2nd Square 1913, K Malevich."

The most expensive work of art sold to date in Russia is Vasily Kandinsky's "Portrait of Nina Kandinskaya," which was auctioned off for $1 million in March 1998, Stetsyura said.

Born in Kiev in 1878, Malevich was strongly influenced by Cubism and Futurism in his early works. But some time around 1913 he began to develop a new style that discarded references to figures and actual objects in favor of colored plain geometric shapes on a white background. Malevich became concerned exclusively with form and emphasized the purity of shapes, particularly the square.

In 1915, he showed off his radical new works for the first time at an exhibition in Petrograd, labeling them "Suprematism Paintings." Hanging in the corner of the room, where icons are traditionally placed, was a "Black Square," which subsequently became the emblem of the Suprematist movement and an "icon of 20th-century art," as some critics have described it.

When he fell ill with cancer 20 years later, Malevich decorated his own coffin with a black square.

Apart from the Samara version, three other "Black Square" paintings are known to exist: The original, painted around 1915, and a later square from around 1929 are owned by the Tretyakov Gallery; a third square, circa 1923, is in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

Art experts say that Malevich probably painted several black squares. But until the Samara version showed up out of the blue it was widely assumed that these had either been lost or destroyed.

"The appearance of the Samara square was completely unexpected," said Andrei Sarabyanov, director of the Russky Avangard publishing house. "But it was a wonderful surprise."

The painting's provenance also came as a surprise to employees at Inkombank in Samara, who did not take the young loan-seeker seriously at first, Stetsyura said.

Luckily though, they notified Inkombank's central office in Moscow about the painting.

The bank's president, Vladimir Vinogradov, decided to send two art experts down to Samara, who recommended that the painting be transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery for further tests.

Sarabyanov said that the tests involved studying the canvas and paint used and comparing the writing on the back of the picture -- which reads "Suprematism, 2nd Square 1913, K Malevich" -- with other samples of Malevich's handwriting.

The Tretyakov experts concluded that the painting was genuine, although the date on the back was misleading. Malevich often predated his later works to before 1915, and most experts believe that the Samara square was painted sometime in the 1920s.

"I think there is no doubt that it is genuine though," Sarabyanov said.

It turned out that the young man in Samara was married to Malevich's great-niece, who inherited the "Black Square" via her mother and grandmother, who was given it by her sister Natalya, Malevich's widow.

When Inkombank investigated further, it found that the family also had a "Self-Portrait" and "Portrait of Wife" by Malevich stowed in its apartment, as well as photographs, letters and other valuable archive material.

The bank decided to buy the "Black Square" for $320,000 and the two portraits for $40,000, Stetsyura said. At Saturday's auction, the starting price for "Portrait of Wife" will be $60,000 to $65,000, while bids for "Self-Portrait" will start at $350,000 to $380,000.

Inkombank went bankrupt after the 1998 financial crisis, and a committee of creditors was set up to oversee the sale of its property. Among Inkombank's assets were more than 1,200 works of art that it collected in its heyday.

Under Russian bankruptcy law, these must be sold at auction, said Alexei Gerasyuk, spokesman for the committee of creditors.

Stetsyura would not speculate on how much the "Black Square" might sell for, but said it would probably be of interest to corporate art collectors.

"Buying the 'Black Square' would be unbeatable PR for a company," he said. "If a company buys it, everyone will talk about it as the firm that bought the 'Black Square.'"

Stetsyura said that Gelos, which will receive 4 percent of proceeds, was also conducting the auction primarily for publicity purposes.

"We are interested basically in image -- that we will be the ones to sell the 'Black Square,'" he said. "If we sell the whole collection, 95 percent of the money will come from the 'Black Square.' If we sell the 'Black Square,' we'll make a profit. If not, we definitely won't."

A more pressing problem, however, is that the "Black Square" might not get to the Gelos auction house on time. On Thursday, the Hermitage was still carrying out its valuation of the painting, and some art experts doubted that it would be finished before the weekend.

"We spoke to the Hermitage today, and we are still expecting the painting to be delivered Saturday," Stetsyura said Thursday. "If we don't get it on time, we will auction it separately from the rest of the collection at a later date."

The auction of Inkombank's art collection starts at 2 p.m. on Saturday at the Gelos auction house, 2/6 1st Botkinsky Proyezd.