Kazimir Malevich was a pionnering Russian painter and founder of the Suprematist movement. His seminal Black Square (1915) and Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918), are often cited as some of the first abstract paintings ever produced. "The black square on the white field was the first form in which nonobjective feeling came to be expressed," Malevich wrote. "The square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling." Born on February 23, 1878 in Kiev, Ukraine, he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture where he learned to paint in an impressionistic style.