Early Life, Family and Training Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev, in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, around 1878 or 1879. He was raised in an ethnic Polish family, the son of Sewryn Antonovich Malevich, who managed a sugar factory. The family moved frequently, often settling in Ukrainian villages amidst sugar-beet plantations. These early years were spent far from urban cultural centers, surrounded instead by the textur…