Suetin on sale coffin, Malevich's last carriage

When Kazimir Malevich died in 1935, a huge mourning procession took over the streets of Saint Petersburg – then Leningrad - to offer their rendition to the passing artist. He had succumbed to cancer at the age of fifty-seven already as a living legend on sale and as one of the most relevant artistic contributors of Russia of his and of all times.

Along that announced ceremony – entirely funded by the city's council -, Malevich's corpse was carried inside a flamboyant and angular coffin decorated with motifs of his own style. It was made of wood, painted in white with a black square and circle, and took the streets entirely surrounded by Suprematist decoration, carried on the shoulders of his closest friends and disciples.

Although Malevich had wished to have one of his Architectons on top of the coffin before burial in his selected spot in the outskirts of Nemchinovka – just outside Moscow -, it was his fellow Suprematist artist and friend Nikolai Suetin who designed what would become the truly last mortuary carriage and Kazimir's last deathbed before incineration. The “Suetin Coffin”, as the box would be called for the rest of history, accompanied the last memories of those who witnessed the acts of that May 15th, which finished by an oak tree, underground, by the little town of his choice.

Nikolai Suetin (1897 – 1954), one of the greatest Suprematism artists after its founder, was a graphic designer, ceramics painter and designer who studied under Kazimir Malevich at the Vitebsk Higher Institute of Art. He participated in the UNOVIS moviment, took part in the biggest Avant-Garde exhibitions of his time, and even designed and decorated the Soviet fair stand for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes celebrated in Paris in 1925. During most of the 1920s and 1930s, Suetin worked in porcelain production plants, had several positions in institutions related to art, illustrated books and designed exhibitions, and took over the responsability of representing the USSR in International fairs and exhibits, timely needing to adapt his artistic language from the ground-breaking Suprematism to more conventional and traditional decorative styles more in line with the totalitarian Stalinist regime that ruled Russia at the time.

This rendition to the Suetin's ouvre – also referred to as the Malevich coffin -, adapted though to domestic dimensions, is entirely made of wood loyally stacked in layers to resemble the original creation. A layer of white paint with two geometric shapes in black gives the perfect finish to the replica.

The coffin structure has two wood notches on its inside that function as a buffer stop.

Design thought by Beamalevich and consequently handmade by Barcelona cabinetmakers in single units, all different from each othe



SPECIFICATIONS

Dimensions:
LENGTH: 17.7 cm // 7 in
WIDTH: 5.2 cm // 2 in
HEIGHT: 4.8 cm // 1.9 in

Weight:
124 g // 0.27 lb // 4.4 oz

Materials: precise cut wood, black paint, white paint

Characteristics:
Hollow inside allows to store items of small size such as short pens, a fountain pen, jewellery or anything fitting in a hand case

Buffer stops make the product maintain its original display and precise closing edges

Painted like the original Malevich coffin