Kazimir Malevich
1879 – 1935 · 56 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Founder of Suprematism and creator of the Black Square (1915). Born in Kyiv to a Polish family, he taught in Vitebsk and Leningrad; he was arrested in 1930 and returned to figurative painting in his last years.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 5 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, born the same year
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 12 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 2 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 10 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 60 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 1 year older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 9 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 17 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 51 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 45 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 39 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 2 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 18 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 37 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 19 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 39 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 35 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 39 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 13 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 35 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 46 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 4 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 39 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 10 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 14 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 18 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, born the same year
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 13 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 10 years younger
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 23 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 32 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 10 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 16 years older
- Franklin D. Roosevelt — 32nd President of the United States, 3 years younger
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 5 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 8 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 19 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 40 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 32 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 3 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 18 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 0, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 0, Africa
- 1879 Baku oil boom and Branobel — aged 0, Middle East
- 1881 Battle of Geok Tepe — aged 2, Asia
- 1882 Britain occupies Egypt — aged 3, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 4, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 5, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 6, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 6, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 6, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 7, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 7, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 9, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 10, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 10, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 12, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 14, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 14, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 15, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 15, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 15, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 16, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 17, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 18, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 26, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 29, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 35, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 35, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 35, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 36, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 37, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 39, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 40, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 49, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 50, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 50, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 54, Europe