The trailblazing Wassily Kandinsky and the bulletproof masters of abstraction, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, doubled, tortuously, as theorists.

NEWYORKER: Shapes of Things

However, two important pieces, Giacometti's sculpture La Clairiere and Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist Painting, Rectangle and Circle, failed to sell.

BBC: Renoir sells for ?14.5m

"Painting and the Problem of Architecture" was a collaboration with Kazimir Malevich, who hoped his Suprematist theories on art and spirituality could find wider circulation as cinema.

WSJ: Avant-Garde Film's Godfather | Hans Richter | Los Angeles County Museum of Art | Richard B. Woodward