Simultaneous Death in an Airplane and at the Railway

"Simultaneous Death in an Airplane and at the Railway" is a seminal lithograph created by Kazimir Malevich in 1913. This Russian work, classified as a print, stands as a crucial example of the artist’s radical experimentation during his Cubo-Futurist phase. Produced just two years before the artist fully transitioned into Suprematism, the lithograph explores core avant-garde concerns: the mechanical age, speed, violence, and the simultaneous breakdown of traditional time and space. The use of the lithograph medium allowed Malevich to disseminate these fragmented, challenging compositions widely among the intellectual and artistic circles of the period.

Malevich was deeply engaged with poetic and visual expressions of simultaneity, a concept borrowed both from French Cubism's treatment of perspective and Italian Futurism's obsession with movement. In this piece, the static nature of traditional representation is abandoned in favor of an explosive dynamism. The composition fractures the visual elements of two distinct, catastrophic events—an air disaster and a train crash—into a single, intersecting plane. Through abstract geometric forms, overlapping planes, and sharp, diagonal lines, the work conveys the chaotic energy of collision, reflecting the period's anxieties and fascinations with mechanized travel and its inherent dangers.

As one of the most provocative works of the Russian avant-garde aesthetic leading up to World War I, this work remains highly influential for understanding the origins of non-objective art. This specific print is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), solidifying its importance in the history of abstraction. While the original lithograph from 1913 is a rare artifact, the composition continues to be referenced globally, making it one of Malevich’s most significant early prints available for study.