1915
oil on canvas
79,5 õ 79,5
The black square became a symbol of the new understanding of creativity in the 20th century. The black square literally was used by Malevich to close down the history of figurative art. The master dreamed of painting which creates and does not copy. He believed that works based on nature “remind us of something living the same way that skirts remind us of a woman.”
Malevich presents the original shape (square) and the original colour (white and black). Black is the absence of colour and white is the melding of all colours. Such a solution encapsulates the potential of any and all paintings.
“The square is not an image, just as a switch or a socket is not an electric current,” Malevich wrote. One cannot approach this work with the viewer’s usual criteria of beautiful/not beautiful, lively/not lively, I like it/I don’t like it. In the foreground there is not some aesthetic experience of reality but the wholeness of an idea itself.”
Black Square is a unique manifesto by Suprematism, the movement in art created by Malevich.
at 10, Krymsky Val, Hall 6
