Composición suprematista 1

Malevich unveiled Suprematism in Petrograd in December 1915, at an exhibition he called 0,10. He hung a plain black square high in the corner of the room, where an Orthodox household would keep its icon, and declared painting free of any duty to show the visible world. This composition belongs to that first burst, a scatter of coloured bars and blocks drifting over a pale ground, weightless and tied to no horizon. He was working through the last months of the Russian empire, and within two years war and revolution would sweep away the very world these forms had turned their back on. Malevich was born in Kyiv, the city that now holds this canvas, to a family of Polish origin.