Sensation de danger

About 15 years before this, Malevich had painted a black square on white and declared the painting of recognizable things finished. By 1930 he was painting people again, peasants with blank, egg-smooth faces, standing stiffly in open fields. The change was not a whim. Stalin's state was tightening its grip on art, pushing everyone toward a cheerful, realistic style that served the government, and pure abstraction had become dangerous to make. That same year Malevich was arrested and questioned for weeks. His faceless peasants carry the unease of the moment, and some read the empty faces as people the new order had rendered anonymous. He kept dating works like this to earlier years, as if to hide when they were really made.