Malevich by Gerry Souter

Author:Gerry Souter [Souter, Gerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783107018
Publisher: Parkstone International

Magnetic Composition,

motif: 1916-1917, version: 1929.

Oil on plywood, 71.1 x 44.8 cm.

The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Mixed Sensations, 1916. Oil on canvas, 74 x 76 cm.

Museum of Fine Art of Ekaterinburg, Ekaterinburg.

Grinding on to create the springboard to his eventual fame, Kasimir Malevich traced a parallel path to that of his contemporaries. With travel cut off and most communications difficult for four years in Europe, and with the 1917 Russian Revolution that toppled the Romanov Dynasty raging throughout the country, art was not a top priority among the warring nations.

Acknowledging Malevich’s love of flight and with the Manifesto as a guide, the viewer can drop into the artist’s deep spatial representation in Supremus No. 56 painted in 1916. Once again, the action is moving from lower right to upper left, only this time the non-objective Suprematist formulae seem to be at odds. The overhead view is clearly stated and a directional line segment through the primary black, yellow and red rectangles supplements the climbing movement in time. Using pastel colours Malevich takes us beneath these rectangles to architecture below. Clusters of rectangles/lines suggest other moving objects on the same level as the larger rectangles. Spotted in the composition are a green disc, a blue curved shape and a small black oval. Their counterparts in the aerial procession is not clear, but the other moving constructions flowing beneath us remove virtually all concealment or metaphysical mystery inherent in Malevich’s more static Suprematist works.

The Commissariat of Public Education bought this canvas from Malevich in 1919 on the occasion of his one-man show, and it now hangs in the Russian Museum.

Not everything flew, nor was there always hand-holding available for many of Malevich’s Suprematist paintings. A Suprematist Composition of 1917 now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York is a case in point. The first impression is a section slice of a gelatin mould with objects suspended in it not unlike fruit aspic. Malevich continues his use of space, depth and implied movement, but here he offers pastel nuances and a barely seen central figure that is key to the work.

Presaging his later white on white experiments, he recasts the bent-over suggestion of The Woodcutter from his canvas of 1912 and stages the dynamics of that painting in Suprematist terms. The partially seen bent back of the woodcutter is an arched veil of white against the sized canvas, while the pale mauve diagonal line segment that bisects the composition carries the momentum of the downward cutting axe as did the cutter’s arm. Dark rectangles, a pastel pink square and a grey circle all slide in the direction of the cutter’s stroke. The action all balances on a truncated grey oval shape resting on the bottom of the canvas, stabilizing the movements and anchoring the composition, pierced as it is by a black vertical bar.

These geometric relationships were created with care and thought as evidenced by a re-drafting of the composition in a 1920 lithograph. In the black and white

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