Visual Arts Library
Peasants
Artist: Kazimir Malevich
Date:
circa
1930
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 53 x 70 cm
Event: Soviet Repression
Motif:
Faces
Fading Memory
Kazimir Malevich Like other representatives of the avant-garde, Malevich experienced a "romance with revolution" which encompassed changes in both society and art. A founder of the Suprematist movement, which stressed the purity of shape and form, as opposed to social or political meaning, he and was an active contributor to the art of the new Communist world. His illusions were soon dispelled and his alliance with the new political regime short-lived, however, since his new leaders preferred life-like art fueled by ideology rather than form. Removed to the sidelines of artistic life, he turned again to figurative art. But the influence of Suprematism endured, and his paintings of 'faceless' figures had a previously unknown potential for generalization. Malevich began to depict an empty, cold world filled with people whose poses and gestures reveal their doom. Lacking faces and hands, they have lost their freedom and individuality. His Peasant cycle has no equal in Russian art of the 20th century in its tragic view of the world.
-- Alexander Borovsky.
Credits: Courtesy The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
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