Kasimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich pioneered abstract painting. In 1915 he showed his Black Square, a flat black square on white, and launched Suprematism, an art of pure geometric shapes floating on plain grounds. Before that he worked through Impressionism, Symbolism and a Cubo-Futurist style of bright, fragmented figures.

He was born in Kyiv to a Polish family and worked in Moscow, Vitebsk and Leningrad. His Cubo-Futurist phase produced works like An Englishman in Moscow (1914), with its jumble of objects and words, now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. After the 1920s, political pressure pushed him back toward figurative painting of peasants and portraits. The Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum and the Stedelijk hold major collections.

Aviator and An Englishman in Moscow show his playful, pre-abstract side. Look for the bold, flat colours.