Kazimir Malevich, Self Portrait (1908-1910), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

In 1915, Kazimir Malevich first exhibited his Black Square, a simple, powerful statement on the possibilities for painting in the face of contemporaries still bound up in the exploration of figurative painting and impressionist tropes.  The piece marked a bounding leap forward for modernist practice, or rather, a point of entry in its own right to the early concepts of abstraction.

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting (with Black Trapezium and Red Square) (1915), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (more…)