Woman with Rake

137 years ago Kazimir Malevich, one of my favorite artists, was born. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde Suprematist movement. His 'Black Square' is an iconic painting frequently invoked by critics, historians, curators, and artists as the “zero point of painting", referring to the painting's historical significance and paraphrasing Malevich. “Woman with a Rake" belongs to Malevich’s so-called "second peasant cycle". The loss of his previous peasant works, left abroad after exhibitions in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927, was a formal reason for the artist to repeat the cycle. However, some new works were added to the series after the Suprematism period of his creative work. Those new pieces, however, solved different artistic problems. The female figure is composed of colourful geometrical elements against a generalized schematic landscape. The composition was the result of artist’s search for a universal image of the world. At the same time, his addressing of the figurative (material) world together with the return to a peasant theme traditional to Russian art signals an impossibility for the artist to lose the sense of uniqueness of normal everyday life. On the one hand, images of this type demonstrate fear of "a personality losing tragedy;" but on the other hand, they retain the universality peculiar to any genuine art. The 1930s were dark years for Malevich. He was arrested in 1930 and incarcerated for 2 months under accusations of espionage. Soon after, Malevich developed cancer. He died in 1935, aged 56.