Kazimir Malevich and the art of geometry

by Milner, John

During 1915, in the midst of the war years that preceded the Russian Revolution, Kazimir Malevich devised and displayed a completely unprecedented geometric style of painting that he called Suprematism. By the 1920s, geometric art had become an international phenomenon. John Milner examines Malevich's art of geometry by looking at its sources of inspiration, its methods and its meanings and, arguing persuasively that it is based on obsolete Russian units of measurement rather than the decimal system, has found a new interpretative tool with which to understand this pioneering art. Milner describes Malevich's early work (pointing out his sensitivity to Russian and West European art, with their diverse traditions of depicting time and space) alongside contemporary developments in physics and mathematics, including theories such as that of the fourth dimension. He closely examines Malevich's designs for the 1913 futurist opera Victory over the Sun, the first major public manifestation of