Study Drawing for Suprematist Composition

The work of Malevich as a draughtsman is now strewn all across the world in a variety of public and private collections. We have pulled out a few in order to give you a better idea of how he worked and the sort of drawings that he produced across his career.

This particular drawing is at the very early stages of a later painting, as we can see a very rough looking composition, where straight lines are only approximately completed. Malevich wanted to see how things would look visually on the paper, prior to spending time working directly in oils. He would often work first from sketchbooks, as these could be carried around with him in case of any sudden creative ideas. Much research has been made into uncovering more artworks from his career as this work has helped to reveal a large number of study drawings such as these, which otherwise would have been lost forever were it not for the fame achieved by the artist. Some have actually presented drawings as genuine artworks that should be treated in the same way as a painting or sculpture, but Malevich saw this medium very much as a means of preparation for later paintings.

Here we discover two main compositions, and perhaps the artist is using the same piece of paper to plan out two different potential paintings. Both are framed within a light, rough border. The first is placed higher on the page and has several shapes at different angles, with black shapes and others left entirely unfilled. Further down you will find a large triangle around which many smaller shapes are positioned along its edges. The two compositions have a very similar style which is entirely in line with his Suprematist approach, but with different arrangements that must have been done this way with a clear purpose in mind. His main use of abstraction was to avoid connections to reality and to allow a viewer to find his own thoughts and emotions without being led by the artist.

The artist would be joined by a number of other notable names from across Europe as new forms of abstract art would spread right across the continent. Holland-based painter, Mondrian, would gift us the likes of Sans Titre, Serigraph and Tableau I having earlier worked in a more expressive manner. We understand today more about his own legacy and the way in which he slowly introduced people to abstract forms by evolving his artistic style over time. Whilst we take these modern ways for granted today, it would take a lot of work from artists such as these to gain acceptance for these new methods, just as others had done in previous centuries when attempting to push things onwards once more. Even the Impressionists would go through a similar experience during their earliest exhibitions, something that many today would find hard to understand.