Woman at the Tram Stop

Woman at the Tram Stop was one of a number of Cubo-Futurist artworks created by Kazimir Malevich in 1913. This painting, alongside a number of others from this body of work, can now be found in the Stedelijk Museum which is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

This painting features a wealth of detail, all delivered within the fractured world of Cubism. Themes based around the tram stop are displayed overlaid amongst each other, with different parts of each intertwined in a geometrical maze. One can pick out individual details before then trying to connect them together. A gentleman's head with hat is visible first of all, along with a green topped calendar. Several flights of stairs can also be seen, as well as a wine bottle and perhaps some fruit. Further information is added in the form of black lines all across the rest of the work, and then we come across the artist's signature in the bottom right corner. It seems harder to identify many elements within this painting as compared to his other entries into Cubism, though the case remains for many other artists who actually specialised within this style.

The work is 92cm wide and tall and was eventually given the title of Woman at the Tram Stop, or at least the Russian version of that. Some have placed it over the years of 1913-1914 and this feels highly accurate because we already know of several other Cubist paintings by the artist at around that time. It is rare to find so many items from this artist in the same location today, as most have been dispersed all across the world, within a combination of private and public collections. Western Europe have proven to be particularly interested in collecting items from his career, and there have also been a number of prominent collectors within his native Russia as well.

Head to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands to see this artwork in person, but it might be worth checking ahead of your visit that it is actually out on display. This institution has a large collection than available display space, like most art galleries and museums, and therefore not everything will be on display all the time. This interesting venue serves Malevich as well as anywhere in the world, featuring a number of other Cubist paintings by the artist as well as many of his drawings as well. It is likely that these arrived together at the same time from a particular collector who may have chosen to pass on some of his possessions to a public gallery so that more people could see them after their own death. Otherwise it would have taken a lot of work, or fortune, for the gallery to have acquired so many related items over a relatively short period of time. The major works from Malevich are actually worth astonishing amounts of money today, though it is rare for anything from his hand to now come up for sale.