Black Square

Introduction

Kazimir Malevich's first Black Square, painted in 1915 and now in Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. 11925), presents an uneven black quadrilateral inside a broad light border. Its title promises an elementary shape, but this canvas is not a flawless design printed in two flat tones. The dark paint is crossed by a dense network of cracks. Colour from earlier work on the same support can be glimpsed in some breaks, and the white field has its own worked and aged surface. Malevich first showed this painting in Petrograd in December 1915, placing it high across the corner of a room at The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10. There it acted both as one canvas among many new Suprematist compositions and as an unusually forceful sign of the change he was proposing. ^{[1], [2], [3]}

This page concerns the first surviving painted Black Square: oil on canvas, 79.5 by 79.5 centimetres, Tretyakov inventory 11925. Malevich and later catalogues used several titles, including Quadrilateral and Black Suprematist Square. He also made later black-square canvases. Their familiar outline makes them easy to conflate in photographs, yet they have different dates, sizes, collections and material histories. The 1929 Tretyakov repetition, for example, is a separate 80-centimetre painting. The original is the 1915 work whose cracked surface and 0.10 exhibition photograph anchor the account that follows. ^{[1], [4]}

At a Glance

• ArtistKazimir Malevich (1879–1935)
• Current museum titleBlack Suprematist Square, often called Black Square
• First exhibition titleQuadrilateral, according to the Tretyakov's historical account
• Date1915 for the physical painting and first exhibition; Malevich later associated the idea with 1913
• MediumOil on canvas
• Dimensions79.5 × 79.5 cm
• CollectionState Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, inv. 11925
• First public settingMalevich's room at the 0.10 exhibition, Petrograd, December 1915

Contents

1. What the canvas shows
2. A 1913 idea and a 1915 painting
3. The room at 0.10
4. Through the “zero of form”
5. What lies under the black paint
6. Four painted black squares, not one image copied four times
7. The first critical argument
8. A century of exhibitions and a changing legacy
9. Questions readers ask
10. Annotated Details

Where this work sits in Malevich’s career

Selected works, 1912–1933

19121917192219271933

The Woodcutter (recto)

1912

Morning in the Village after Snowstorm

1912

Taking in the Rye

1912

Woman with Pails: Dynamic Arrangement

1912–13

The Knife Grinder

1912–13

An Englishman in Moscow

1914

Composition with the Mona Lisa

1914

Reservist of the First Division

1914

Black Square (first canvas)

1915

Black Cross (Pompidou canvas)

1915

Red Square (Russian Museum canvas)

1915

Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying

1915

Suprematism, 18th Construction

1915

Painterly Realism of a Football Player

1915

Boy with a Knapsack (MoMA canvas)

1915

Dynamic Suprematism (Tate canvas)

1915–16

Suprematist Composition

1916

White on White

1918

Black Circle (Russian Museum canvas)

c.1923

Head of a Peasant (Russian Museum Ж-9488)

1928–29

Sportsmen (Russian Museum canvas)

1928–1932

Red Cavalry (Russian Museum canvas)

c.1932

Girl with a Comb in Her Hair

1932–33

Girl with a Red Staff

1932–33

Watch: Kazimir Malevich

Three short films place Black Square, the 1915 exhibition and Malevich’s later work in context.

Kazimir Malevich | TateShots

Tate

A curator introduces Black Square, the 0.10 exhibition and Malevich’s later work.

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▶01 · Artist and exhibitionKazimir Malevich | TateShotsTate▶02 · Black Square explainedWhy is this painting of a black square famous?TED-Ed▶03 · Short introductionKazimir Malevich in 60 secondsTim Marlow

What the canvas shows

There is no pictured person, building, landscape or object that the black form stands in for. A dark quadrilateral occupies the centre, with a light band on each side. It approaches the shape named in the title without becoming a mathematically exact square. Its edges are not mechanically straight, and the distances to the outer frame vary. The border matters as much as the centre: without that pale surround, the black form would not have the same scale, tension or relation to a square canvas. The viewer sees a painted relation between dark and light, not simply a black mark against a convenient blank page. ^[1]

The painting's present appearance also contains time. Cracks branch across the dark area; lighter passages within them make the surface look less opaque than a digital icon. A screen reproduction can show the overall design and some of that craquelure, but it cannot reproduce the full relief, the response of paint to light, or the sense of standing in front of a canvas roughly eighty centimetres across. Cropping or smoothing the reproduction can erase the light margin or disguise wear. The exact-version image chosen for this page preserves the visible border and irregular outline; it is a guide to looking, not a substitute for the object. ^{[1], [5]}

The black field does not give the eye a conventional centre of action. There is no horizon or depth cue leading toward a subject. Instead, small differences at the edges become conspicuous. One corner of the quadrilateral may feel tighter against the surrounding white; another may seem to shift away. The painted surface complicates an initial expectation that this is only a shape that anyone could draw. Malevich's decision to make and exhibit it as a canvas changes the question from “Can a square be drawn?” to “What can a painting contain when the depicted object is removed?”

That question should not be answered by pretending the paint itself has vanished. Black Square may be nonobjective, but it remains made of material: support, paint layers, marks and later cracks. The Tretyakov and its technical collaborators have examined those layers precisely because the visual reduction is not a reduction of the object to nothing. The work's physical history and its proposed pictorial freedom belong in the same account. ^{[1], [5]}

Annotated Details from Black Square

These numbered points draw attention to visible features of the 1915 Tretyakov canvas. A reproduction records its current surface imperfectly; museum technical images, rather than this photograph, support claims about hidden layers. ^[1][5]

A 1913 idea and a 1915 painting

The date of Black Square has often been told as a simple puzzle: why did Malevich sometimes point to 1913 when the first exhibition was in 1915? He worked on the futurist opera Victory over the Sun in 1913, designing costumes and stage scenery. Later, he connected the black-square motif to that theatrical work. A dark quadrilateral or divided square in an opera design is relevant to the history of the idea, but a stage sketch is not the Tretyakov canvas. The physical painting discussed here first appeared publicly at the December 1915 exhibition. ^{[1], [6], [7]}

Specialist accounts differ in how tightly they connect the 1913 designs to the later painting. A. D. Sarabianov notes that the exact image of a black square is not straightforwardly found in the surviving stage sketches, although square contours occur in them. He describes a related sketch sent to the composer Mikhail Matyushin in 1915 and reports Alexandra Shatskikh's proposal of 8 June 1915 as the date of the canvas, inferred from the letter's timing. That proposed day is a scholarly reconstruction, not a dated studio diary entry giving an uncontested moment of completion. The securely documented public presentation remains December 1915. ^[7]

Shatskikh frames that interval as more than a wait between an opera and a finished canvas. Her publisher's chapter abstract describes Fevralism as a precursor to Suprematism and interprets Malevich's 1913 dating as pointing to a period in which the idea was developing before the 1915 painting. This is her historical reconstruction, not an inscription on the Tretyakov object or proof that a painted square existed in 1913. The accessible abstract supports that limited formulation; the chapter's full argument has not been read for this page. ^[13]

The distinction can be kept without denying Malevich's own interest in tracing the idea back. An artist may give a work a conceptual origin earlier than its canvas date. Malevich's retrospective 1913 association says something about how he wanted the square understood within his career. Museum object records and the exhibition photograph answer a different question: which physical canvas existed and was displayed in 1915? Both kinds of evidence matter, but they should not be merged into a false claim that the Tretyakov painting was exhibited in 1913.

Malevich was already using forms of rupture in his work before the square. His Cubo-Futurist and alogical paintings challenged ordinary scale and picture space while still retaining recognisable fragments. In An Englishman in Moscow (1914), a face, fish, words and tools crowd together without becoming a stable scene. The first Black Square makes a more severe move: it leaves the depicted fragments behind. That contrast clarifies a change in his practice without turning the earlier canvas into a mere rehearsal or assuming a single neat path from figuration to abstraction. ^[8]

The room at 0.10

The 0.10 exhibition took place in Petrograd at the end of 1915, with work by Malevich and other avant-garde artists. Malevich's group of paintings introduced Suprematism in a visible, public setting. A surviving installation photograph shows Black Square placed high across the meeting of two walls, with numerous other geometric works below and nearby. The photograph is a rare check on later descriptions: it makes the corner position visible instead of relying only on repetition of an anecdote. ^{[1], [2], [9]}

In a Russian domestic room, an icon could occupy a high corner position. Malevich's placement therefore invited an association with the “red corner,” the customary place for an icon. That is an observation about display and reception, not proof that the canvas depicts a religious figure or that it carried one fixed devotional message. The black form was deliberately set where viewers might expect a sacred image, while the painting denied the usual subject of an icon. The tension was part of the exhibition experience. It helps explain why early commentators argued about the work as more than an exercise in shape. ^{[1], [7]}

The corner did not isolate the canvas from Malevich's other experiments. The archival photograph shows a dense arrangement of crosses, coloured planes and other Suprematist compositions around the high square. Centre Pompidou curator Angela Lampe has identified the particular 1915 Black Cross in installation photographs through irregularities in its painted contour. That cross survives separately as Pompidou AM 1980-1. The picture on the wall was not a lonely black symbol floating in a white gallery; it presided over a collection of related but visually varied tests of nonobjective painting. ^{[2], [10]}

Accounts differ about exactly how many works Malevich showed. The Tretyakov gives 39; Centre Pompidou's Black Cross study uses 40. A specialist study of the exhibition says the precise counts and identities remain a research question. It would be misleading to let a confident number stand in for a fully verified checklist. What matters for this canvas is secure without that resolution: Black Square was in the show, the surviving image places it high in the corner, and Malevich presented it alongside a substantial group of other new paintings. ^{[1], [9], [10]}

The exhibition also had documents and debate beyond the walls. Malevich's short text on the move from Cubism toward Suprematism was printed for this moment; a 1915 folded brochure survives in MoMA's collection. These sources can establish that ideas circulated with the paintings, even though the surviving MoMA object page does not transcribe an exact hanging list. A photograph can show an arrangement but cannot record every visitor's response; a manifesto can state an artist's programme but cannot explain every formal choice in a painting. Reading the different records together gives a fuller, and more careful, view of 0.10. ^{[9], [11], [12]}

The exhibition title itself needs explanation. The usual account reads “0.10” as a plan for ten artists to reduce previous art to zero and move beyond it. The specialist history of the show says ten participants were first envisaged, yet its final participant list has fourteen names. It also records the spring 1915 idea of a journal called Zero. Shatskikh's book explicitly revisits the title and questions how later writers have repeated the usual derivation. “Zero” belongs to the group's vocabulary, but “ten” should not be made to mean that exactly ten artists ultimately exhibited. ^{[9], [13]}

Malevich's corner was also part of a contested shared event. The exhibition's organisers were Ivan Puni and Ksenia Boguslavskaya; its catalogue listed works by artists including Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova, Ivan Kliun and Vladimir Tatlin. Tatlin exhibited three-dimensional counter-reliefs, offering another approach to real space beside Malevich's painted planes. The archival photograph frames one part of Malevich's display, not the entire exhibition. It therefore cannot prove that everyone who entered the Dobychina rooms met a unified Suprematist movement or agreed with Malevich's claims. ^[9]

Through the “zero of form”

Malevich's writings of 1915 explain why a nearly objectless canvas could be presented as a new kind of realism. In his text From Cubism to Suprematism, he argues that Cubism and Futurism had disrupted familiar images yet continued to depend on fragments of depicted things. Their visual energy still came from the encounter of those fragments, from movement or from modern machinery. He wanted the painted form to come from painting's own masses of colour rather than from a horse, person, machine or landscape that painting had to describe. ^[12]

Near the end of the Russian text, Malevich says Cubo-Futurism has completed its tasks and describes himself as passing through a “zero of form” toward Suprematism, a new painterly realism of nonobjective creation. This is a claim about what art can make once representation stops setting its terms. It does not mean that the Tretyakov canvas is literally zero paint or that every later geometric work has exactly the same philosophical meaning. The black quadrilateral and white field are a stark way to test the claim, but the text is a programme for a broader practice, not a private instruction sheet for every edge of this one painting. ^[12]

His own brief formulation is more forceful than the later shorthand: “I transformed myself into the zero of form and went beyond zero—one” (our translation of the Russian text signed June 1915). The speaker is Malevich, claiming a new direction for his painting; the sentence does not date the physical Black Square to 1913 or describe a technical procedure for making it. ^[12]

The publication history needs care. The digital Russian text and its editorial note say a first Petrograd issue was printed in 1915 for the 0.10 exhibition, although its cover bore 1916; an early second issue reused the same text with a new cover. Malevich published related but changed texts and titles as his ideas developed. Thus “Malevich wrote in 1916” and “the manifesto accompanied 0.10 in 1915” may both refer to a real aspect of the source. A quotation detached from its edition or translator can obscure that history. This article paraphrases the inspected Russian passage and links its edition note rather than relying on a free-floating English slogan. ^{[11], [12]}

It is tempting to turn the argument into a declaration that Malevich abolished painting. The canvas suggests the opposite: he was asking what painting could be when it no longer served the familiar task of showing objects. He gave black and white, shape and surrounding field, enough importance to carry a whole picture. Later he would use coloured planes, crosses, circles and eventually white forms, but the question began here in a concentrated and unsettling form. A picture could insist on its own construction while refusing to illustrate a thing in the world.

The painting before the name

The familiar account can make Suprematism sound as though it arrived fully formed: Malevich named a movement, wrote a theory, then illustrated it with a square. His surviving correspondence gives a more complicated sequence. The works of coloured and black geometric forms were being made in spring and summer 1915, but the name Suprematism first appears explicitly in a letter to his friend, the composer Mikhail Matyushin, dated 24 September 1915. Aleksandra Shatskikh places that moment at the opening of the second chapter of her study of the painting. A newly painted square and a settled doctrine were therefore not necessarily simultaneous events. ^{[13], [14]}

Richard Burrows, reading the letters alongside Ivan Kliun's later memoir, describes a visit to Malevich at Kuntsevo in late June or early July 1915. Kliun recalled seeing canvases laid out to dry and hearing Malevich speak of a planned series of roughly forty paintings built from differently coloured simple forms. A memoir written afterward does not provide a numbered inventory of works on that particular roof. Its value is as testimony to the scale and shared setting of the summer experiments, not proof that the first Black Square was finished on the day of the visit. Burrows's wider argument places this activity amid the First World War and Malevich's anxiety about conscription. Malevich's letters themselves show that urgency; the precise psychological effect on each canvas remains an interpretation. ^[14]

The artist's requests to Matyushin in May and June 1915 matter for another reason. He wanted designs associated with Victory over the Sun reproduced in a publication about the opera. In one letter he presented a square design as a source of possibilities for later forms. Burrows reads Malevich's emphasis on 1913 partly as an attempt to establish priority for his new visual language while he was competing with Vladimir Tatlin and trying to secure authorship. That interpretation is plausible, especially in light of a September letter expressing worry after Ivan Puni unexpectedly saw works in Malevich's studio. It should not turn every reference to 1913 into a deliberate falsehood. The opera was a real collaborative experiment, and the date Malevich placed on the back of the painting is evidence of his own retrospective claim, even if it does not redraft the physical canvas's first exhibition date. ^{[7], [14]}

This account also helps explain why the square can look less like an end point than a working proposition. The nearly empty face of the painting did not end the making of Suprematist pictures. Malevich had to name, describe, defend, reproduce and vary the discovery. Shatskikh's book devotes chapters not just to the painting's birth and the threshold of 0.10 but to the Supremus circle and the later white phase. The scope of that scholarship warns against compressing the whole movement into a single black form. ^[13]

What lies under the black paint

The cracked surface lets some earlier colour show through. The Tretyakov Gallery reports that a technical investigation for the painting's 2015 centenary found evidence of two earlier geometric compositions beneath the visible square. This does not make the current work a picture of the hidden shapes. Malevich covered earlier experiments on the same canvas; the underlayers show revision and reuse in the process that produced the familiar surface. The exact formal sequence and interpretation are research questions, rather than details a visitor can confidently reconstruct by looking at a thumbnail. ^{[1], [3]}

It is also inaccurate to say that researchers first learned in 2015 that something lay underneath. Red, yellow and blue elements had long been visible through the crack network. Aleksandra Shatskikh points to a radiograph published in 1990; Andréi Nakov says that he secured and published another X-ray in his 2007 French monograph, later translated into English. The 2015 study added a new set of images and a more detailed account of the painting's layers, including the claim that there were two preceding compositions. Separating the history of observation from the history of new imaging avoids turning a genuine technical result into a fictional first discovery. ^{[15], [16]}

The relation between the hidden pictures and the final square is historically suggestive. Irina Vakar, as reported in Burrows's study, calls the underlying work “proto-Suprematist” to acknowledge forms that do not fit neatly into Malevich's earlier Cubo-Futurist or alogical labels. Other scholars distinguish a lower Cubo-Futurist layer from a subsequent abstract composition. These labels are attempts to describe material evidence in a period of rapid change. They should not be treated as a hidden key that fixes what the black field means for every viewer. ^{[14], [15]}

The network of cracks also needs careful language. A thin line of coloured paint in a crack is evidence of stratified paint and aging; it is not automatically evidence that a particular colour was intended to remain visible. Nor does the fact that the 1915 picture aged prove an exact date or cause for every crack. The surface became especially significant because the design is so reduced: small material differences now compete with the deliberately simple black and pale geometry. A good reproduction should let the viewer see both the composition and its condition without digitally “repairing” it into a perfectly flat logo. ^{[1], [5]}

A disputed inscription on the white margin

The 2015 technical investigation also brought attention to traces of pencil writing on the pale margin. Tretyakov researchers, as quoted in Shatskikh's detailed response, reported a partial inscription and proposed that Malevich wrote it. Irina Vakar suggested that the wording might allude to a nineteenth-century French monochrome joke associated with Alphonse Allais, whose caption uses a racist term. The surviving marks are fragmentary; even the museum publication distinguished legible letter fragments from a longer suggested reading. It is therefore unsafe to repeat the proposed sentence as an established title of Black Square or proof of the artist's intention. ^[15]

Shatskikh disputes both the confident reading and the attribution to Malevich. She observes that the pencil was applied after the white paint had dried and argues that someone who encountered the work later could have written it. Her alternative of vandalism is itself a hypothesis. Nakov likewise said in 2015 that neither wording nor handwriting had yet been established. The disagreement matters because a confident attribution would suggest one kind of relation to visual parody, while a later graffito would tell us about a viewer's reaction instead. Until the trace is securely read, dated and attributed, the two histories cannot be collapsed. ^{[15], [16]}

This debate is a case study in what technical examination can and cannot do. Imaging may disclose layers, surface relief and faint marks. It cannot by itself identify the author of a short, damaged pencil line or explain why an artist placed a picture in a room. Even if the Allais comparison were ultimately accepted, it would have to sit beside the 1915 manifesto, the exhibition placement and Malevich's later uses of the square, rather than replacing them. The unresolved status deserves a reader's attention because popular accounts often present the phrase as a solved secret. ^{[15], [17]}

Scanning a fragile surface

In March 2018, the Factum Foundation worked with the Tretyakov Gallery to record both Tretyakov black-square canvases: the 1915 original and the 1929 version. Its non-contact Lucida scanner captured fine surface relief, especially the network of craquelure on the first painting. Panoramic colour photography produced files up to 900 dpi, checked against colour references. The museum also supplied infrared and X-ray images that Factum aligned with the colour and relief data in a layered research viewer. These methods answer different questions: colour records how the work appears, 3D records small changes of height, while X-ray and infrared can reveal information hidden by the upper surface. ^[5]

The collaboration also gives conservators a record against which later changes can be compared. Factum describes the 1915 paint layer as fragile and its layered archive as available to Tretyakov researchers. A photograph made for public display is not the same as that restricted technical data, nor does a visible online sample grant permission to reproduce the museum's specialist images. The publicly reusable 1915 image on this page can introduce the object; it cannot serve as a substitute for the conservation archive. ^[5]

Four painted black squares, not one image copied four times

Malevich returned to the black-square motif. Institutional records and the specialist historian A. D. Sarabianov identify four painted versions. Their sizes, dates and histories answer a common question: if a reproduction looks unusually clean or disproportionately large, are we looking at the original? The answer depends on the exact collection object, not the shared title. ^{[1], [4], [7], [18]}

The second version belongs to a related trio with Black Circle and Black Cross. The Russian Museum says these canvases were intended for the 1924 Venice exhibition but were not shown there. Sarabianov reports that Malevich's pupils Nikolai Suetin, Anna Leporskaya and Konstantin Rozhdestvensky assisted with the group. Assistance in making a later version is a historical detail; it does not transfer the 1915 painting's authorship or identity to that later group. ^{[7], [18]}

The 1929 painting raises a different problem. Factum says Malevich was asked to make a repetition for his retrospective because the first canvas already showed signs of aging. The Tretyakov's own record identifies it as a separate object and says it entered the collection from the artist in 1934. A version can be artist-made and historically important without being the first 0.10 canvas. This distinction also matters when images are circulated without dates: claims about cracks, X-rays or the 1915 installation cannot be transferred to an image of the 1929 work. ^{[4], [5]}

The two Tretyakov squares also entered the collection by different routes. The museum records the 1915 canvas as a 1929 transfer from the Museum of Painterly Culture, while its 1929 repetition was acquired from Malevich in 1934. In the later work's catalogue essay, a former gallery employee is quoted recalling Malevich carefully copying the older square in the mornings before visitors entered, after cracks had appeared on it. This is a reported recollection, not a technical record of each painting session, but it ties the decision to repeat the form to the original canvas's visible condition. The date 1929 therefore names both the making of one canvas and the transfer year of the other, not a single object. ^{[1], [4]}

A recent museum display makes the identification problem concrete. When the Tretyakov's Kaliningrad branch announced a Black Square for its 2025 opening exhibition, it specified that the loan was the 1929 version, close in size to the 1915 canvas and also painted by Malevich. A headline or gallery photograph saying only “Black Square” could easily be read as a report that the first canvas had travelled. The museum's date and the object records resolve which painting the announcement concerned; they do not establish where either canvas is displayed today. ^{[4], [29]}

The smallest version has another acquisition story. The Hermitage's own digital collection identifies it as ГЭ-10620, an oil-on-canvas painting of 53.5 × 53.5 cm from Malevich's family collection. It records entry in 2002 after purchase from Incombank with funds supplied by Vladimir Potanin. The owner's description calls the version circa 1930–32, while its formal date field combines 1913 / circa 1932 without explaining the slash. Sarabianov instead gives 1931–32 and approximately 53.6 cm. The direct museum record now fixes the object, material and current catalogue size; the differing date labels and slight measurement difference remain attributed. Its 1913 field must not be read as proof that this smaller physical canvas was painted for the 1913 opera. ^{[7], [27], [31]}

The title Black Square also appears on works made in other media. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues Black Square, Second State, 2014.1353, as a 9.9 × 16.1 cm graphite drawing on cream graph paper, dated 1915/20. Its “second state” title refers to the museum's drawing, not to the much larger circa-1923 second painted square in the Russian Museum. The Chicago sheet therefore belongs in a study of the motif, but it is not a fifth oil-on-canvas version of the 0.10 painting. The same museum separately catalogues a small 1915 graphite drawing simply titled Suprematism, 2023.3491; a geometric drawing need not be a preparatory sketch for this exact canvas merely because the date is close. ^{[36], [37]}

From artist's work to museum object

The first square's path into the Tretyakov was not a straight line from the 1915 gallery wall to its present display. Sarabianov cites a Russian state archive record for a Museum Bureau purchase from Malevich in early summer 1920 for the Museum of Painterly Culture. He says the canvas was at the Tretyakov from 1922 and formally accepted there in 1929. The Tretyakov's present owner record states that it came from the Museum of Painterly Culture in 1929. The dates describe acquisition, custody and accession, which are separate events. They should not be simplified into “the Tretyakov bought it in 1915.” ^{[1], [7]}

Its later museum status was precarious in a specific, documented way. In the 2003 Guggenheim catalogue, Tretyakov researcher Tatiana Mikhienko reports that the 1915 Black Square disappeared from the museum's published Soviet-art catalogue in the late 1940s as works judged “formalist” were segregated. In an early-1950s importance classification, she places the 1915 canvas in the third of four categories; the separate 1929 square was in the fourth. Proposals to send lower-ranked works to a central archive became tangled in practical limits, and the avant-garde painting collection largely remained in the Tretyakov. This evidence supports a story of institutional marginalisation, without turning it into an unsupported claim that the 1915 canvas was physically destroyed, removed from Moscow or deliberately cracked by state action. ^[28]

The painting also changed roles while Malevich lived. It began as a single work in an exhibition of new paintings, but the square became an emblem of the Suprematist group UNOVIS. Sarabianov documents its appearance on group signs and posters and notes that Malevich used a small black square in place of an ordinary signature in some late portraits. The mark could be reproduced and recognized beyond the 79.5-centimetre canvas, which helps explain why people sometimes know the sign before they know the painting's actual surface. That afterlife should be traced without assuming that every later printed square is a literal reproduction of the 1915 object's edges. ^[7]

The motif could also acquire a different narrative in another artist's hands. MoMA holds El Lissitzky's 1922 illustrated book About Two Squares, a Suprematist tale in which a black and a red square arrive on Earth. Its collection account reads the red square as the new Soviet order overcoming an older black one. That is an interpretation of Lissitzky's book, made years after Malevich's first canvas. It shows how portable the two forms became in print, while offering no licence to read the same political plot back into the 1915 Black Square or to mistake the book's black character for a photograph of the Tretyakov painting. ^[30]

The symbol remained present at Malevich's death in 1935. The Russian Museum describes his funeral as a final public act of Suprematism in Soviet Russia: a Suprematist coffin travelled on an open vehicle carrying a black-square emblem, and a white cube with a black square, designed by Suetin, marked the burial. These are documented uses of the sign, not proof that the 1915 canvas itself was carried in every part of the procession. The painting, the repeatable emblem and the design of a memorial had become intertwined by then, but they were different objects. ^[19]

The first critical argument

The icon-corner placement was noticed at the time, not invented by later curators. Alexander Benois, an established artist and critic associated with World of Art, responded to the 0.10 exhibition in the newspaper Rech on 9 January 1916. A specialist biographical study of Benois reproduces his fiercely negative description of the black square in its white surround. He saw an affront to what he valued in art and framed it in apocalyptic language. His reading was a contemporary polemic, not a neutral report of Malevich's aims. It nonetheless confirms that the exhibition challenged viewers' expectations far beyond a question of whether a black shape was competently painted. ^[22]

Benois called the black square in its white surround “no simple joke, no simple challenge” (our translation). His sentence continues into a judgment of cultural desolation, which is why the short opening cannot be used as evidence that he admired the work. The cited encyclopedia reproduces an excerpt of his 1916 review; the original newspaper page has not been inspected here. ^[22]

Malevich drafted a response to Benois in May 1916. In it he used the image of a bare icon of his time, language subsequently quoted in institutional accounts of Black Square. An editorial note to his collected writings states that the letter was neither sent to Benois nor published at the time; its original is in the manuscript department of the Russian Museum. That distinction changes how the document should be used. It gives access to Malevich's own reaction and later self-description, but it was not part of the newspaper exchange encountered by the 1916 public. ^[23]

In that draft, Malevich answered in a deliberately severe register: “On my square you will never see the smile of sweet Psyche” (our translation). The line conveys his refusal of the affectionate artistic values Benois invoked, but it belongs to an unsent draft, not to a published reply that readers in January 1916 could have seen. ^{[22], [23]}

The reaction was not uniformly Benois's. M. K. Ivanova's study of the exhibition identifies another Rech critic, Alexander Rostislavov, who sensed a difficult change in pictorial form. In the specialist account's reproduction of his review, he considers how simple geometry and separated masses of colour could carry both stillness and movement. That does not make him an unreserved supporter of Malevich, but it shows a contemporary viewer trying to describe a new artistic quality rather than dismiss the display outright. The original newspaper pages remain a further archival check; the distinction between these two critical positions is supported by the cited specialist study. ^[9]

Rostislavov wrote that “a change of forms is taking place in art, perhaps even a very difficult shift” (our translation). His review appeared in Rech on 25 December 1915, before Benois's January response. The surviving specialist transcription lets us compare two named contemporary reactions without treating either as a vote by the entire audience. ^[9]

The two statements are often paired as if they form a tidy debate about whether the square is a “new icon.” The actual evidence is more interesting. Benois condemned the implications of a black quadrilateral in the place normally given to an icon; Malevich later appropriated icon language for his own work. Neither account settles whether a viewer should interpret the canvas religiously. They show that the site of display was culturally charged and that both critic and artist recognized its force, even while giving it opposed values. ^{[7], [22], [23]}

Why the square keeps inviting interpretation

The high corner at 0.10, the pared-back design, and Malevich's forceful language have produced readings in religious, formal, philosophical and political terms. The icon association is historically grounded in the installation photograph and contemporary Russian display conventions. It does not require us to decide that Malevich offered a replacement religion. Likewise, “zero of form” describes his effort to free painting from depiction; it does not mean that the canvas has no form or material. An account that takes those phrases literally will overlook how much labor and revision the physical object contains. ^{[2], [7], [12]}

The meanings Malevich gave the square also changed over time. In the 2003 Guggenheim catalogue, Yevgenia Petrova reads his 1920 letter to Mikhail Gershenzon as giving the form a spiritual significance and interprets its repeated use in relation to his ideas about God and the universe. This is a curator's reading of later writing, not direct evidence that every viewer at 0.10 understood the 1915 painting that way. Petrova connects the square to Victory over the Sun; the stage motif, the first exhibited canvas and its later repetitions remain distinct objects and moments. ^[28]

Nor should Black Square be called the first abstract painting without qualification. Earlier nonrepresentational and near-abstract experiments existed in more than one artistic setting. What made this canvas distinctive was the severity of its reduction, its public presentation as part of a named programme, its placement in the 0.10 room and the expansive uses to which Malevich put its form afterward. These are concrete historical claims. A contest to identify a single universal “first” tends to hide the different kinds of abstraction being tried by different artists. ^{[2], [13]}

Centre Pompidou's survey of abstraction presents Malevich alongside Hilma af Klint, Kandinsky, Kupka, Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, Olga Rozanova and Sophie Taeuber-Arp as artists who reached different formulations in the early twentieth century. The comparison is useful because a geometric painting, a coloured nonfigurative composition and an abstract textile can all reject ordinary depiction without making the same claim about painting. Malevich's own “zero” is a specifically Suprematist argument within that broader field. ^[26]

It is possible to read the square as a response to a turbulent time without saying that one political event is secretly depicted inside it. The First World War is part of the documented 1915 context, and Burrows argues that Malevich's exposure to conscription sharpened the urgency of his work. The Russian Revolution came later. The 1915 canvas should therefore not be introduced as a painted illustration of the 1917 Revolution. Its subsequent reception took place across changing Soviet politics, but a general claim that “Stalin damaged it” would need object-specific evidence that the conservation record supplied here does not provide. ^[14]

At the same time, the picture resists being treated as an idea detached from history. A visitor sees black and pale fields, crooked edges, a support of a particular size and paint that has aged. The archive shows letters, a room photograph, owner records and technical scans. Each record is partial. The continuing fascination of Black Square lies partly in the way an apparently elementary painting asks for several kinds of looking at once: at a shape, at a worked surface, at an exhibition gesture, and at the changing meanings of a sign over the following decades.

A century of exhibitions and a changing legacy

Later museums have used Black Square to tell different histories. Matthew Drutt's 2003 Guggenheim exhibition focused on Suprematism as geometric art across paintings, drawings, architectural models and designed objects. The museum describes the 1915 square's corner placement and treats its influence as a starting point for that broader account. This is a useful reminder that the black square was one component of Malevich's work across media, not a single minimalist image isolated from his other production. The exhibition page confirms the general curatorial frame; selected passages from the separately checked Drutt-edited catalogue support the specific exhibition and museum-history claims below. ^{[24], [28]}

For the painting's centenary in 2015, London's Whitechapel Gallery took a different route. Its exhibition Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015 used the square as an emblem for a survey of more than one hundred artists across many countries. Its four themes were utopia, architectonics, communication and everyday life. That is an exhibition's curatorial argument about the reach of geometric abstraction, not evidence that each later artist copied the exact Tretyakov canvas. It shows how the sign has become a way to ask questions about design, social order and the circulation of abstract forms far beyond Petrograd. ^[25]

The 2003 Guggenheim catalogue is also evidence of a changed physical reach for the first canvas. Its curator Matthew Drutt states that the exhibition was the first time the 1915 original had been shown outside Russia. He displayed it beside the surviving 1915 Black Cross, Black Circle and Elongated Plane, distinguishing those denser, more visibly worked early canvases from the more regular black-form repetitions of the 1920s. This is an exhibition-specific comparison made from the original objects, and a useful warning against treating photographs of later versions as interchangeable illustrations of the 0.10 room. ^[28]

The first painted square and its emblematic afterlife therefore need to remain visible together. The 1915 object has a fragile, specific surface in Moscow. A black square as a repeatable form can appear on a coffin, a book cover, a poster or a contemporary exhibition identity. The resemblance explains its power; the differences keep its history intelligible. ^{[1], [7], [19], [24], [25]}

Related works: a short guide

Black Cross is related but not interchangeable with the square. Centre Pompidou owns a 1915 Black Cross and its curator Angela Lampe identifies its place in the 0.10 photograph by the contour of that canvas. A cross introduces intersecting directional arms into the same stark black-and-light vocabulary; the recorded object can be compared with the square without claiming it has an identical function. ^[10]

Black Circle makes the grouping of elementary black forms more legible, but versions and dates also require care there. The Russian Museum owns a circa-1923 circle made with its square and cross for the Venice project. A discussion of that later trio must not quietly label it as the three original canvases at 0.10. ^[18]

An accessioned drawing shows the motifs continuing beyond the first exhibition. The ALBERTINA catalogue records Black Square and Circle, DL724, as a 1920–21 pencil drawing on paper, 19.5 × 31 cm, with a private-collection credit. It is a distinct sheet that puts two elementary forms in relation, not a painted version of the Tretyakov square. The same portal dates its Sketch for a Stage Curtain for the Opera Victory over the Sun, DL725, to 1928. That later sheet is evidence of the opera's continuing place in Malevich's imagery; its title alone cannot make it a surviving 1913 stage design. ^{[32], [33]}

Two earlier sheets at Museum Ludwig make this distinction useful even within the years around the first Black Square. The Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln catalogues Schwarzes Viereck (Black Quadrilateral), ML/Z 2011/036, as a 1914–15 black-chalk drawing and study on paper, 22.4 × 17.9 cm. It separately catalogues Quadrat und Viereck (Square and Quadrilateral), ML/Z 2011/037, as a 1914–15 black-chalk drawing and design on paper, 20.4 × 14 cm. Their titles and dates document related geometric work, but the archive entries do not establish either sheet as the direct preparatory drawing for the Tretyakov canvas. They are separate accessioned objects, and a relationship between them and the painted square requires more than a shared shape. ^{[34], [35]}

The 1915 Red Square in the Russian Museum changes the problem of colour. It is not simply a black square with a different pigment: the red form can look mobile and its exhibition title attached a deliberately incongruous figurative phrase. White on White, held by MoMA and dated 1918, reduces contrast in another direction, with a pale tilted square against a pale field. These comparisons let a reader follow Malevich's experiments in form and colour after the black square without forcing a simple sequence of ever less visible objects. ^{[20], [21]}

Documented Malevich collection records

Explore 665 catalogued source objects from museums and archives, including 87 exact links to local artwork pages. Records include works, print impressions, book components and archival items; they are not a deduplicated or complete oeuvre. Medium labels are grouped into broad English categories. Titles link to local artwork pages where available.

665 records

Search recordsBroad mediumAll recordsPaintingDrawingPrintBookSculpture or objectPhotographOtherReset

Artwork title	Date	Medium
"Front line soldier" (Ratnik 1-go razriada)	Δεκαετία 1920	Photograph
[Le Cheval blanc]	[circa 1930 - 1931]	Painting
[Sensation du danger]	[1930 - 1931]	Painting
A Game in Hell, Petrograd, 1913 (2nd expanded edition)	1913	Book
A Game in Hell: A Poem (Igra v adu: Poema)	1914	Book
A Peasant Woman Goes for Water	1913	Print
A pork-butcher came around to Lodz and we said "Good day." From Lodz to neighboring Radom he passed, and left behind one sorry ass. (Podoshel kolbasnik k Lodzi / my skazali : 'Pan dobrodzi!' Nu, a s Lodz'iu riadom Radom / i ushel s podbitym zadom.)	c. 1914	Print
Alogisme 1. Portret Moskovskoy Damy (Alogisme 1. Portret van een Moskouse dame)	1914	Drawing
Alogisme 2. Vis, zaag, lepel, telegraafpaal	1914	Drawing
Alogisme 22. Malorossiyanin (Alogisme 22. Een kleine Rus)	1915	Drawing
Alogisme 23. Sobol, koshka (Alogisme 23. Sabel, kat)	1915	Drawing
Alogisme 29. Derevnya	1915	Drawing
Alogisme 3. Chastichnoe zatmenie (Alogisme 3. Gedeeltelijke eclips)	1914	Drawing
Alogisme 4. Apteka (Alogisme 4. Apotheek)	1914	Drawing
Alpha	1923 / 1978	Sculpture or object
An Austrian was going to Radzivily	1914	Print
An Austrian was going to Radzivily	1914	Print
Analytical Chart	1924–27	Drawing
Analytical Chart	1924–27	Drawing
Analytical Chart	1924–27	Drawing
Analytical Chart	1924–27	Drawing
Analytical Chart	1924–27	Drawing
Announcement for Malevich's lecture in Orenburg	1917-1920	Print
Apple Tree in Blossom	c. 1930	Painting
Architecton Alpha	1920	Sculpture or object
Architecton Gota	1923 (?)	Sculpture or object
Architectonische constructie	1917 (versie ca. 1925)	Drawing
Architectons and Figurines	Späte 1920er Jahre	Sculpture or object
Architecturaal-kosmische compositie	1920 (latere versie (1927?))	Drawing
Architectural construction	ca. 1917	Drawing
Aritmetica	1913	Drawing
Aritmetica	1913	Drawing
Arkhitekton Zeta	1926	Photograph
At Harvesting (Marfa and Vanka)	1928-1929	Painting
Aveniriens	vers 1931 - 1932	Drawing
Aviator	1914	Painting
Aviator v Pobede nad solntsem (Vliegenier in Overwinning op de zon)	1913 (versie ca. 1929)	Drawing
Baadsters op de rug gezien	1910	Painting
Back cover from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Back cover from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Bader	1911	Drawing
Betende Bäuerin	1933	Drawing
Biddende figuur	motief ca 1922, versie voor 1927	Drawing
Birkenhain	um 1905 - 06	Painting
Black Circle	c. 1923	Painting
Black Cross	c. 1923	Painting
Black quadrilateral	1915	Painting
Black Square	c. 1923	Painting
Black Square and Circle	1920-1921	Drawing
Black Square and White Cylindrical Form	1915	Drawing
Black Square, Second State	1915/20	Drawing
Blacksmith	Study. 1933	Painting
Blestifze (Pencils)	1917–1918	Drawing
Boer met baard	ca 1930	Drawing
Boerenvrouw in het veld	ca. 1929-1930	Drawing
Boerenvrouw met emmers	1912	Painting
Book of Selected Poems (Kniga izbrannykh Stikhotvorenii)	1930	Book
Boy (Vanka)	1928–1929	Painting
Boy wuth knapsack / Mal'chyk s rantsem	1915	Print
Brooch	1920	Sculpture or object
Brooch	1920	Sculpture or object
Bubnovy Valet 21. Boerenvrouw met kind	1911-1912 (latere versie)	Drawing
Bubnovy Valet 40. Portret (van M.F. Larionov?)	1910	Drawing
Bubnovy Valet 41. Na uglu stoit apteka, lyubov sushit tseloveka (De drogist is op de hoek, van liefde droogt een man uit)	1910-1911 (versie ca. 1930)	Drawing
Bubnovy Valet 42. Portret moei rodstvennitsy (Bubnovy Valet 42. Portret van mijn familielid)	1911	Drawing
Bubnovy Valet 43. Kop van een boer	1912 (latere versie)	Drawing
Bubnovy Valet 44. Dansend paar	1912	Drawing
Bubnovy Valet 57. Lopende man	1911	Drawing
Bubnovy valet 8. Kop van een boer	1912	Drawing
Budetliyansky silach (Futuristische sterke man)	1913 (versie 1915)	Drawing
Bêta	avant 1926 / 1978	Sculpture or object
Car and Lady		Photograph
Carpenter	1928–1929	Painting
Carré noir	[1923 - 1930]	Sculpture or object
Chelovek v ochkakh (Man met bril)	ca 1929	Drawing
Compositie 1 z (Supremus nr. 67)	1916 (versie jaren 1920)	Drawing
Compositie 10 t (Suprematisme: constructief moment)	1917	Drawing
Compositie 11 t (Supremus nr.18: constructievorming afhankelijk van de beweging naar een bol )	1916	Drawing
Compositie 13 t (Supremus nr 38)	1915-1916	Drawing
Compositie 13 t (Supremus nr 38)	1915-1916 (gedrukt 1920, annotaties jaren 1920)	Print
Compositie 14 t Oshchushchenie elektrichestva (Compositie 14 t Gevoel van electriciteit)	1915	Drawing
Compositie 15 k (Suprematisme)	1916 (versie begin jaren 1920)	Drawing
Compositie 15 q (Supremus nr. 118)	1918	Drawing
Compositie 16 t (Suprematisme: groot zwart trapezium en vierkant tussen rechthoeken en lijnen)	1915	Drawing
Compositie 2 i (Suprematisme: gecombineerd gevoel: cirkel en vierkant)	1916 (latere versie)	Drawing
Compositie 2 t (Verlengd vierkant met elementen overdwars)	1915 (versie ca. 1920)	Drawing
Compositie 2 z Obshchushchenie magnita (Compositie 2 z Gevoel van een magneet)	1916 (hernomen in 1919, versie jaren 1920)	Drawing
Compositie 3 t	1916	Drawing
Compositie 4 l Suprematisme van de geest	1919	Drawing
Compositie 4 t (Suprematisme: cirkel tussen rechthoeken en driehoeken)	1916	Drawing
Compositie 4 z (Supremus nr. 84)	1916 (latere versie)	Drawing
Compositie 5 l Suprematisme van de geest	1919	Drawing
Compositie 6 d (Tekening verwant aan ‘Huis in aanbouw’)	1915	Drawing
Compositie 6 t Obshchushchenie vremeni (Compositie 6 t Gevoel van tijd)	1916	Drawing
Compositie 9 b. Fevralizm kak emotionizm (Compositie 9 b. Februarisme als emotionisme)	1915	Drawing
Compositie 9 h (Suprematisme: kruis en drie rechthoeken)	1916 (versie 1920)	Drawing
Compositie 9 k (Suprematisme: zeven rechthoeken)	1915	Drawing
Compositie 9 t (Suprematisme: vier ruimtelijke elementen tegen een zwart trapezium)	1915	Drawing
Composition 1 e (Suprematisme: vierkant op diagonaal vlak)	1915	Drawing
Composition 1 t	[1916 / vers 1920]	Drawing
Composition 14 f	[1918]	Drawing
Composition 15 t	1916	Drawing
Composition 2 a	[1917 - 1918]	Drawing
Composition 3 z	[1919 / avant 1930]	Drawing
Composition 5 x	[été 1915]	Drawing
Composition 5 x	[été 1915]	Drawing
Composition alogique	[1915]	Drawing
Composition with La Gioconda (Partial Eclipse)	1914	Painting
Compositions 11 R	circa 1915–16	Drawing
Construction 5 h	1916	Drawing
Costume study for the Budetlyan Athlete in Victory over the Sun	1913	Drawing
Cow and Violin	1913	Painting
Cow and Violin from On New Systems in Art (O Novykh Sistemakh Visk Usstve)	1911–19	Print
Croix [noire]	[1915]	Painting
Croix noire	[vers 1923 - 1926]	Sculpture or object
Dame	1915	Drawing
Dame an der Straßenbahnhaltestelle	1913	Drawing
Dame bij reclamezuil	1914	Painting
De gardist	1913-1914	Other
De houthakker (recto) / Boerenvrouwen in kerk (verso)	1912	Painting
De likdoornsnijder	1911	Drawing
De likdoornsnijder	1911	Drawing
De provincie	1910	Painting
De tuinman	1911	Painting
De vloerboeners	1911	Drawing
Der Häftling	1930	Drawing
Der Tod eines Menschen, gleichzeitig im Flugzeug und der Eisenbahn	um 1913	Print
Desk and Room (legacy site: Bureau and Room)	1913	Painting
Dessin de Lissitzky d'après "Supremus n° 58, composition dynamique jaune et noire", 1916, de Malevitch	[1924]	Drawing
Deux plans de villes	[1916 / avant 1930]	Drawing
Deux plans en extension	[1916 - 1919]	Drawing
Diagramm	around 1917/1918	Drawing
Die Hochzeit	1903	Other
Die Waschfrau	1911	Painting
Dorp	ca. 1906	Other
Dorpje	1908	Drawing
Drei Köpfe	after 1930	Drawing
Drie boerenvrouwen	1917-1919 of eind jaren 1920	Drawing
Drie figuren in een landschap	ca. 1928-1930	Drawing
Drie naakte vrouwen en een kind, peren plukkend	1909	Drawing
Drie staande vrouwen	1930	Drawing
Drie vrouwenfiguren	ca 1905-1906	Drawing
Druckstock für Holzschnitt	1920	Print
Dynamic Construction	1923	Photograph
Dynamic Figure from On New Systems in Art (O Novykh Sistemakh V Iskusstve)	1911	Print
Dynamic Suprematism	1915/16	Painting
Dynamisch suprematisme	1917-1918	Drawing
Een Engelsman in Moskou	1914	Painting
Een paar onder bomen	ca 1929	Drawing
Elegant gezelschap in een park	ca 1908	Drawing
Elementarer Suprematismus	1917	Drawing
Eléments d'architectone	[après 1924]	Drawing
Eléments non identifiés	[1923 - 1935]	Sculpture or object
Engelsman in Moskou	1913-1914	Drawing
Entwurf für das Gemälde 'Die roten Häuser'	1910	Drawing
Entwurf für die Bemalung der Pfeiler aus der Serie von Entwürfen für die Ausgestaltung des Roten Theaters in Leningrad	1931	Drawing
Entwurf für eine Deckenmalerei im Roten Theater in Leningrad	1931	Drawing
Eskiz k portretu Roslavtsa. Pesn golubym oblakam (Schets voor portret van de componist Roslavets. Lied van de blauwe wolken)	1907-1908	Drawing
Etude de paysan	fin 1911	Drawing
Etyud suprematis 52 sistema A 4	1916-1917 (versie 1920-1927)	Drawing
Explodity (Vzorval')	1913	Book
Explodity (Vzorval')	1913	Book
Explodity (Vzorval)	1913	Book
Female Figure	1928–1929	Painting
Female portrait	ca. 1910-1911	Painting
Female Torso	1928–1929	Painting
Female Torso	1928-1929	Painting
Figur mit ausgebreiteten Armen, ein Kreuz bildend	1933	Drawing
Figuren in Schwarz und Weiß	1928/1930	Drawing
Flower Seller	1930	Painting
Folio 1 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 15 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 17 verso from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 18 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 19 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 19 from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Folio 20 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 23 from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Folio 25 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 27 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 27 from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Folio 29 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 31 from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Folio 32 verso from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 34 verso from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 37 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 4 verso from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 7 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Folio 9 from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Footballer / Futbolist	1915	Print
Four Squares	1915	Painting
Fragmenten van een tekst over het suprematisme	1927	Other
From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism (Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu)	1916	Book
Front cover from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Fruit plukken / Overvloed	1909	Painting
Fuhrleute	1909-1910	Drawing
Full portrait of Malevich	1931	Photograph
Futuristische draak	1913	Print
Futurizm: dvizhenie cheloveka po lestnitse (Futurisme: beweging van een man op een trap)	1919	Drawing
Gebet II	um 1913	Print
Gesellschaft in Zylindern	1907	Drawing
Girl in the Countryside	1928–1929	Painting
Girls in a Field	1928-1929	Painting
Gliad', pogliad' uzh blizko Visly. Nemtsev puchit, znachit kislo.	1914/1918?	Print
Glyad, poglyad, uzh blizko Visly	1914	Print
Golgatha	around 1911	Drawing
Gota	1923 / 1978	Sculpture or object
Gota 2-a	1923 / 1978	Sculpture or object
Grafik ...	ca. 1923	Other
Grafik dvizheniya tvorcheskikh edinits v beskonechnosti	ca. 1923	Other
Grammatica	1913	Drawing
Harvesting	Study for a painting. 1928–1929	Painting
Head of a Peasant	Early 1930s	Painting
Head of a Peasant	1928-1929	Painting
Head of a Peasant	1928–1929	Painting
Hiëratisch suprematistisch kruis (groot kruis in zwart over rood op wit)	1920-1921	Painting
Houses of the Future Leningrad: Pilot's House	1924	Drawing
Huis, man, ladder	1930-1931	Drawing
Huit dessins suprématistes	[1917 / avant 1930]	Drawing
Huizen op het platteland	ca. 1906	Other
Häuser und Kreuze (Golgatha)	1930	Drawing
I yu mane tor	ca. 1915	Drawing
Igra v adu	1914	Other
Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1914	Book
Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1914	Book
Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1914	Book
Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
II	1913	Drawing
Illustration for the book by Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov "Igra v Adu»" (2nd edition, Moscow 1914)	1914	Print
Ils vont à l'église	1928 - 1932	Drawing
Into Wagons of the French, German Corpses Were Tightly Wrenched; Their English Brothers Carried Kegs Stuffed with Germans Who Lost Their Legs	c. 1914	Print
Izbornik stikhov s poslesloviem rechiaria. 1907–1914 gg. (A Selection of Poems with an Afterword by the Wordsmith: 1907–1914)	1914	Book
Jnitsa	1913	Drawing
K.Malevich, M.Matiushin, A.Kruchenykh, St.Petersburg, December 1913	1913	Photograph
K.Malevich, M.Matiushin, A.Kruchenykh, St.Petersburg, December 1913	1913	Photograph
K.Malevich, M.Matiushin, A.Kruchenykh, St.Petersburg, December 1913	1913	Photograph
Kabarett	1930	Drawing
Kazimir Malevich lying seriously ill in his bed, shortly before he died	1935	Photograph
Kettle with lid	1923	Sculpture or object
Komposition mit einer Figur	after 1930	Drawing
Konstruktion	around 1915	Drawing
Kop van een boer, kruis, en landschap	1928-1929	Drawing
Kop van een boerenmeisje	1912	Painting
Kop van een boerenvrouw	1913	Drawing
Kopf	1930	Drawing
Kopf	around 1930	Drawing
Kostüm für das Stück 'Maskenball'	1913	Drawing
Krestyanka (Boerenvrouw)	1913	Print
Krestyanka idet po vodu (Boerin haalt water)	1913	Print
Kubisme 25. Avtoportret (Kubisme 25. Zelfportret)	1913	Drawing
Kubisme 6. Wandklok	1913	Drawing
Kubisme 9. Molitva (Kubisme 9. Gebed)	1913	Drawing
Kubistische compositie	ca 1925	Drawing
Kubistische figuur staand op de rug gezien	1912-1913 (versie ca. 1925)	Drawing
Kubofuturistische compositie met piano	1913-1914	Painting
Kubosuprematismus	1916/1920	Drawing
Kuppel des Volkshauses in Leningrad	1931	Drawing
Lamp - Musical Instruments	Δεκαετία 1920	Photograph
Lamp / Muziekinstrumenten	1913	Painting
Landscape	1911	Painting
Landscape	c. 1906	Painting
Landscape with a White House	1928–1929 in Gasper-Hulvat 2012; Christie’s groups work with early-1930s landscapes	Painting
Landscape with a Yellow House (Winter Landscape)	c. 1906	Painting
Landscape with Five Houses	1928–1929	Painting
Landscape with house	c. 1905-1906	Painting
Landschaft	around 1933/34	Other
Landschaft (Der Winter) (Landscape (Winter))	after 1927	Painting
Lauf	1917	Drawing
Let's Grumble (Vozropshchem)	1913	Book
Liggende naakte vrouw met twee spelende kinderen	1908	Drawing
Lopende man met zaag onder de arm	ca. 1928-1929	Drawing
Maaiende vrouw	1913	Drawing
Maaiende vrouw	1913	Drawing
Maaiende vrouw	1913	Drawing
Maaiende vrouw	1912-1913	Drawing
Magnetic construction		Drawing
Magnetisch architectonische compositie	ca. 1920 (versie 1925-1926)	Drawing
Magnetischer Suprematismus	1916	Drawing
Male Portrait	1933–1934	Painting
Malevich archief	1913-1927	Other
Malevich with his students (UNOVIS)	Μάιος 1922	Photograph
Man met zak	1910-1911	Painting
Manifesto handbill for the 0.10 exhibition	1915	Book
Mann in suprematistischer Landschaft	um 1930 - 31	Painting
Mann mit Pferd	1933	Drawing
Manuscript with drawings, Page 27, 1 July 1916	1916	Other
Maternity. Woman in Birth	1908	Drawing
Moederschap / Overvloed	1910	Painting
Morning in the Village after Snowstorm	1912	Painting
Muziekinstrument	1913	Drawing
Muziekinstrumenten	1913-1914	Drawing
Mystic Suprematism (Black Cross on Red Oval)	1920–22	Painting
Mysticus	1930	Drawing
Mystiek suprematisme (rood kruis op zwarte cirkel)	1920-1922	Other
Naakt met geheven handen	1908	Drawing
Nachtwandeling	1909-1910	Drawing
Nu i tresk-zhe, nu i grom-zhe byl ot niemtsev podlie Lomzhi.	1914/1918?	Print
O Novykh Sistemakh V Iskusstve (On New Systems in Art)	1919. (Prints executed 1910-1919).	Book
O novykh sistemakh v iskusstve. Statika i skorost'	1919	Other
O novykh systemakh v iskusstve. Statika i skorost' ( On New Systems in Art: Statics and Speed )	1919	Book
O novykh systemakh v iskusstve: Statika i skorost’ (On New Systems in Art: Statics and Speed), Vitebsk	1919	Book
Ohne Titel	around 1904-1908	Drawing
Ohne Titel	1916	Drawing
Ohne Titel	around 1931	Drawing
Ohne Titel	1916	Drawing
Ohne Titel	around 1916	Drawing
Ohne Titel (Untitled)	1917–1930	Drawing
Omslag van A. Kruchenykh en V. Khlebnikov, Igra v adu (Een spel in de hel)	1913-1914	Print
Omslag van Sezd Komitetov Derevenskoi Bednoty (Congres van Comités van Armoede op het Platteland)	1918	Print
Omslag van Troe (Het drietal)	1913	Print
Omslagontwerp voor Internatsional iskusstva (Internationale van de kunst)	1918	Print
Omslagontwerp voor N.N. Punin, Pervy tsikl lektsii (Eerste cyclus van lezingen)	1920	Drawing
Omslagontwerp voor Troe (Het drietal)	1913	Drawing
Ontwerp voor een architecton type 'Alfa'	ca 1925-1926	Drawing
Ontwerp voor een architecton type Alfa	1925-1929	Drawing
Ontwerp voor een monument	ca. 1932-1933	Drawing
Ontwerp voor een monument	ca. 1932-1933	Drawing
Ontwerp voor een monument	ca. 1932-1933	Drawing
Oogstende vrouwen/Het binnenhalen van de rogge II	1912	Other
Op de boulevard	1910	Painting
Opdoemende kruisvorm	1917-1918	Drawing
Ornements suprématistes	1927 / 1978	Sculpture or object
Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu. Novyi zhivopisnyi realizm (From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: New Painterly Realism)	1916	Book
Ot kubizma k suprematizmu. Novy zhivopisny realizm	1916	Other
Ot Sezanna do Suprematizma. Kritichesky ocherk	1920	Book
Ot Sezanna do Suprematizma. Kritichesky ocherk.	1920	Other
Paard en koets in beweging	1913	Drawing
Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack - Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension	1915	Painting
Painterly Realism of a Football Player—Color Masses in the 4th Dimension	Summer/fall 1915	Painting
Patriotic poster against the Germans	1914	Print
Patriotic Poster Against the Germans	1914	Print
Patriotic Poster Against the Germans	1914	Print
Patriotic Poster Against the Germans		Print
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcard with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Patriotic propaganda postcards with verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky	1914	Book
Paysanne	[1912 / 1932]	Drawing
Paysanne et deux enfants	[1911 / avant 1930]	Drawing
Peasant	Between 1930–1932	Painting
Peasant bringing Water	1912 (Thema), 1920er Jahre (Ausführung)	Drawing
Peasant in a Field	1928–1929	Painting
Peasant Woman	Early 1930s	Painting
Peasants	c. 1930	Painting
Peasants	circa 1928 (NGA); 1928–1929 (Gasper-Hulvat)	Painting
Perfected Portrait of Ivan Kliun	1913	Painting
Peruyi Tsikl Lektsii	1920	Book
Pervyi tsikl lektsii chitannykh na kratkosrochnykh kursakh dlia uchitelei risovaniia (First Series of Lectures, Given at a Short-Term Course for Teachers of Drawing)	1920	Book
Plan d'éléments d'architectone	[après 1924]	Drawing
Planetaire constructie (magnetische kruisvorm)	1916-1917 (ontwikkeld 1920-1922, latere versie (voor 1927))	Drawing
Planetary-Architectural Suprematism	1919-1920	Drawing
Plate (folio 17) from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Plate (folio 21) from Igra v adu (A Game in Hell)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Plate (folio 22) from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Po utru iz Lvova vyshli	1914	Print
Pobeda nad solntsem. Opera (Victory over the Sun: An Opera)	1913	Book
Podoshel kolbasnik k Lodzi	1914	Drawing
Pokhoronnoe byuro (Begrafeniskantoor)	1914-1915	Drawing
Porosiata	Saint Petersburg: 1913	Book
Porosiata (Piglets)	1913	Book
Portrait of a Youth	1933	Painting
Portrait of M. V. Matyushin	1913 in gallery-magazine object record; 1913–14 in Tretyakov education page	Painting
Portrait of the Artist’s Wife	1933	Painting
Portret M.V. Matyushina (Portret van M.V. Matyushin)	1913	Drawing
Portret stroitelya usovershenstvovan (Verbeterd portret van een bouwer)	1913	Drawing
Portret van de vader van de kunstenaar	ca 1902-1903	Painting
Portret van een jonge vrouw (waarschijnlijk Sofia Rafalovitch)	1908-1909	Drawing
Portret van een man (Aleksei Morgunov?)	1912	Other
Portret van M.V. Matyushin	1913	Drawing
Prayer	1913	Drawing
Prayer	1913	Print
Prayer	Study for a fresco painting. 1907	Painting
Prayer (plate, folio 19) from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Primitiv (Schuhmacher)	1910	Drawing
Prografachnik	1916	Drawing
Projekt einer kosmischen Anlage	around 1917	Drawing
Quadrat und Oval	1915/1916	Drawing
Quadrat und Viereck	1914-1915	Drawing
Red Cavalry	c. 1932	Painting
Red House	1932	Painting
Red Square	Undated	Drawing
Red Square. Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions	1915	Painting
Reicher Mann	around 1910	Drawing
Relaxing (Society in Top Hats)	1908	Drawing
Reservist of the First Division	fall-winter 1914	Painting
Roar!: Gauntlets of 1908-1914 (Riav!: Perchatki 1908-1914)	1914	Book
Rotes Quadrat auf Schwarz	around 1922	Other
Samovar	1913	Painting
Schema I: Construction of Axes of a Model; Schema II: Cubist Structure (Construction); Schema III: Cubist Constructed Drawing from On New Systems in Art (O Novykh Sistemakh Visk Usstve)	1919	Print
Schets vooor de opera Voyna (Oorlog): Topor molodets ne brekhal (de jongeman Topor heeft niet gelogen)	1918	Drawing
Schets voor de opera Voyna (Oorlog): Bas, day stakan (Bas, geef me een glas)	1918	Drawing
Schets voor de opera Voyna (Oorlog): gekruisigde tegen een lichte achtergrond	1918	Drawing
Schets voor de opera Voyna (Oorlog): gekruisigde tegen een zwarte achtergrond	1918	Drawing
Schets voor de opera Voyna (Oorlog): interieur met figuur en hangend kruisbeeld	1918	Drawing
Schets voor de opera Voyna (Oorlog): Odin tikho (een stille)	1918	Drawing
Schets voor een architectonische structuur	1920-1921 (versie 1923-1924)	Drawing
Schetsboekomslag		Drawing
Schneider, Allogismus, Aushang	around 1915	Drawing
Schnitter	1909-1910	Drawing
Schnitterinnen	1909-1910	Drawing
Schnitterinnen (Reapers)	1909–1910	Drawing
Schwarzes Viereck	1914-1915	Drawing
Scène uit Anathema	1909-1910	Print
Segodnyashnye sooruzheniya	1920 (versie 1923-1924)	Drawing
Segodnyashnye sooruzheniya	1923-1924 / 2010	Other
Selected Verse, 1907–1914 (Izbornik stikhov, 1907-1914)	1915	Book
Self-Portrait	Study for a fresco painting. 1907	Painting
Self-Portrait	1910–1911	Drawing
Self-Portrait (Artist)	1933	Painting
Shel avstriec v Radzivily	1914	Print
Sieg über die Sonne 1913-1973	1973	Print
Sieg über die Sonne 1913-1973	1973 / 2010	Other
Simultaneous Death in an Airplane and at the Railway	(1913)	Print
Simultaneous Death of a Man in an Airplane and on the Railroad (plate, folio 15) from Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Sketch for "Vertical Suprematist Construction»"	Undated	Drawing
Sketch for a Stage Curtain for the Opera Victory over the Sun	1928	Drawing
Sketch for Agit-Train	περ. 1918	Drawing
Slovo Kak Takavoe (The Word as Such)	1913	Book
Slovo kak takovoe (The Word as Such)	1913	Book
Smert cheloveka odnovremmeno na aeroplane i zhel. doroge (De gelijktijdige dood van een man in een vliegtuig en op de spoorlijn)	1913	Print
Sportsmen	1928–1932	Painting
Square and Cone	1915	Drawing
Staande boer	1928-1929	Drawing
Staande boer met emmer	1930-1932	Drawing
Staande boer met zeis bij het hooien	1928-1929	Drawing
Staande duivel	1913-1914	Print
Staande figuur	1927	Drawing
Staande mannenfiguur	1930-1931	Drawing
Staande vrouw en man Kop en schouders Vijf figuren met twee suprematistische elementen	1918 (latere versie)	Drawing
Staande vrouw met de armen over elkaar	ca 1930	Drawing
Standing Figure	1913	Drawing
Standing Woman	circa 1930	Drawing
Stikhi V. Maiakovskogo. Vypyt (The Poetry of V. Mayakovsky. [Vypyt])	1914	Book
Still Life	c. 1910	Drawing
Stroyuschiysya dom [House under construction]	1915–16 (museum); reverse inscription 1914 distinguished from execution date	Painting
Studie für das Gemälde 'Die Rote Kavallerie'	1930	Drawing
Studie nach Picasso. Entwurf für das Bauhausbuch 'Die Gegenstandslose Welt'	1926/1927	Drawing
Studie nach Picasso. Entwurf für das Bauhausbuch 'Die Gegenstandslose Welt'	1926/1927	Drawing
Study for the rear curtain for Victory over the Sun	1913	Drawing
Study for the rear curtain for Victory over the Sun	1913	Drawing
Summer Landscape (Zomerlandschap)	circa 1929	Painting
Suprematicheskoe postroenie N 118 (Suprematistische constructie nr. 118)	1917-1918 (versie 1920)	Drawing
Suprematisch kruis (klein kruis in zwart over rood op wit)	1920-1927	Other
Suprematism	1915	Drawing
Suprematism	1915	Painting
Suprematism	1915–1916	Painting
Suprematism (Supremus No. 56)	1915-16	Painting
Suprematism (Supremus No. 58)	1916	Painting
Suprematism, 18th Construction	1915 (artist's reverse inscription reads 1914)	Painting
Suprematisme	1917-1918	Drawing
Suprematisme van de geest	1919	Other
Suprematisme. Oplossende constructie, vorm 78	1918 (latere versie (1927))	Drawing
Suprematisme: Compositie 5 c	1915-1917	Drawing
Suprematisme: drie overlappende rechthoeken	1916-1917 (latere versie)	Drawing
Suprematisme: drie snijdende vlakken, vervagend	1917-1918	Drawing
Suprematisme: elementen in wisselwerking, vervagend	1917-1918	Drawing
Suprematisme: formatie van rechthoeken	1916 (latere versie)	Drawing
Suprematisme: formatie van rechthoeken en vierkanten van verschillende grootte	1916 (latere versie)	Drawing
Suprematisme: formatie van rechthoeken van verschillende grootte	1916 (latere versie)	Drawing
Suprematisme: gevoelens van angst	1917-1919	Drawing
Suprematisme: in tweeën	1917-1919	Drawing
Suprematisme: krommingen en bogen	1917-1918	Drawing
Suprematisme: magnetische rechthoeken in stervorm Vier kaderlijnen	1917-1919	Drawing
Suprematisme: magnetische staven	1917	Drawing
Suprematisme: ovaal en rechthoek Twee staande vrouwen in een landschap Man met hoed (zogenaamd portret van Larionov?) Boer Vier figuren	1916-1917 (latere versie)	Drawing
Suprematisme: Ovaal, boog en rechthoeken	1917	Drawing
Suprematisme: twee snijdende vlakken, vervagend	1917-1918	Drawing
Suprematisme: twee snijdende vlakken, vervagend Suprematisme: drie snijdende vlakken, vervagend	1917-1918	Drawing
Suprematisme: zwart vierkant en witte rechthoek met rode strepen	1917-1919	Drawing
Suprematismus	1912-1913	Drawing
Suprematist Composition	1915	Drawing
Suprematist composition	c. 1916	Drawing
Suprematist Composition	1916	Photograph
Suprematist Composition	1916	Painting
Suprematist Composition with Plane in Projection	1915	Painting
Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying	1915 (dated on reverse 1914)	Painting
Suprematist Composition: White on White	1918	Painting
Suprematist Diagonal Construction 79	1917	Drawing
Suprematist Drawing	(c. 1916-17)	Drawing
Suprematist Drawing	(c. 1916-17)	Drawing
Suprematist Element: Circle	(1923)	Drawing
Suprematist Elements: Squares	1923	Drawing
Suprematist interior decoration	1920-1921	Drawing
Suprematist Painting	1916-17	Painting
Suprematistisch schilderij (met zwart trapezium en rood vierkant)	1915	Other
Suprematistische compositie	1915 (versie 1920-1927)	Drawing
Suprematistische compositie (met acht rode rechthoeken)	1915	Painting
Suprematistische compositie (met blauwe driehoek en zwarte rechthoek)	1915	Painting
Suprematistische compositie (met gele, oranje en groene rechthoek)	1915-1916	Other
Suprematistische Elemente im Raum	1914-1915	Drawing
Suprematistische Komposition	1915-1916	Drawing
Suprematistische Komposition	1915/1916	Drawing
Suprematistische Komposition (Suprematist Composition)	1915	Painting
Suprematistische schets	1915-1920	Drawing
Suprematistische Zeichnung (Plan eines Erdflugplatzes)	1927	Drawing
Suprematistisches Architekton	around 1926	Sculpture or object
Suprematizm. 34 risunka	1920	Print
Suprematizm. 34 risunka (Suprematism: 34 Drawings)	1920	Book
Supremus No. 18	1916–1917	Drawing
Supremus nr 51	1916 (versie 1920-1927)	Drawing
Supremus Nr. 38	1916	Other
Supremus nr. 50	1915	Other
Supremus nr. 58	1916 (versie begin jaren 1920)	Drawing
Sushchestvuet énergiya v sushchestve kot	ca. 1923	Other
Sämann	1910/1912	Drawing
Tenhemelopneming van een heilige	1907-1908	Drawing
The Triumph of Heaven	1907	Painting
The UNOVIS way (Put' Unovisa)	Ιανουάριος 1921	Print
The Word As Such (Slovo kak takovoe)	1913	Book
Third State of Being	designed in 1915, made in the 1920s	Drawing
Three Female Figures	Early 1930s	Painting
Threesome (Troe)	1913	Book
Thèmes pour des monuments architecturaux dans des parcs et sur des places	1927 / 1978	Sculpture or object
Tizian	around 1930	Drawing
Tochil’schik Printsip Mel’kaniia (The Knife Grinder or Principle of Glittering)	1912–13	Painting
Toekomstige planits voor Leningrad. Het huis van de vliegenier	1924	Drawing
Toekomstige planits, huizen voor aardbewoners	1920-1921 (versie 1923-1924)	Drawing
Toneelontwerp voor akte 1, scène 4 van Overwinning op de zon	1913	Drawing
Toneelontwerp voor Overwinning op de zon	1913 (versie 1915)	Drawing
Torse féminin	[1908 / avant 1930]	Drawing
Torso (Figure with a Pink Face)	1928–1929	Painting
Torso (Prototype of a New Image)	1928–1929	Painting
Torso in a Yellow Shirt (Complicated Premonition)	c. 1932	Painting
Transrationele compositie: geluiden	1913	Drawing
Trees	circa 1904	Painting
Triple Portrait	Study for Socialist City (unexecuted). 1933	Painting
Troe (The Three)	1913	Book
Troe (The Three)	1913	Book
Trois croix	vers 1930 - 1932	Drawing
Trois dessins : tête de femme, buste et visage	[1908 / avant 1930]	Drawing
Troye	1913	Other
Tvorchestvo ne mozhet byt' svobodno	ca. 1923	Other
Tvorchestvo ne mozhet byt' svobodno	ca. 1923	Other
Twee duivels die een vrouw doormidden zagen	1913-1914	Print
Twee mannen in beweging	1917-1918 of ca. 1930	Drawing
Twee naakte vrouwen peren plukkend	1909	Painting
Twee vrouwen en een man tegen een lage horizon	1930	Drawing
Two figures with a stretcher	ca. 1930-1931	Drawing
Two Male Figures	Early 1930s	Painting
Tête noire	vers 1930	Drawing
Universal Landscape	1913	Print
UNOVIS Questionnaire	1920	Print
Untitled	1920	Drawing
Untitled	c. 1920	Print
Untitled	αχρονολόγητο	Print
Untitled	Undated	Drawing
Untitled	Undated	Drawing
Untitled	1913?	Drawing
Untitled (Suprematist Composition)	circa 1919–1926	Drawing
Untitled (Suprematist Composition)	circa 1919–1926	Drawing
Untitled (Suprematist Cross)	1920, printed 1973	Print
Untitled, Illustration for the book by Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov "Igra v Adu»" (2nd edition, Moscow 1914)	1913	Print
Verdwijnend geel vlak	1917-1918	Painting
Verdwijnende constructie (diagonale balk met drie bogen in wit)	ca. 1917	Other
Verdwijnende witte vlakken	1917-1918	Other
Verklarende kaarten over de theorie van het additionele of toegevoegde element in de schilderkunst	1927	Drawing
Verticale constructie, suprematisme	1919-1920 (versie 1920-1925)	Drawing
Vier figuren in een landschap	ca. 1928-1930	Drawing
Vijf geketende figuren op de rug gezien, geflankeerd door twee bewakers	1910-1911	Drawing
Vil'gel'mova Karusel' (Wilhelm's Carousel)	1914	Print
Vloerboeners	1911	Drawing
Voorstudie voor het omslag van het programma van het Congres van Comités van Armoede op het Platteland	1918	Drawing
Voorstudie voor het omslag van het programma van het Congres van Comités van Armoede op het Platteland	1918	Drawing
Voorstudie voor het omslag van Sezd Komitetov Derevenskoi Bednoty (Congres van Comités van Armoede op het Platteland)	1918	Drawing
Voorstudie voor het omslag van Sezd Komitetov Derevenskoi Bednoty (Congres van Comités van Armoede op het Platteland)	1918	Drawing
Voyna (Oorlog)	1914	Drawing
Vozropshchem (Let's Grumble)	1913	Book
Vrouw bij tramhalte	1913-1914	Other
Vrouw in lange jurk met kind	1930	Drawing
Vrouw met de armen over elkaar	1931-1932	Drawing
Vrouw met krant op schoot	1904	Other
Vrouw omgeven door vruchten	1909	Painting
Vrouwelijke figuur met uitgespreide armen	1930?	Drawing
Vrouwenfiguur	1909	Drawing
Vrouwenfiguur met gespreide armen	1930-1931	Drawing
Vrouwenfiguur, vis, cirkel, kruis	ca. 1928-1930	Drawing
Vsemirny peyzazh (Universeel landschap)	1913	Drawing
Vzorval	1913	Book
Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913	Book
Vzorval' (Explodity)	1913–14, published 1914	Book
Wachthuisje, drie kruisen	ca 1930-1931	Drawing
What a Rattle	1914	Print
Wilhelm Carousel	1914	Print
Windmills	ca. 1909-1910	Painting
Wit suprematistisch kruis	1920-1921	Painting
Woman Reaper (front cover) from Slovo Kak Takavoe (The Word as Such)	1913	Book
Woman with Pails: Dynamic Arrangement	1912-13 (dated on reverse 1912)	Painting
Woman Worker	1933	Painting
Women Bathers	Circa 1930	Painting
Women Reapers (The Reapers)	1928–1929; 1905 inscription separately documented by Gasper-Hulvat 2012	Painting
Wraparound cover for the program S'ezd komitetov derevenskoi bednoty (Congress of Committees of Peasant Poverty)	1918	Book
Wäscherin	1909-1910	Drawing
Ya apostol novykh ponyaty b iskusstve (Ik, de apostel van nieuwe begrippen in de kunst	1916	Drawing
Zelfportret in twee dimensies	1915	Painting
Zeta	1923 / 1978	Sculpture or object
Zhnitsa (Maaiende vrouw)	1913	Drawing
Zittend naakt op de rug gezien	1907-1908	Drawing
Zwei Schwestern	around 1904-1906	Drawing
«Живо заняли мы Галич...».	1914	Print
«Ну и треск же, ну и гром же...»	1914	Print
«Подошел колбасник к Лодзи...»	1914	Print
Весна – цветущий сад	1928–1929	Painting
Вильгельмова карусель	1914	Print
Голова крестьянина	Конец 1920-х	Drawing
Девочка под деревом. Этюд	1932–1933	Painting
Девушка с гребнем в волосах	1932–1933	Painting
Девушка с красным древком	1932–1933	Painting
Деревня. Три рисунка	1928-1929	Drawing
Динамический супрематизм	1920	Drawing
Динамический супрематизм. Аэроплан летит	1920	Print
Доктор Мабузо. Образец киноплаката	1925–1926	Painting
Ескіз розпису конференц-залу ВУАН в Києві (Sketch for the painting of the conference hall of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kyiv)	1930	Drawing
Женщина с граблями	1930-1931	Painting
Композиция с двумя прямоугольниками	1920	Drawing
Крестьянка	1928-1929	Drawing
Кубофутуризм. Динамическое ощущение натурщика. Авторская реплика композиций 1911 и 1919 года	Вторая половина 1920-х	Drawing
Кубофутуристический пейзаж	1913	Drawing
Лубок. «Вильгельмова карусель»	1914	Print
Лубок. «Глядь, поглядь, уж близко Висла»	1914	Print
Лубок. «Подошел колбасник к Лодзи»	1914	Print
Лубок. «Шел австриец в Радзивиллы»	1914	Print
На сенокосе	1928-1929	Painting
Пейзаж под Киевом	1930	Painting
Плащаница	1908	Drawing
Портрет А.А. Лепорской	Около 1933	Painting
Портрет В.А. Павлова	1933	Painting
Портрет жены	1934	Painting
Портрет Н. Н. Пунина	1933	Painting
Портрет ударника (Краснознаменец Жарновский)	1932	Painting
Почтовая карточка «По утру из Львова вышли...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Ах ты, милый город Люблин...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Выезжали мы за Млаву...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Выезжали мы из Ковны...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Глядь, по глядь, уж близко Висла...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Как заехали за Лык..»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Не ходи австриец плутом...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Ну и треск, да ну и гром же...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Скоро, скоро будем в Краков...»	1914	Print
Почтовая карточка. «Шел австриец в Радзивилы...»	1914	Print
Почтовые карточки	1914	Print
Принцип росписи стены	1919	Drawing
Сестры	1930	Painting
Смерть конного генерала	1914	Drawing
Станция без остановки. Кунцево	1913-1914	Painting
Супрематизм	1920	Drawing
Супрематизм	1919	Drawing
Супрематизм. Композиция с кругом	1917-1918	Drawing
Супрематическая композиция	1917-1918	Drawing
Три супрематических композиции	Начало 1920-х	Drawing
Туалетная шкатулка	1913-1914	Painting
Чашка (получашка)	1923	Sculpture or object
Чашка (получашка) «Супрематизм»	1923	Sculpture or object
Черный квадрат	1929	Painting
Черный квадрат (Black Square)	1913 / circa 1932 in formal field; circa 1930–32 in museum essay	Painting
Черный супрематический квадрат	1915	Painting
‘aF’ forma obema (‘aF’ vorm van volume)	1915, versie 1924 of 1926	Drawing

Frequently asked questions

Why is Black Square famous if it looks simple?

The visual economy was a radical public proposal in Malevich's 1915 setting. He exhibited a nonobjective painting high in a corner, developed a written argument for freeing painting from depicted objects, and made the square a recurring element of Suprematism. The physical canvas is also more complex than the familiar icon-like thumbnail: its boundaries, border, layered paint and cracks repay close attention. ^{[1], [2], [12]}

Why did Malevich make the square black?

The strong contrast between the dark quadrilateral and its light surround makes the form immediately legible without depicting a person, place or object. Malevich's 1915 writing argues for a passage through the “zero of form” toward nonobjective painting, which helps explain the work's radical reduction. It does not supply one exclusive explanation for his choice of black pigment. Treating black as a fixed code for death, emptiness or any single idea would go further than the cited evidence. His nearby Red Square and later White on White show that he continued testing the relation of elementary shape, colour and ground rather than assigning all of Suprematism to black. ^{[1], [12], [20], [21]}

Was it painted in 1913 or 1915?

The first surviving painted and publicly exhibited canvas discussed here dates to 1915. Malevich traced the idea to his work on the 1913 opera Victory over the Sun and later marked a 1913 origin. Scholars debate exactly how that stage material relates to the final composition; it is safest to separate the origin of a motif from the date of the Tretyakov canvas. ^{[1], [7], [13]}

What does “0.10” mean?

The title of the Petrograd exhibition used Malevich's language of starting from zero, and the organisers initially expected ten artists. Fourteen artists appear in the specialist history's final participant list. Shatskikh has challenged the routine explanation of the unusual title, so the phrase should be treated as a historically argued programme rather than a literal final headcount. ^{[9], [13]}

Is the square mathematically exact?

No. The black area is a hand-painted quadrilateral, and its edges and white surround vary visibly. The title is a useful name for the motif, not a claim of machine-perfect geometry. The irregularity is part of the viewer's encounter with an actual painting. ^[1]

What caused the cracks?

The original has a prominent network of cracks and earlier paint is visible in some of them. Technical study shows layered compositions beneath it. Those facts support a discussion of paint and aging; they do not justify reducing all of its condition to one unverified cause. The 1929 version is a different canvas made after the original had already shown signs of age. ^{[1], [5]}

Are there really four Black Squares?

Specialist and museum records identify four painted versions associated with Malevich: 1915, circa 1923, 1929 and a late Hermitage version catalogued around 1930–32. They differ in dimensions, inventory and collection. Drawings, printed signs and later appropriations of the motif are additional objects, not extra copies of the 1915 canvas. ^{[1], [4], [7], [18], [31]}

Did X-rays reveal a hidden racist joke?

The 2015 research found faint pencil traces on the white margin as well as earlier paintings beneath the surface. Some Tretyakov researchers proposed a reading connected with an old French joke using racist language and attributed it to Malevich. Other specialists dispute the transcription and authorship. The writing should be reported as a contested interpretation, not as a confirmed hidden title or an X-ray-proven message. ^{[15], [16]}

Where can the first version be seen?

The 1915 painting is in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, inventory 11925. Display arrangements can change, so visitors should confirm its current location through the museum's own information before travelling. ^[1]

Was the Black Square shown in Kaliningrad the 1915 original?

The Tretyakov's announcement for its Kaliningrad branch named the 1929 authorial repetition as the painting shown for its 2025 opening exhibition. It is a separate 80-centimetre canvas, inventory 21987, very close in size to the 1915 original. The announcement is evidence about that dated exhibition, not a live display listing. ^{[4], [29]}

References

These references distinguish the painting's museum records from later historical interpretation. Where specialists disagree, the article names their views and leaves the disagreement visible. A book listing confirms publication details; it does not establish the contents of pages that are unavailable to read.

1. State Tretyakov Gallery, Black Suprematist Square (1915), inv. 11925. View source.
2. Archival photograph of the 0.10 installation, Central State Archive of Film, Photo and Audio Documents of St Petersburg, D 3539. View source.
3. Tretyakov Gallery, Yulian Khalturin and the Black Square technical project. View source.
4. State Tretyakov Gallery, Black Square (1929), inv. 21987. View source.
5. Factum Foundation, Malevich's Black Square: recording and processing the data. View source.
6. Centre Pompidou, Kazimir Malevich educational dossier. View source.
7. A. D. Sarabianov, “Black Square,” Encyclopedia of Russian Avant-Garde. View source.
8. Stedelijk Museum, An Englishman in Moscow. View source.
9. M. K. Ivanova, “The Last Futurist Exhibition 0.10,” Encyclopedia of Russian Avant-Garde. View source.
10. Centre Pompidou, Angela Lampe, study of Black Cross. View source.
11. MoMA, original 0.10 exhibition brochure, 1915. View source.
12. Malevich, From Cubism to Suprematism, 1915 Russian text and editorial note. View source.
13. Aleksandra Shatskikh, Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism, Yale University Press, 2012; publisher's chapter 1 abstract; published chapter openings. View source.
14. Richard Burrows, Kazimir Malevich: Painting, Architecture and the Avant-Garde in Russia, University of York PhD, 2025. View source.
15. Aleksandra Shatskikh, “Inscribed Vandalism: The Black Square at One Hundred,” 2017. View source.
16. Andréi Nakov, “Malevich's Black Square: A fallacious discovery?”, 2015. View source.
17. Irina Vakar, “New Information Concerning The Black Square,” in Celebrating Suprematism, 2019; publisher metadata and preview only, with detailed positions mediated through reference 15. View source.
18. State Russian Museum, Black Square, circa 1923, inv. Ж-9484. View source.
19. State Russian Museum, centenary exhibition essay on Malevich's funeral. View source.
20. State Russian Museum, Red Square, 1915. View source.
21. MoMA, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918. View source.
22. Encyclopedia of Russian Avant-Garde, Alexander Benois biography and 1916 Rech review excerpt. View source.
23. Malevich collected-writings editorial note on the unsent Benois letter; Russian Avant-Garde Encyclopedia on the icon wording. View source.
24. Guggenheim Museum, Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, exhibition page, 2003. View source.
25. Whitechapel Gallery, Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015. View source.
26. Centre Pompidou, introduction to the birth of abstract art. View source.
27. Hermitage Friends Club, museum account of the Hermitage Black Square variant, 2019. View source.
28. Matthew Drutt (ed.), Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, Guggenheim Museum, 2003, Drutt pp. 26–28, Tatiana Mikhienko pp. 84–85 and Yevgenia Petrova pp. 89–91: full digitized catalogue in the Internet Archive's Guggenheim Museum collection. View source.
29. State Tretyakov Gallery, Kaliningrad branch, announcement identifying its exhibited Black Square as the 1929 version, 27 May 2025. View source.
30. MoMA, El Lissitzky, About Two Squares, illustrated book, 1922. View source.
31. State Hermitage Museum, Black Square, inv. ГЭ-10620: owner's item record for the late variant, including its 53.5 × 53.5 cm size, oil-on-canvas medium, catalogue dating and 2002 acquisition. View source.
32. ALBERTINA, Black Square and Circle, inv. DL724: owner-listed 1920–21 pencil drawing, 19.5 × 31 cm, credited to a private collection. View source.
33. ALBERTINA, Sketch for a Stage Curtain for the Opera Victory over the Sun, inv. DL725: owner-listed 1928 pencil drawing, distinct from the 1913 opera production. View source.
34. Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln / Museum Ludwig, Schwarzes Viereck, inv. ML/Z 2011/036: catalogued as a 1914–15 black-chalk drawing and study on paper, 22.4 × 17.9 cm. View source.
35. Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln / Museum Ludwig, Quadrat und Viereck, inv. ML/Z 2011/037: catalogued as a separate 1914–15 black-chalk drawing and design on paper, 20.4 × 14 cm. View source.
36. Art Institute of Chicago, Black Square, Second State, inv. 2014.1353: owner object record for a 1915/20 graphite drawing on cream wove graph paper, 9.9 × 16.1 cm. View source.
37. Art Institute of Chicago, Suprematism, inv. 2023.3491: separate 1915 graphite drawing on tan wove paper, 11.2 × 16.4 cm. View source.
38. Wikimedia Commons, Shakko (Sofia Bagdasarova), photograph of the 1929 Black Square, 2021: author-published CC BY-SA 4.0 photograph of the distinct Tretyakov painting in its frame. View source.
39. Splash image: Kazimir Malevich, Black Suprematist Square, 1915. Oil on canvas, 79.5 × 79.5 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, inv. 11925. Image supplied by the site owner, who identifies this reproduction as public domain.

Further reading

Aleksandra Shatskikh's Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism (Yale University Press, 2012; translated by Marian Schwartz) is the most directly relevant book-length study in this selection. It investigates the painting's genesis and the subsequent movement through archival evidence. The book's published chapter openings and metadata informed this article; claims requiring unseen chapters have not been attributed to it.

W. Sherwin Simmons's Kasimir Malevich's Black Square and the Genesis of Suprematism 1907–1915 (Garland, 1981) is an earlier scholarly study of the path to Suprematism. Richard Burrows summarises part of Simmons's argument in his 2025 thesis; the original book's full text was unavailable for this article. Matthew Drutt edited Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism (Guggenheim, 2003), a 267-page exhibition catalogue with ISBN 9780892072651. Passages by Drutt, Tatiana Mikhienko and Yevgenia Petrova were checked directly and cited for the 2003 exhibition, the Tretyakov's earlier classification of the painting and Petrova's reading of Malevich's later writing. ^[28]

The Tretyakov Gallery's Irina Vakar, Kazimir Malevich: Black Square (2015, 64 pages, ISBN 978-5-89580-113-0) is an especially relevant museum publication because its official listing says the appendix presents results of a comprehensive investigation. The listing establishes the book's scope and bibliographic details; the book's text and technical appendix were not available for passage-level use here.

Sophie Pinkham's Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine is reportage on Ukraine and Russia in the 2000s and 2010s. Its title alludes to the artwork, but the publisher describes a book on a different subject; it is not a source for the painting's date, materials or meaning.

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