Suprematist Composition: White on White

Kazimir Malevich · 1918

This is Suprematist Composition: White on White, painted by Malevich in nineteen eighteen, a year after the Russian Revolution. He meant it as painting's zero point — a white square, tilted, on white. There is nowhere further to go in that direction, which was rather the idea.

Medium Oil on canvas · Dimensions 31 1/4 x 31 1/4" (79.4 x 79.4 cm) · Credit 1935 Acquisition confirmed in 1999 by agreement with the Estate of Kazimir Malevich and made possible with funds from the Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest (by exchange)

Hanging beside it in Gallery 507: Some, Untitled

Works like this one elsewhere in the museum: Composition in White, Black, and Red, Composition with Color Planes 5, Some, Composition with Red and Blue, Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray, Vertical and Diagonal Planes

More by Kazimir Malevich here: Woman with Pails: Dynamic Arrangement, Samovar, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack - Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension, Suprematist Painting