Woman Torso 1932

Kazimir Malevich painted Woman Torso, probably with oils, at some point in his career. I like that the painting is so flat, so clearly about simple forms, not pretending to be a window onto something else. Look at the colours. The palette is restricted to a few colours: red, black, blue, orange, green and white, but they sing together. The paint handling is interesting too. It's opaque, like house paint almost, and thinly applied, so you can still see the grain of the wood panel underneath. There is this wonderful red sliver of colour above the blue rectangle. The way these shapes abut each other to create a figure is masterful. Malevich was always pushing at the boundaries of what painting could be, and you can really see him doing that here. I can see the conversation he was having with Picasso and Braque, but there is something else, too, a mystical quality.