Peasant Woman with Buckets and a Child 1912

Kazimir Malevich made this oil painting, *Peasant Woman with Buckets and a Child,* and it's now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The first thing I notice is the colour and the somewhat crude approach to making marks. The colour is strange – kind of earthy but also weirdly luminous, with a dark palette punctuated by vibrant hues. Looking closely, you can see how the paint is applied in layers, creating a kind of textured surface. The brushstrokes are visible, almost like the artist was building up the image bit by bit, like a sculpture. The woman’s face has this haunting quality – those eyes seem to follow you. And the way the artist has rendered the hands and feet, they’re almost abstract. It’s interesting to think about how this painting relates to Malevich’s later, more abstract works like *Black Square*. You can see him playing with form and space here, pushing the boundaries of representation, but never quite abandoning it altogether. It reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker too, with those thick strokes and slightly surreal distortions of the human figure.