Peasant woman 1912

Kazimir Malevich made this painting, Peasant Woman, with oil on canvas. The canvas is an ode to dynamism, an exercise in geometric mark-making and color. Malevich uses clean lines and shapes with their tonal gradations. The lines almost vibrate. I keep coming back to the gradients of color which make up the figures. If you look closely, you can see all the individual brushstrokes in the lines, how the paint fades from dark to light, how the different colors blend into each other. It is so controlled and meticulous. The palette is restrained; there are subtle contrasts between colors that create a sense of depth and dimension. The painting evokes a sense of movement, like cubism, but with more rigid forms. A bit like Leger.