Haymaking 1929

Kazimir Malevich painted Haymaking, and you can find it in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery. The colors are really saturated in this painting, like they've been freshly squeezed from the tube, right? And the shapes! They're so simplified, almost geometric. I can just picture Malevich stepping back from the canvas, squinting, and thinking, ‘How can I capture the essence of haymaking with the fewest possible elements?’ Look at that central figure, so monumental and composed of such simple forms. He's holding a scythe, but it's not just a scythe, it’s like a symbol. Malevich is so in control of the forms and their relations, that this piece is very different from many of his Suprematist paintings, like “Black Square.” But they are linked by the desire to find the essential and universal through abstraction. I think what Malevich was doing was not just making art but trying to get at some fundamental truth. He was in dialogue with all the painters who came before him, and now he’s talking to us.