Kazimir Severinovich Malevich
Spring, A Garden In Bloom
1904
oil on canvas
44 x 65 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Malevich, the creator of Suprematism, started out as an Impressionist and as a painter of studies representing nature. “In front of me, among the trees, was a recently whitewashed house; the day was sunny, the sky cobalt blue, with shade on one side of the house and the sun on the other. For the first time, I could see the clear reflections of the blue sky, and pure, transparent tones.... That was when I became an Impressionist,” recalled the artist in his autobiography. At the time, he was already interested in the expressiveness of painting through colour, line and shape; he asked himself what visual art should consist of and how he should execute it. Malevich reached the conclusion that the Impressionists perceived the world of objects as a pretext to create a new specifically pictorial reality. According to the painter, from this point onward, reality for him, “was no longer a phenomenon to be imitated, but it had rather become a purely pictorial phenomenon.”