Oil Paint
Oil paint is a slow-drying art medium made with pigment and a drying-oil binder that allows extended working time, smooth blending, and layered application.
Painter
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich was a Kyiv-born avant-garde painter who founded Suprematism, reducing painting to geometric shapes, color, and the texture of oil on canvas.
Kazimir Malevich quick facts
Malevich introduced Suprematism at the 1915 exhibition known as 0.10, proposing that color and form could carry meaning without recognizable subjects.
| Born | 1879 · Kyiv, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
|---|---|
| Died | 1935 · Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) |
| Nationality | Born in present-day Ukraine to a Polish family; worked in the Russian and Soviet avant-garde |
| Movements | Suprematism; earlier Cubo-Futurist works |
| Paint types | Oil Paint |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas |
| Painting methods | Arranged flat squares, rectangles, and tilted planes on pale grounds; explored contrasts of color, surface texture, and visual weight |
| Common subjects | Geometric planes, squares, crosses, floating forms, and later simplified rural figures |
| Notable works | Black Square · Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying · Suprematist Composition: White on White |
Sources: MoMA: Kazimir Malevich, MoMA: White on White, MoMA: Airplane Flying, MoMA: Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack.
Paint types used
Oil paint was the documented medium for Malevich's central Suprematist canvases, from contrasting colored planes to his near-white abstractions.
Surface types used
Canvas supported Malevich's key Suprematist oil paintings, including White on White, where subtle brushwork remains visible within the pale surface.
Canvas
Canvas is a woven fabric support, commonly cotton or linen, used for painting and sold either raw or prepared with a compatible ground layer.
Painters similar to Kazimir Malevich
Mondrian and Kandinsky also developed influential forms of nonrepresentational painting, though their approaches differed from Malevich's geometry.
Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian was a Dutch abstract painter known for balanced compositions of straight black lines, rectangular color planes, and white space.
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian-born painter, teacher, and theorist known for abstract compositions exploring relationships among color, line, shape, and rhythm.