White on White

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "White on White" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

White on White
Artist	Kazimir Malevich
Year	1918
Catalogue	80385
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	79.4 cm × 79.4 cm (31¼ in × 31¼ in)
Location	Museum of Modern Art, New York City[1]
Accession	817.1935

Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918) is an abstract oil-on-canvas painting by Kazimir Malevich. It is one of the more well-known examples of the Russian Suprematism movement, painted the year after the October Revolution.

Part of a series of "white on white" works begun by Malevich in 1916, the work depicts a white square, portrayed off-centre and at an angle on a ground which is also a white square of a slightly warmer tone. The work measures 79.5 by 79.5 centimetres (31.3 in × 31.3 in). Malevich dispenses with most of the characteristics of

, with no sense of colour, depth, or volume, leaving a simple monochrome geometrical shape, not precisely symmetrical, with imprecisely defined boundaries. Although the artwork is stripped of most detail, brush strokes are evident in this painting and the artist tried to make it look as if the tilted square is coming out of the canvas. Malevich intended the painting to evoke a feeling of floating, with the colour white symbolising infinity, and the slight tilt of the square suggesting movement.

A critic from the rival Constructivist movement quipped that it was the only good canvas in an exhibition by Malevich's UNOVIS group: "an absolutely pure, white canvas with a very good prime coating. Something could be done on it."

Malevich took the work to

.

See also

• Black Square
  (1915)

References

External links

• Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918), Alexandra Sokolova