Triangle space & Dynamic Suprematism (1916)

Thinking out the box (or the triangle) for a moment Kasimir Malevich (1916)..

(from modernism exhib. last year)...Kasimir Malevich supplies some cerebral coolness, with an oil on canvas entitled Dynamic Suprematism (1916). An empty, pale blue triangle floats against white space. Other forms and shapes are layered against it – random, unidentifiable, clustering together or drifting apart in this infinite half-light.

Malevich said:

Colour and texture in paintings are ends in themselves.

If this sounds like the usual abstract musings of a contemporary artist, what is useful in the V&A's show is the reminder that these artists had a social vision. Malevich developed the ideas behind the genre he called Dynamic Suprematism, in which forms appear to be in flux, because he wanted to:

free art from the dead weight of the real world, the State and Church.

After the Revolution of 1917, he founded a collective called Supporters of New Art in order to promote abstraction as an art form for a new society. Somewhat charmingly (these dizzy artists!) he announced its end in 1919.