Still Life 1911

Kazimir Malevich made this still life with oil paint on canvas. The process here feels really intuitive. Malevich is putting down these confident strokes, thick outlines in black, and then filling them with strong, flat colour. There is a delicious red apple, and next to it a yellow pear on a plate, then a black vase behind it all. You can see the texture of the canvas coming through. Each object has its own strong outline, like a stained-glass window. Look at how the colours are laid down, in blocks, almost arbitrary at times. See the touches of pink on some of the leaves and the blue on the fruit. It feels a bit like how I decide where the colours should go in my own paintings: not according to any set of rules but just what feels right! The bold shapes and colours also remind me of Matisse’s Fauvist works, where colour is used for its own sake, expressive and free from any need to represent reality. It is exciting to feel the dialogue of art across generations.