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Kazimir Malevich emphasized throughout his whole life that he was Ukrainian, despite the constant attempts of Russians to attribute this genius of suprematism to himself.

His most famous work is a black square, which isn’t black at all, but a mixture of many colors, none of which was black, and not even a square because its sides are not equal. It is a thing of high metaphorical significance, an end and a beginning at the same time. According to the author’s idea, supremus is the highest stage of the avant-garde capable of affording the geometric laconicism of expressive means.

After the black square, the artist worked on a cycle of supremacist canvases, successively making his way to the white-on-white painting, which is also one of his most famous works.

After that, he turned to figurative object art from abstraction, which at first glance looks very unexpected.

Returning to images, symbols, complex metaphors, he created his second villager cycle dedicated to Ukraine, the most symbolic of which is probably his painting of a villager.

This picture is a deeply tragic story about the state of the villagers during collectivization and soviet rule, because on the canvas three men are standing in a yellow field, most likely with ripe rye, but the men are drawn without hands, so they cannot gather it.

Also, this picture has another more symbolic layer; the male figures are built disproportionately, with excessively elongated torsos, and the middle man is also located a little lower than the others, although all the heads are at the same level, which creates an allusion to the trident. The figures themselves are on a yellow-blue background, which further strengthens the symbolic effect.

The same villager cycle is clearly connected with Ukraine and the situation of Ukrainian villagers, because Malevich witnessed collectivization, that is, the destruction of the free farming.

Also, in the same time period, there is another very important work, “Complicated foreboding”, where behind the human figure the earth is visible, which is depicted in a combination of yellow-blue and red-black colors, which symbolizes not only Ukraine, but also the resistance, the struggle for freedom, and the red blood on black soil.

The combination of these colors becomes a recurring motif of the villager cycle, for example, the same combination is used in the work “Girl”; by the way, she is also armless, which symbolizes willlessness.

The same combination is in the painting “a running man” and even in one of the artist’s rare commissioned works “the galloping red cavalry” also has this combination.

At the same time, Malevich created a series of drawings of armless people, whose faces were branded with a cross, or a sickle with a hammer, or a coffin.

The way Malevyk created his paintings was absolutely innovative for world art, which is why they touched the hearts of so many and resonated with their deep meanings in visual simplicity.