Which Russian artist painted the 1915 work 'Black Square'?

Kazimir Malevich painted the 1915 work Black Square. The Russian avant-garde artist created it as a radical statement about reducing painting to basic geometric form, without depicting recognizable objects or scenes.

Black Square became the breakthrough work of Malevich’s Suprematist movement, which emphasized pure shape and color as independent artistic forces. He described the painting as a kind of zero point for painting. Its first major exhibition was The Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Petrograd in 1915, where it was placed high in a traditional icon corner, giving the abstract image a powerful cultural and spiritual resonance.

There is not just one Black Square: Malevich produced several versions, including works from 1923 and 1929. The original 1915 version is an oil painting on linen measuring roughly 79.5 square centimeters on each side. Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, and Wassily Kandinsky were important Russian avant-garde figures, but none painted the original Black Square.