THE WORK

I selected "Woman Torso" (1929) oil on plywood, a work from Malevich's last period of art before his death in 1935. This image portrays a humanoid shape half composed of layered geometric shapes in varying shades of red, blue, and yellow with the main portion of the face in solid black. True to his Supremacist style, the second half  of the body and the background are formed through his signature layers of white.

REACTION

What first attracted me was the drastic difference between the left and right side of the image. The piercing colored eye kind of shocked my system because of how unusual it was compared to some of his other humanoid images that had no face at all. After the initial surprise, I analyzed the two halves. The two halves seem to represent transition, in one case it is the transition of the female image over the ages, and in the other Malevich's transition in style. The rounded edges of the colored shapes  and their layering reminded me of the style of women in the 1800s with their countless layers of fabrics. The white half shows the exposure of the female image in the 1920s with her thinner and more revealing clothes.