Painterly Realism of a Football Player—Color Masses in the 4th Dimension

Kazimir Malevich explained in 1921, “In reality, the globe has no bottom, no top, no perspective, no weight—it does not have that most important thing upon which our knowledge of the world is based: relativity.” This statement, which expresses the radical ideas of the Suprematist movement, illuminates Malevich’s belief that art could undermine basic, yet erroneous, assumptions that inform what we accept as “natural” or “normal.”

Breaking from observed reality to focus instead on the relationship between colored geometric forms on a textured white background, Malevich asked viewers to imagine a new type of realism in painting. He invoked this style through the metaphor of a spatial fourth dimension, referenced in the title of this piece, and by displaying the works without frames and refusing to assign them a precise orientation.