Foreshadowed: Malevich's "Black Square" and Its Precursors

An exploration of Kasimir Malevich’s radical 1915 artwork, its predecessors, and its continuing relevance.

When Kasimir’s Malevich’s Black Square was produced in 1915, no one had ever seen anything like it before. And yet it does have precedents. In fact, over the previous five hundred years, several painters, writers, philosophers, scientists, and censors—each working independently towards an absolute statement of their own—alighted on the form of the black square or rectangle, as if for ...