malevich bather 1911 Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935)

Description of the painting "Bather" by Kazimir Malevich

All of the works by Kazimir Malevich painted between 1900 and 1934 were created primarily in the style of Suprematism. This is a whole system which was justified by the artist himself. It consists in the fact that all the artistic images were created solely by combining any geometric shapes.

In his work "Swimmer," the artist depicted a rather clumsy man who is rewarded with flipper-like limbs. He runs toward the water. But as if seeing something, he is petrified, turning into a monument. The figure is depicted in colors that give it strength, power. We can see how the drawing is filled with brutal meaning, despite the fact that it is slightly deformed.

The work is drawn on paper using gouache. Today it is stored in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Kazimir Malevich used gouache at the turn of the decades. He managed to convey with gouache all the energy, expressiveness of his character. To do this, it was simply necessary to make an elastic outline, while slightly reinforcing it with colors, molded in the form of thickened volume.

The painting is filled with an incredible power of color. Despite the colorfulness, the picture itself looks anti-realistic, down-to-earth. Malevich wanted to show with this painting that it is an independent organism, which lives according to its own laws, no one subordinate. The only law that can affect it is the law of color. Malevich’s predecessors were the French Fauvists, who were called a bit wild by many for their use of the power of color.

Art critics have found a carnal beginning in the portrait image of the Bather. We see in the picture a kind of dance of the red devil - this is how the person depicted in the picture "Bather" is perceived. Malevich believed that it was in the dance that the human body could acquire forms of a kind of refinement, of sincerity.