Black Square

A single black square sits on a white ground - nothing more - and with it Kazimir Malevich declared the 'zero of form,' the end of painting's dependence on the visible world. He called the new art Suprematism, the supremacy of pure feeling, and hung the Black Square high in the corner of the room where Russian homes placed their holy icons. Now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, it is one of the most radical and influential works ever made - abstraction reduced to an absolute, a blank threshold opening onto a wholly new art.