Description of the picture:
Portrait of the artist M.V. Matyushin – Kazimir Severinovich Malevich. 1913. Oil on canvas. 106.5×106.7
By 1913, among the Russian futurists, an artistic direction appeared – cubofuturism. Its creators sought to synthesize the ideas of futurism and cubism. The main task of futurism is to convey a sense of movement.
Portrait of Matyushin Malevich (1878-1935) мейд up of different geometric planes, which at first glance makes him related to the style of the cubist works of Picasso and Braque. But there is a significant difference: the founders of cubism wrote mainly in monochrome technology, while Malevich actively uses a rich color scheme.
Another feature of the picture: with all the abstractness, realistic details are scattered on the canvas. So, for example, part of the forehead with hair combed in a straight parting, exactly repeats the hair of Matyushin, according to the testimony of people who knew him. This is perhaps the only detail indicating that we have a portrait. Matyushin was not only an artist, but also a composer, so it’s easy to guess that the line of white rectangles dividing the picture along the diagonal is the piano keyboard (and without black keys – a hint at the originality of the musical system of Mikhail Vasilyevich Matyushin)."