Verdwijnend geel vlak

In ‘Yellow Plane in Dissolution’, the yellow shape can be thought of as a colored plane moving through space, whereby the short, right-hand edge of the plane vanishes and appears to gradually disappear into the background. The suggested upward movement refers to aviation and technology, both themes that fascinated Malevich. The artist understood space in the broadest terms; he also regarded it as the space of the universe. This is apparent from the following text written by Malevich about the effect of colored shapes on a white ground: ‘A colored plane painted against a white background gives our consciousness an enormous awareness of space. It transports me to an infinite vacuum in which you experience the creative universe all around you’. For Malevich, geometry and mathematics were so important that he applied an ancient Russian measuring system of ‘arshin’ and ‘vershok’ (16 vershok make 1 arshin) when designing almost all his artworks.