The artist is Malevich
The tragic sensation of the fate of the peasantry, transmitted in many works from the so -called peasant cycle, coincided not only with the period of repression towards them, but also with the circumstances of Malevich’s own life. Often even used to live on a penny, now, from the mid-1920s, the artist is increasingly describing the unbearable conditions of his life. He, as an idealist and mysticism, in 1925 deprived of benefits. In 1930, Malevich often informed his friends: “It’s cold and chilly, but the room is still chilly, and firewood is completely out of you”. The inhabitants of Leningrad themselves unload the firewood from the barge and receive them as a grocery ration. “Everywhere it is empty and the heart is great at heart”.
One of the works of this time – “peasants” – concisely and accurately conveys the state of the author. Bright lemon and fiery scarlet colors of peasant shirts, like a piercing scream, fills the field of the picture. The oppressive doom comes from the mute and faceless peasants of the “strawberries”, from, the desert field, from the icy blue sky. The severity of the horizontal lines of the landscape enhances its geometric regularity the state of numbness of single figures with helplessly lowered hands. As if Leonid Andreev once said about them: “A naked man on naked earth”.
