Comparison of Avant-Garde Art

This paper will be an examination of the works of two titans of the Avant-garde, working in the early phases of the Abstract; Woman With Yellow Hair (1931) by Pablo Picasso, and Morning in the Village after Snowstorm (1912) by Kazimir Malevich. In its time the Avant-garde artistic movement caused great changes in the world of painting, influencing countless persons and reaching creative communities across the globe. The phrase “Avant-garde” itself stems from the French term used for a scouting group maneuvering in the fore of a larger army. This analogy rings true, with fringe artists leading the way into new fields through creative experiments with medium, subject, and style. Pablo Picasso was arguably one of the world's most famous and renowned artists, and one of the frontline "soldiers" of the Avant-garde movement Picasso is famous for his imaginative, distinctive, and varied approach to his craft, going through a variety of styles over the period of his life. The Russian-born Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was another leading artist in the mostly Western-dominated Avant-garde. An inventive Abstract artist famous for having formed and led the Suprematist movement, a movement that put a radical emphasis on geometric shapes and a movement away from traditional artistic formats, many say Malevich “is unquestionably the most celebrated Russian artist of his generation”1

      Woman With Yellow Hair (fig. 1), is an oil on canvas piece by Picasso, and a permanent part of the Guggenheim Museum's Thanhauser collection. The work can be summed up simply as “Picasso's voluptuously curvaceous painting of [a] sleeping Marie-Therese Walter” 2, Marie-Therese being Picasso's mistress around the time. The piece is at the time of writing located on the second floor of the Guggenheim, in the “Paris and The Avant-Garde“ exhibition, surrounded by other examples of abstract Parisian art. According to the Guggenheim website, Picasso, as a response to recent denouncements of the...