Higher Realities in Squares, Lines and Circles: Mystical Symbolism by Paul Solovyev

Paul Solovyev

Russian painter and art theoretician Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (1878–1935) is probably most famous for his enigmatic “Black Square” of 1913, now displayed at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It was just that – a black square. What was the big deal? Malevich believed that art was for spiritual awakening, and this fact has led to a range of interpretations of his work.

Taking Malevich’s style as a starting point, Russian artist Paul Solovyev has come up with his “Pope Art” series that uses colour and geometry to reveal greater truths. Paul asks: “What is Malevich’s “Black Square” — the Absolute or the Void, God or the opposite, the image or the absence of image, is it impossibly bright light or darkness, the living Word or the black square of censorship, the icon or the anti-icon?” Carefully composed, each painting of Paul’s raises similar questions.

“I get my inspiration literally everywhere,” the artist…