It is one of the more well-known examples of the Russian Suprematism movement, painted the year after the October Revolution.

Malevich dispenses with most of the characteristics of representational art, with no sense of colour, depth, or volume, leaving a simple monochrome geometrical shape, not precisely symmetrical, with imprecisely defined boundaries.

Although the artwork is stripped of most detail, brush strokes are evident in this painting and the artist tried to make it look as if the tilted square is coming out of the canvas.

Malevich intended the painting to evoke a feeling of floating, with the colour white symbolising infinity, and the slight tilt of the square suggesting movement.

When he returned to Leningrad later that year, Malevich left it with the architect Hugo Häring; in 1930 he passed it on to Alexander Dorner, director of the Provinzialmuseum in Hanover, who put it into storage after the Nazi party came to power in 1933.