White-on-White Cross

Khan-Magomedov notes that, unlike Malevich’s paintings of 1915 – 18, Khidekel’s works, along with those of several others who passed through Lissitzky’s class on projection drawing, “consisted not of colored geometric figures freely floating in the white space but of extended rectangles joined in a rigid cross-like composition.” Khidekel regarded these graphic compositions as his contribution to the structural transformation of Suprematism. Looking at and analyzing Khidekel’s Vitebsk works, Khan-Magomedov observed the characteristic features that led to Suprematism’s development by artists of the next generation, most notably the “shifting to volume and space.” Khan-Magomedov also noted in Khidekel’s work the presence of “extremely minimal structures . . . where a cross and a square intricately interacted: for instance, a square split by a cross,” in addition to such motifs as the yellow cross and echoes of Malevich’s white on white series – iconic images that determined Khidekel’s subsequent development of Suprematism.