It is useless attempting to discern a subject here. The strange, faceless «prototype», as the artist himself called such works, enciphered in Kazimir Malevich’s torso exists in a parallel world, the cosmos of the artist’s imagination, a space outside time. It unwittingly recalls a character from the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun. The opera was staged in 1913 and combined an absurd form of mythology with the ultra-personal nature of its characters. More than a decade and a half later, Malevich’s torso to a certain extent repeats the Futurist mystery, proving that the artist’s creative path does not consist entirely of movements forwards. He also delved into the conclusions of his past, which explains the unexpected backward turns in his oeuvre. Russian Museum: From Icons to the Modern Times. Palace Editions, St Petersburg, 2015. P. 330.