Image: Kazimir Malevich’s White on White installed between two windows in the galleries of the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art held at The Museum of Modern Art in 1936.

Alfred Barr’s seminal Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition at MoMA in 1936 played a defining role in establishing abstraction in the United States. It is in conjunction with this exhibition that MoMA acquired its first works by Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and several other pioneers of abstraction now well represented in the Museum’s collection. Some of the works that were in Barr’s exhibition, including White on White, are now on view in Inventing Abstraction. 

Learn more about Malevich