Abstract
The present study offers a comparative analysis of minimalist traits in the paintings of Leyli Matin‑Daftari, a pioneering figure of minimalist painting in Iran, and the Suprematist works of Kazimir Malevich, one of the most radical pioneers of early twentieth‑century abstraction. Although Minimalism and Suprematism emerged in distinct historical and cultural contexts the former in 1960s America and Britain, the latter in revolutionary Russia they share a fundamental visual and conceptual orientation toward reduction, geometric purity, and the elimination of non‑essential elements. This shared ground raises a central question: to what extent can the minimalist language of Matin‑Daftari be understood in relation to Malevich’s Suprematist legacy, and how does her work simultaneously diverge from that legacy through a distinctly personal and culturally embedded visual expression? The research addresses this question by examining selected works from both artists, focusing on four key formal components:

extreme reductionism, the use of empty space as an active compositional element, the rejection of perspective and three‑dimensional illusion, and the employment of flat, restricted color palettes.

The study adopts a descriptive‑analytical and comparative methodology. Data were collected from library sources, scholarly articles, online databases, and direct observation of artworks. The sample consists of eight paintings four representative minimalist works by Leyli Matin‑Daftari (produced between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, corresponding to the formative period of contemporary Iranian art) and four major Suprematist compositions by Kazimir Malevich (executed between 1913 and 1932). The analysis proceeds in two stages: first, the theoretical foundations of Minimalism and Suprematism are reviewed; second, the selected works are systematically compared across the four formal criteria, and the findings are summarized in a comparative table. The research
also traces the historical channels through which Malevich’s Suprematist ideas may have reached Matin‑Daftari, notably via the British artists David Burljuk and John Graham, both of whom were directly influenced by the Russian avant‑garde and whose work was known in the London art scene during Matin‑Daftari’s formative years.

The findings reveal substantial visual affinities between the two bodies of work. In both Matin‑Daftari’s minimalist paintings and Malevich’s Suprematist compositions, forms are drastically simplified: figures and objects are stripped of detail, reduced to basic geometric shapes squares, rectangles, circles, and straight lines and rendered in flat, unmodulated colors without shading or tonal gradation. Empty space is treated not as passive background but as an active structural element that establishes balance, rhythm, and a sense of immateriality. Perspective is entirely abandoned; the picture plane is conceived as a two‑dimensional surface rather than a window onto an illusory depth. Color is restrained and purified, often limited to primary hues (black, white, red, yellow) or soft, subdued tones that evoke calmness and concentration. These shared features indicate a common origin in the avant‑garde impulse to move beyond representation toward the essential properties of form and color.

However, the comparison also brings to light a fundamental conceptual difference. For Malevich, Suprematism was a radical metaphysical project. The Black Square (1915) was intended as the “zero point of painting” an act of total liberation from the visible world, from nature, and from all objective content. His later figurative works, such as Two Figures in a Landscape (1932) and Athletes (1930–32), still demonstrate this drive toward abstraction: the
human figure is reduced to a cluster of colored blocks, yet the reference to the external world is deliberately dissolved in favor of a purely spiritual, non‑objective reality. Malevich’s art seeks to express “pure sensation” divorced from any narrative or emotional subjectivity.

In contrast, Leyli Matin‑Daftari never completely renounces the natural world. Her subjects still‑lives with flowers, fruits, fish, vases, and occasionally single figures remain recognizable, albeit reduced to their most essential outlines. She simplifies, but she does not eliminate. Her empty spaces, often tinted in soft blues or creamy whites, create an atmosphere of poetic stillness and intimacy rather than metaphysical void. Her flat color surfaces retain a warm, almost tactile quality, and her compositions convey a sense of personal recollection and quiet observation. In other words, while Matin‑Daftari adopts the formal vocabulary of Minimalism simplicity, flatness, limited color, and the primacy of space she reorients it toward a personal and culturally mediated expression. Her paintings are not abstract in the radical sense of Malevich; they are distilled representations of everyday life, transformed through a disciplined process of reduction into images of balance, harmony, and contemplation.
The historical transmission of Suprematist principles to Matin‑Daftari is indirect yet traceable. During her studies at the Iceland School of Art in London in the 1960s, she encountered the works of David Burljuk and John Graham, both of whom had absorbed the lessons of Russian Suprematism and Constructivism. Burljuk, a close associate of Malevich, and Graham, a prominent figure in the New York School, mediated the formal ideals of geometric abstraction and color purity to a younger generation of British‑based artists. Through this channel, Malevich’s legacy reached Matin‑Daftari not as a fixed set of rigid principles, but as an open set of formal possibilities, which she adapted to her own sensibility and cultural background.

The study concludes that Matin‑Daftari’s minimalist oeuvre cannot be dismissed as a mere imitation of Malevich’s Suprematism or Western Minimalism. While she clearly inherits and employs the structural grammar of reduction, flatness, and spatial economy, she transforms these principles into a unique visual language that retains a dialogue with nature and personal experience. Her work occupies a distinctive position within Iranian contemporary art: it resists the ornamental tendency of the Saqqakhane school and moves beyond the academic naturalism of the Kamal al‑Molk tradition, offering instead a quiet, introspective modernism that is both international in its formal vocabulary and poetic in its sensibility. Ultimately, the research argues that the value of contemporary art does not lie in the repetition of past achievements but in the artist’s capacity to reinterpret and personalize inherited ideas. Matin‑Daftari exemplifies this creative transformation, demonstrating that Minimalism, when mediated by individual and cultural context, can yield an art of profound stillness and subtle authenticity.