Suprematism is a direction in painting created in 1913 in Moscow under the influence of the ideas of cubism and futurism.

The founder of Suprematism is K. S. Maljevich; in 1913 he painted the first Suprematist canvas, Black Square on a White Surface, and in 1915 he published the manifesto "From Cubism to Suprematism" in Moscow.

![Kazimir Malevich, Reservist of the First Division, 1914 (cubism); The Knife Grinder, 1912-13 (cubo-futurism)](ipfs://QmX7mH9aUwXEM3KuyaP3dYsyY2hA3wufJ6WFCnqwQpXocL)

![Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1913](ipfs://QmUUnXV1dC7poVhTMahUXmwVLTHBRqMRTMauo3EEHDMdvB)

A group of like-minded people formed around Maljevic, including A. Rodchenko, V. Tatljin, and El Lissitzky, as well as the writers V. Majakovski and Maturich. According to Malevich, Suprematism means "the supremacy of pure sensibility in art."

 

![El Lissitzky, Proun 12E, 1923 ](ipfs://QmWVy4RGUhfxACVtYgf9rqxrJxeQG1YyjJUcLjUGBzfcer)

Suprematism strives for the realization of absolute harmony of lines, shapes, and colors, striving to establish those visual causalities that are at the root of artistic experience. In the beginning, the artistic inventory of Suprematism consisted of basic geometric forms (squares, triangles, circles, and straight lines); in the later period, it was enriched and expanded with free elements, but around 1919, it returned to the ascetic austerity of the earlier period.

![Kazimir Malevich, Red Square (Visual Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimension), 1915](ipfs://QmRPnCEFKi9j6w5SoLe1W2tSAGvYUBgow6eWFgoLKynxUc)

![Kazimir Malevich, Black Square and Red Square, 1915](ipfs://QmVexubJQPxJnez7BVJJ2dY1Eg3io8XPfLWoZGUiPTvERZ)

Then Malevich's canvas, "White square on a white surface," was created, the most radical consequence of the suprematist understanding.

![Kazimir Malevich, White on White, 1918](ipfs://QmWGBZV9aucenWSoPCGjMBj8KQX5FiDED3DQ8zWCH7P5qw)

Suprematist ideas significantly influenced the development of world architecture, already in the 1920s on the so-called international style.

Suprematism anticipated later art movements like constructivism, neoplasticism, geometric abstraction, and minimalism.

![Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition, 1915 ](ipfs://QmY6ntTV55utVHgeQhuzt8CWxh6oS8Q4gmXns8mLtm3ccB)

The significance of the Malevich's Black Square

Created as a protest against academicism and the traditional repertoire of forms, over time it became an icon not only of Suprematist and abstract painting, but also of modernity itself. Believing that color and form must prevail over theme and narrative in art, Maljevic came up with a composition with a black square as "zero form" that allowed him "to free himself from the disease of old art".

While its cult, like the cult of Suprematism, reigned only in a narrow circle of Malevich's followers, the painting influenced numerous artists in the West.

Since the 1930s, it has not been publicly exhibited, removed, like other avant-garde works, from the public life of the Russia. Today, this painting is kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery, and it is also never taken out of the museum, while the author's copies are sent to exhibitions.

Lit.:

K. Malevitch, Die gegendstandlose Welt, Munchen, 1927

M. Seuphor, L'Art abstrait, Paris 1950

H. W. Janson, History Of Art,1967

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ArtintheFridge, September 2022

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Links to other articles:

Modern Art

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/modern-art-00>

Impressionism

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/impressionism-00>

Post-Impressionism

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/post-impressionism-00>

Fauvism

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/fauvism>

Cubism

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/cubism-00>

Expressionism

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/expressionism-00>

Futurism

<https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/futurism-00>


A short description of the art movement Suprematism

Suprematism 00

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