What is Suprematism?

Photo of the 1915 ‘0,10 exhibition’ where Kazimir Malevich featured along with other famous Russian artists.

Suprematism is an art movement that was founded by Kazimir Malevich in the early twentieth-century. The movement was first publicly announced in 1915 when it was revealed at the 0,10 (zero, ten) exhibition in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) where Malevich exhibited alongside other Russian artists.

The Suprematist ideology is formed from the belief that art should be disconnected from the influence of the objective world and instead should be created from artistic feeling. Malevich was heavily influenced by Cubism which he admired for its ability to “deconstruct art”.

Suprematism evolved over the next years with other artists using the style to produce political pieces, like El Lissitzky’s constructivist “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge”.

Malevich was eventually banned from producing his abstract art by the Soviet Union under the belief of it being “bourgeois” and that it didn’t reflect social realities. Other critics saw Malevich’s work as the absence of love of life and nature to which Malevich responded by saying that art can develop for art’s sake and that “art does not need us, and it never did.”

Suprematism isn’t as widely known as other twentieth-century art movements although it has been of significant influence. The Bauhaus and De Stijl movements were both directly influenced by Suprematism and its routes can clearly be seen throughout the twentieth-century and in the minimalism of many modern artistic movements and styles.