Styles & Periods

Suprematism

Suprematism arose as the first purely abstract movement of the 20th century. Located in Russia, and chiefly linked to the work of Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism displayed a strictly geometric style of non-figurative art. Malevich completed his first Suprematist work in 1913, and published the Suprematist manifesto in 1915. While Suprematism was indebted to Cubism and Futurism, the abstract world of Malevich’s art demanded that any recognizable representation be eliminated in painting, and thus provide a new vision of pure form. Malevich’s non-objective art was austere in its simplicity, with few colors of muted tone, and simple, angular shapes filling the majority of his canvases. His papers describe an interest in capturing feeling, free from intrusion by the conscious mind. By removing all references to the natural world, Malevich created a new sense of beauty and formed a body of work that became the architecture for abstract work throughout the 20th century. Suprematism was considered avant-garde, eventually made illegal by the Russian authorities, and Malevich and other artists were forced to abandon the style in favor of Socialist Realism by the late 1920s.