Visit

our Community Pages Please support our work DONATE

SUPREMATISM

Suprematism

Started: 1913
Ended: Late 1920s

Important Art and Artists of Suprematism

The below artworks are the most important in Suprematism - that both overview
the major ideas of the movement, and highlight the greatest achievements by each
artist in Suprematism. Don't forget to visit the artist overview pages of the artists
that interest you.

Study for Decor of Victory Over the Sun (1913)

Artist: Kazimir Malevich
Artwork description & Analysis: Malevich collaborated with Alexei Kruchenykh and
Mikhail Matiushin on the decor for the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun (1913).
This sketch for the backdrop of Act 2, Scene 5, foreshadows the development of
Suprematism in its use of a geometric motif, though it doesn't prefigure any
particular Suprematist piece. Without the use of color or shading, the square moves
beyond a sense of Cubist space with its confrontational flatness. The black and
white in this composition, which can signify presence from absence (creation),
hints again at the birth of Malevich's new movement. The opera was a particularly
appropriate place for the debut of Malevich's ideas, since the Futurist movement
that inspired it was also important in shaping Suprematism. Just as Futurism aimed
at a total renewal of Russian culture, so Suprematism claimed to supersede all art
movements that had gone before it. Malevich's designs for the opera marked a
major break with theatrical convention, since they were neither decorative nor did
they illustrate a scene such as a landscape or a room. Their strange darkness also
chimed with Mikhail Matiushin's belief that the opera was about "Victory, over the
old accepted concept of the beautiful sun."
Pencil on paper - State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg

Black Square (c. 1915)

Artist: Kazimir Malevich
Artwork description & Analysis: Once described as Malevich's "living, royal infant,"
the Black Square has been seen as a major landmark in the history of abstract art, a
point of both beginning and ending. Malevich would paint four versions of it
between 1915 and the early 1930s, and it is said that the last version was carried
behind his coffin during his funeral. Pared down from a design he painted for the
Victory Over the Sun (1913), this first version depicts a purely black square against
a thin border of white, further obscuring any sense of normal space or perspective.
At the 0.10 exhibition in 1915, Malevich emphasized its status by hanging it across
the corner of a room, emulating the Russian tradition for the placement of religious
icons.
Oil on canvas - Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
SHARE

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-suprematism-artworks.htm Created with PrintWhatYouLike.com

 Suprematist Painting, Eight Red Rectangles (1915)
Artist: Kazimir Malevich
Artwork description & Analysis: The three levels of Suprematism were described by
Malevich as black, colored and white. Eight Red Rectangles is an example of the
second, more dynamic phase, in which primary colors began to be used. The
composition is somewhat ambiguous, since while on the one hand the rectangles
can be read as floating in space, as if they were suspended on the wall, they can
also be read as objects seen from above. Malevich appears to have read them in the
latter way, since at one time he was fascinated by aerial photography. Indeed he
later criticized this more dynamic phase of his Suprematist movement as 'aerial
Suprematism,' since its compositions tended to echo pictures of the earth taken
from the skies, and in this sense departed from his ambitions for a totally abstract,
non-objective art. The uneven spacing and slight tilt of the juxtaposed shapes in
Eight Red Rectangles, as well as the subtly different tones of red, infuse the
composition with energy, allowing Malevich to experiment with his concept of
"infinite" space.
Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919-20)

Artist: El Lissitzky
Artwork description & Analysis: This lithograph is one of El Lissitzky's most well-
known works from his Suprematist period. It uses shape, positioning and color in
keeping with the movement's principles, especially the "color" phase of the
movement. The use of lettering and the pointillist shading, however, shows the
evolution of his personal style. More interestingly, the poster reveals
propagandistic intentions in its representation of the struggle between the
revolutionary "reds" and the conservative "whites" in Russia. El Lissitzky described
his own brand of Suprematism as Prounism, a derivation of 'proekt Unovisa'
('project for Unovis'), Unovis being the group that Malevich formed in Vitebsk in
1919, and which drew Lissitzky into the fold of the Suprematists.
Stedelijk Van Abbe-Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands - Stedelijk Van Abbe-Museum,
Eindhoven, Netherlands

Color Painting (Non-Objective Composition) (1917)

Artist: Olga Rozanova
Artwork description & Analysis: Rozanova was one of the first to apply her own
personal interpretation to Suprematism. Her interest in fabrics led her to
concentrate on textural effects, occasionally straying from the primary palette to
use softer, more feminine colors. A fine colorist, Rozanova's ability to employ
delicate tonal contrasts was a prelude to the style of Mark Rothko, as shown in the
composition of Color Painting.
Oil on canvas - State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-suprematism-artworks.htm Created with PrintWhatYouLike.com

 White Square on White (1917-18)
Artist: Kazimir Malevich
Artwork description & Analysis: Malevich repeatedly referred to "the white" as a
representation of the transcendent state reached through Suprematism. This
painting can be seen as the final, complete stage of his "transformation in the zero
of form," since form has almost literally been reduced to nothing. The pure white of
the canvas has negated any sense of traditional perspective, leaving the viewer to
contemplate its "infinite" space. The picture is thus bled of color, the pure white
making it easier to recognize the signs of the artist's work in the rich paint texture
of the white square, texture being one of the basic qualities of painting as the
Suprematists saw it. Painted some time after the Russian Revolution of 1917, one
might read the White Square on White as an expression of Malevich's hopes for the
creation of a new world under Communism, a world that might lead to spiritual, as
well as material, freedom.
Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York

Related Art and Artists

Pure Red Color, Pure Yellow Color, Pure Blue Color (1921)
Movement: Constructivism
Artist: Alexander Rodchenko
Artwork description & Analysis: Traditionally, color is used in art to describe the
appearance of a particular object, or else to lend associations (the blue traditionally
used to depict the Virgin Mary's robes in Renaissance paintings carried symbolic
meanings). But Rodchenko's triptych focuses only on the material character of
color, and it is considered the first artwork to do so. Here, red, blue, and yellow are
used neither to describe an object nor to elicit certain associations; instead they
are presented almost as a palette from which the artist can work. This is typical of
the Constructivist attitude to materials, which was focused not on transforming
them into art but on utilizing their properties in the most honest and effective
ways possible. The triptych might be read as a rejection of the mysticism that
seemed to tinge some work by Rodchenko's Suprematist contemporary, Kazimir
Malevich. Rodchenko wrote of it, in 1921, "I reduced painting to its logical
conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue, yellow. I affirmed: this is the
end of painting. These are the primary colors. Every plane is a discrete plane and
there will be no more representation."
Oil on canvas - The Rodchenko and Stepanova Archive, Moscow

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-suprematism-artworks.htm Created with PrintWhatYouLike.com

 Homage to the Square: Dissolving/Vanishing (1951)
Movement: Bauhaus
Artist: Josef Albers
Artwork description & Analysis: Josef Albers described his most famous series,
Homage to the Square, as "platters to serve color." He began the series in 1949 and
worked on it until his death in 1976. This early version demonstrates his
systematic approach to investigating the optical effects of colors. With this series,
Albers explored how colors change depending on their placement within the
composition. Although the series was created several years after the Bauhaus
movement, the work is typical of the experimental, modernist approach to form and
color that underpinned Bauhaus teaching. Teachers at the school believed that
colors and forms could be reduced to essentials and analyzed as separate
components. That analysis would yield understanding about the character and
effects of these components, and that understanding would result in better design.

In 1999, Howard Singerman wrote: "Over and over again in the teaching of art at
the Bauhaus and in its teaching in America, the re-creation of design as vision is
represented by the field or, more familiarmly, by the picture plane as the gridded,
ordered, law-bound rectangle with which, and on which, art fundamentals begin.
The rectange marks the teaching of modernism as the visual arts, displacing and
containing the human figure that stood at the center of the academic fine arts."
Oil on masonite - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Two Open Modular Cubes/Half-Off (1972)

Movement: Minimalism
Artist: Sol LeWitt
Artwork description & Analysis: LeWitt was a key intellectual of the Minimalist
group and is most known for his open-air, modular structures. He once wrote that
"the most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively
uninteresting." This comment speaks to what Minimalist artists aimed to achieve,
which was to use objects in and for themselves, not as symbols or as
representations of something else (as Frank Stella put it on another occasion:
"What you see is what you see."). This lack of meaning is especially the case in
works that remain untitled or that have purely descriptive titles, as do LeWitt's.
Despite claiming the cube as uninteresting in itself, LeWitt would most often use
this form as a jumping off point for his works, often employing them in a grid-like
format that underscores his interest in systems and modules that could be repeated
and expanded indefinitely, sometimes to the point of irrationality or visual chaos.
The modularity, absence of color, and geometric starkness of his pieces all fit
within the Minimalist aesthetic, as do their placement in the center of the gallery
or museum space.
Enameled aluminum - Tate Gallery, London

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-suprematism-artworks.htm Created with PrintWhatYouLike.com