Suprematism Art Movement: 4 Notable Suprematist Artists

Suprematism is an abstract art movement defined by the use of geometric shapes and bold colors. Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich founded the Suprematist art movement in the early twentieth century. Suprematism grew out of the Cubo-Futurism art movement in Russia.

A few consistent characteristics help define the style of Suprematist works.

1. 1. Geometric shapes: Colorful geometric forms like squares, circles, crosses, and lines usually appear on a light or white background.
2. 2. Non-objective: Suprematism was a non-objective art movement dedicated to creating art that was disconnected from any representation of things in the real world.
3. 3. The zero degree: With their abstract shapes and colors, Suprematist artists sought to find the zero degree, or the furthest point art can be taken before it ceases to be considered art.

Although Suprematism was a short-lived movement in Russia during the early twentieth century, it influenced modern art movements around the world for decades to come.

• Development of Suprematism: In 1913, Kazimir Malevich created the set and costumes for a futurist opera called Victory Over the Sun. Two years later, Malevich painted his infamous artwork, Black Square (1915). True to its title, this painting featured a black square in the middle of a white canvas. Today, Black Square hangs in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
• First exhibition and the formation of Supremus: From 1915 to 1916, Malevich displayed his artwork in The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10 in St. Petersburg—then called Petrograd. To accompany the exhibition, Malevich wrote a manifesto titled, From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. Malevich’s ideas attracted the attention of other Russian artists like Ivan Puni, who helped form Supremus, a collective of artists dedicated to the ideology of the Suprematist art movement.
• End of Suprematism and its legacy: By the late 1920s, most art movements—including Suprematism—were condemned and replaced by socialist realism, a style that presented an idealized version of everyday life in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule. Kazimir Malevich stopped painting for nearly a decade. However, the Suprematism art movement impacted the Western art world when a collection of Suprematist pieces were included in a 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, located at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Constructivism was a Russian art movement that grew alongside Suprematism during the early twentieth century. Founded by artists Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, Constructivism sought to connect art to the real world—specifically industrial production. Although the two movements used many of the same stylistic elements, Constructivist artists rejected the idea of art for art’s sake, instead believing that art should serve a practical function within society. In contrast, Malevich and the Suprematists believed in the “supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts,” creating abstract art that existed for its own sake.

To learn more about Suprematism, explore the work of these Suprematist artists.

1. 1. Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935): After studying at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, Malevich began to develop his own style. An influential art theorist, he wrote several manifestos throughout his life, including The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism (1927). Some of his other Suprematist paintings include Red Square (1915) and White on White (1918).
2. 2. Olga Rozanova (1882–1918): Inspired by the Italian Futurists, Olga Rozanova created collages and paintings with a focus on color. She trained as a painter in Moscow and wrote essays and manifestos, developing new ideas about the pure abstraction of art. Her artwork Suprematism (1916) features overlapping shapes of many colors.
3. 3. El Lissitzky (1890–1941): El Lissitzky was a versatile artist who worked in several mediums throughout his career. He developed his own personal style of Suprematism called Proun. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, Lissitzky became deeply political and transitioned to the more practical Constructivist movement with artworks like Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919).
4. 4. Lyubov Popova (1889–1924): Born in Moscow, Lyubov Popova grew up with an appreciation for Cubism and Futurism. She joined the Supremus group in 1916 and aligned with their revolutionary new ideas. Popova focused on dynamism, or the representation of movement in art, and created several dynamic artworks during her career like Composition with Figures (1913) and Painterly Architectonic (1917).

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