HIGH MODERNISM: SUPREMATISM (c 1915 - 1919)

by Jo Colley 06:25 0 comments

Suprematism as an art movement has previously been summed up with the use of Kazimir Malevich's Black Square painted in 1915. It combines all the elements that pure abstraction attempts to use, the basic use of shape, use of black and white with solid blocks of colour - this image is designed so that is deconstructed to the furthest point possible, no artwork could be simpler at this time. Kazimir Malevich had finally achieved something that many artists had tried and failed at including Pablo Picasso and Paul Cezanne. This was a goal for many Futurist, Cubist and Fauvist artists of the past, as a Russian art movement, Suprematism was finally able to accomplish this from 1915 onward.

"Black Square" by Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) Oil on Linen, 1915.

Black Square was just the first of many of this kind, artists would combine basic shapes with simple colour in order to assemble an artwork of pure abstraction. This movement began in Petrograd, Russia in the December of 1915. Malevich described the terms of Suprematism, "The artist can be a creator only when the forms in his pictures have nothing in common with nature." This shows how the artist aimed for a disconnection between his artworks and reality - with little context, background ideas or connotations - the artwork can either appear meaningless, or hold any meaning that the audience applies to it's pure aestheticism. Representation was no longer key to a painting.

This art movement, shaped around Malevich's ideas, would later morph into Dynamic Suprematism by which the static shapes would gravitate towards one another or pull apart with a context not bound to anything of this world's socio-political influences.

"The Last Futurist Exhibition" Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square" and "Black Cross" (1915)

The image above shows the emergence of Suprematism at what is described as the Last Futurist Exhibition which shows the common features of such artworks of the future five year period. The works used mostly monochrome and primary colour to embolden these simple shapes upon a basic white background. While symbols can be noted from the shapes, it is near impossible to deduce any collective meaning to these works. 

While Suprematism was a short lived art movement of only five years before Malevich announced it's ending in 1919, it's impact on abstraction is fundamental to the makings of contemporary art - it redefined what art can be and pushed boundaries in order to reach it's goals. Suprematism can be both likened and contrasted to previous art movements as it simply can be claimed to have inherited the need to reach a simplicity, but the execution of these works are unlike the representational quality of anything we've ever seen prior to this moment in art history.