Suprematism

Suprematism (Russian: супремати́зм) is an early 20th-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" rather than on the figurative depiction of real-life subjects. Founded by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1913, Supremus (Russian: Супремус) conceived of the artist as liberated from everything that predetermined the ideal structure of life and art. Projecting that vision onto Cubism, which Malevich admired for its ability to deconstruct art, and in the process change its reference points of art, he led a group of Russian avant-garde artists—including Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Kliun, Ivan Puni, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Nina Genke-Meller, Ksenia Boguslavskaya and others—in what has been described as the first attempt to independently found a Russian avant-garde movement, seceding from the trajectory of prior Russian art history. To support the movement, Malevich established the journal Supremus (initially titled Nul or Nothing), which received contributions from artists and philosophers. The publication, however, never took off and its first issue was never distributed due to the Russian Revolution. The movement itself, however, was announced in Malevich's 1915 Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10, in St. Petersburg, where he, and several others in his group, exhibited 36 works in a similar style.