Who are the Suprematists ?

When I first came across the term "Suprematists" I had a vision of extreme right wing politically motivated activists. Even worse was the thought that they would also be involved in racism of the worst kind - Cross Burning, murdering fascists. But NO. That was not the case, thankfully.

Suprematism is the name given to a group of mostly Russian artists of the 20th Century. The interest in being supreme was merely to do with their Art. What they were interested in was developing the most "pure" form of art. For them pure art was that which was a reaction to the previous Western ideals of getting  closer to "reality" in their work. Realism was, to them, the antithesis of art. It was a distraction from the nature of expressive art. The ultimate expression of artistic supremacy was a work by the movement's founder, Kazimir Malevich, which consisted simply of a painted black square.

The nature of Suprematist Artwork was that it was abstract. It was a development of the Cubist Style but also contained influences from the Italian Futurist movement. It went further than Cubism in the sense that it abstracted even further from any hint of "realism". Instead it concentrated on basic shapes - rectangle, triangle, circle, square - and with block colors. 

Whilst the movement was essentially established by Kazimir Malevich, it was an artist who was influenced by the Suprematist style, El Lassitzki, who developed it and made it more acceptable to the mainstream Abstract movements. The style was also a big influence on Wassily Kandinski, who went on to influence the Bauhaus  and the De Stijl movements.

* To find out even more about the Suprematists and their work, take a look at The Digital Modernist website. 

* For short introduction see The Digital Modernist video, "Suprematist Art",  which contains lots of examples of the group's artwork as well as more detail on what they stood for and where they came from.