Term coined in 1915 by KAZIMIR MALEVICH for a new system of art, explained in his booklet Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu: Novyy zhivopisnyy realizm (‘From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: the new realism in painting’). The term itself implied the supremacy of this new art in relation to the past. Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic and concerned only with form, free from any political or social meaning. He stressed the purity of shape, particularly of the square, and he regarded Suprematism as primarily an exploration of visual language comparable to contemporary developments in writing. Suprematist paintings were first displayed at the exhibition Poslednyaya futuristicheskaya vystavka kartin: 0.10 (‘The last Futurist exhibition of paintings: 0.10’) held in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) in December 1915; they comprised geometric forms which appeared to float against a white background. While Suprematism began before the Revolution of 1917, its influence, and the influence of Malevich’s radical approach to art, was pervasive in the early Soviet period.

• Suprematism
  • Abstract art, §2: Pioneers, 1912–20
  • Cubo-Futurism
  • Fourth dimension
  • Ideology, §2: The ideological analysis of art
  • Klyun, Ivan
  • Lissitzky, El, §2: Vitebsk, Suprematism and the Proun works, 1919–21
  • Malevich, Kazimir, §1(i): Life and painted work, before 1918
  • Modernism
  • Monochrome
  • Performance art, §1(ii): Origins: Futurism
  • Popova, Lyubov’
  • Pougny, Jean
  • Rodchenko, Aleksandr, §1: Ideas and work, to 1921
  • Russia, §III, 3(i): Architecture, 1917–c 1945
  • Russia, §IV, 2(iii): Painting, graphic arts and sculpture, c 1900–1916
  • Udal’tsova, Nadezhda
  • Uspensky, Pyotr
  • collections
    • Costakis, George
  • exhibitions
    • Jack of Diamonds
  • painting
    • Lissitzky, El, §3: Moscow, Constructivism and later work, 1921–41
    • Surakarta