What Is Suprematism in Art? Definition & Examples

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Published: June 6, 2019 | Last Updated: June 11, 2025

Origins and Philosophy

Suprematism emerged in the years before and during the Russian Revolution, when radical art movements were taking shape in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Kazimir Malevich, originally influenced by Cubism and Futurism, began experimenting with abstract compositions around 1913. He introduced the term “Suprematism” in 1915 during the Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10, where he exhibited Black Square.

Malevich’s work removed all recognizable subjects from the canvas. Instead of portraying the world, he arranged basic forms like squares, circles, and lines on empty white backgrounds. He believed this new kind of painting revealed a “supremacy of pure feeling,” beyond material reality or logic. Suprematism aimed to make visible the sensation of space, weight, and movement without relying on objects or figures.

Visual Language

Suprematist paintings feature sharply defined shapes (often squares, crosses, or rectangles) arranged with precision. Color is limited. Malevich used black, white, red, blue, and ochre to stress the flatness of the image plane and the sense of spatial push and pull. The compositions often appear to float. There’s no center. Shapes tilt, rotate, or drift across the surface, avoiding any symmetrical balance.

Works like Supremus No. 55 (1916) and White on White (1918) use only geometric structure to create tension and rhythm. The lack of horizon or perspective removes the illusion of depth. Instead, the viewer focuses on placement, weight, and speed inside the frame.

Stages of Development

Early Suprematism relied on strong contrast. Black Square and its successors use bold shapes on white. Later, Malevich moved toward near-invisible forms. His “white world” series turned abstraction into a meditative space, removing color and visual anchors.

Eventually, Suprematism expanded into three-dimensional models and spatial studies, but the focus stayed on non-objectivity. Other artists contributed as well. El Lissitzky applied Suprematist principles to architecture and typography.

Olga Rozanova worked alongside Malevich but pushed Suprematism toward color-based abstraction. Her paintings from 1915 to 1918 use vivid color planes without relying on strict geometry, focusing instead on chromatic intensity and spatial tension.

Ivan Kliun explored Suprematist principles through painting and theoretical writings, focusing on circular forms and color relationships.

Suprematism in Film and Visual Design

Suprematism influenced modernist architecture and graphic design, especially through Lissitzky’s work. Its clean forms, asymmetric balance, and floating compositions also shaped visual styles in cinema and motion graphics.

Suprematism also helped shape Soviet avant-garde cinema in the 1920s. Artists and filmmakers worked in overlapping circles, often sharing studios, publications, and ideological goals.

Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera (1929, VUFKU) reflects this connection through its abstract compositions, circular motifs, and rhythmic editing. Vertov rejected narrative realism in favor of visual construction, echoing Malevich’s belief that form should replace imitation.

Film theorists like Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov, while more narrative-driven, still drew on Suprematist and Constructivist ideas about visual conflict, spatial rhythm, and non-objective design.

Suprematist thinking also influenced abstract animation in Europe, such as Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 (1921), which arranges geometric forms in time like a moving painting.

Summing Up

Suprematism is one of the earliest examples of total abstraction. It removes subject, symbolism, and natural reference. Instead, it uses form and space to show pure feeling. Suprematism revolutionized the way we think about painting and paved the way for cinema, design, and architecture to follow suit today.