By Francesca Lungarotti

“By ‘Suprematism’ I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art. For the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; what matters is feeling. Art no longer concerns itself with serving the State and religion; it no longer seeks to illustrate the history of manners; it no longer wants anything to do with the object as such, and believes it can exist in and for itself, without ‘things’.” (Kazimir Malevich)

In a world filled with “stuff” it is fascinating to observe the unexpected and compelling intellectual journeys hidden within art history—paths capable of assimilating everything, only to dismantle it piece by piece and return to the essence of thought. Such paths are as captivating as they are often obscured by the passage of time. Among them, the artistic and visual journey of Kazimir Malevich is of particular interest and well worth recounting.

Born in Kiev to parents of Polish descent, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (1878 – 1935) studied drawing in Kiev before attending the Stroganov School in Moscow and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His early works drew inspiration from Impressionism and Symbolism; however, following a trip to Paris in 1912, he became fascinated by the Cubism of Pablo Picasso—a style he adopted and brought back with him to Russia. It was there that an artistic revolution of monumental proportions came to life, accompanied by the development of related theories and manifestos—specifically regarding the “non-object.”

Starting from the observation and Cubist deconstruction of objects—and while acknowledging their value—Kazimir Malevich realized that something significant and genuinely revolutionary was taking shape in his mind, stemming from those very objects.

Beginning in 1913, he started creating abstract geometric compositions devoid of references to recognizable objects, following a style he termed “Suprematism.” This concept championed the supremacy of color, line, and form over subject matter or narrative in art; thus, black squares, circles, and Suprematist compositions emerged, through which the artist consciously sought to make the mind forget familiar objects, leaving room for pure sensation.

In 1927, during a visit to the Bauhaus in Germany, he met Wassily Kandinsky and published a book on his theory titled *The World as Non-Object*. Later, when Soviet authorities turned against modern art, Malevich and his work fell out of favor. In the final years of his life, his artistic output showed a return to figuration. Malevich died in sickness, poverty, and obscurity.

Suprematism—the pioneering movement of geometric abstraction in painting—was founded by Kazimir Malevich in Russia around 1913.

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