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Gallery · Room 06 · Russia, 1913–1920s

Suprematism

Pure geometric shapes floating on white, with nothing left to describe.

Black, yellow and red rectangles of different sizes tilt diagonally across a white ground, like aircraft in formation.

Kazimir Malevich

Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, 1915

Oil on canvas

The Museum of Modern Art, New York · View record ↗

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Wall text

Kazimir Malevich gave the name Suprematism to an abstract art built from basic geometric forms, such as squares, circles, lines and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors.

Malevich dated its start to 1913, but it was first shown at the exhibition 0.10 in Petrograd in December 1915. Malevich hung more than thirty abstract paintings, led in the catalogue by his black square on a white ground. He placed the square high across a corner of the room, where an icon traditionally hangs in a Russian home.

The forms float on a usually white ground, so color seems to drift in space. In 1915 and 1916 Malevich's group Supremus included Liubov Popova, Ivan Kliun, Olga Rozanova and Nadezhda Udaltsova. El Lissitzky met Malevich in 1919 and carried the ideas abroad, into architecture and design. Under Stalin, Malevich's career faded, and he died in 1935.

Palette · Sampled from the works shown

  • Chalk white

    #D2D1C7

  • Black

    #1E201C

  • Red

    #A92B0E

  • Yellow

    #D6951C

  • Dusty pink

    #AE686C

How to recognize it

  • Flat geometric shapes: rectangles, bars, squares and circles

  • A white ground with no horizon or perspective

  • Shapes tilted on the diagonal so they seem to float or fly

  • A limited range of colors, often intense

More works

What to borrow

  1. 01

    Tilt one element off the grid and a still page starts to move.

  2. 02

    Generous white space makes a few shapes feel weightless and deliberate.

  3. 03

    Keep the vocabulary small. A handful of shapes and colors used with conviction is easier to recognize than a large kit.

Sources