The Manifesto of Rayonism became instructive for Suprematism to the degree as Malevich states:
Long live our Rayonistic painting style, which is independent of shapes belonging to reality and develops accordingly to artistic laws. It concerns itself with spatial forms that result from the reflection of intersecting rays of various objects, and it rests upon shapes that are determined by the artist himself.
Following his trip to London in 1906, where the watercolours of William Turner had impressed him, Mikhail Larionov had become obsessed with the idea of a non-figurative painting. Now with Rayonism, he had been able to realise his vision.
Mikhail Matyuchin, Moving into Space, 1919.
Oil on canvas, 124 × 168 cm. Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square on White Background, dated of 1913, achieved after 1920.
Oil on canvas, 106.2 × 106.5 cm. Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
The painter and musician, Mikhail Vasilyevich Matyushin, assumed among the Russian avant-garde a leading and, for the younger generation, an influential position. He was a professional musician. In the years between 1903 and 1905 he had experimented in the area of quartertone music. He was a painter and an intellectual. In addition, he was interested in science and philosophy. In the correspondence between Kazimir Severinovich Malevich and Matyushin, it becomes apparent that it was Matyushin, who for a considerable period of time conveyed the developments in philosophical theories such as the teachings of Berdyaev, Fyodorov, or Bergson, as well as mystical theories of the Middle Ages and ancient Indian philosophy to Malevich. Both artists were bound by a lifelong friendship. Of the two, Matyushin was closer to nature, he felt as though elements of painting should be analogous to those found in nature and beings found in the organic world. Matyushin undertook exercises to increase his perception in order to intuitively understand and anticipate the hidden and supernatural. He espoused visualising with the back of one’s head, the temples and the soles of one’s feet.
In 1913 Malevich and Matyushin jointly produced the opera Victory over the Sun. This became a milestone in the development of art in the 20th century. Malevich designed the costumes and the set. The poet, Kroutchenykh, wrote the libretto and Velemir Khlebnikov wrote the prologue. Matyuchin’s futuristically oriented composition, which incorporated dissonances, unexpected interval jumps, aircraft noises, cannons, and machines, inspired Malevich to develop Suprematism. This opera was the first attempt at a total show, a precursor of later innovation. This caused a scandal and left, as Matyushin reported, a deep impression. The words had a deep inner power, ‘of such power and so frightening were the sets and the futuristic people with such power as one had not seen the likes before.’ On the curtains between the acts, Malevich had painted his first Black Square.
From 1912 and 1913, Malevich’s works become increasingly abstract. Cézanne’s goal to geometrise everything led him more and more to abstract shapes that organise space in three dimensions. Malevich had succeeded in producing a convincing synthesis of Cubism and Futurism in these paintings. He succeeded in the fracturing and energising of the world of shapes and, furthermore, like Matisse, in the emancipation of colour.
Fernand Léger succeeded in arriving at a similar form of expression at the same time in Paris. This was just at the time when in 1912 the vehement dispute over priorities between the Cubists and the Futurists broke out. Léger and Malevich solved this problem in their own way. Indeed, they rather built their paintings, as it were, out of elements shaped like pipes of such volume that they fit one in the other and in this manner create a strong dynamic effect. To the colour they mixed metallic elements, thereby, stressing the mechanical.
In subsequent years, Malevich came ever closer to the higher level of consciousness of ‘pure painting.’ This was certainly encouraged by the theories of Nikolai Berdyaev, who had been teaching in Moscow since 1917 and had founded a Religious Philosophical Academy. His spiritual teachings regarding the relativity and equilibrium of man and the cosmos convinced Malevich that he could create perfect supermatistic shapes that float in themselves.
Fernand Léger, Composition, 1918. Oil on canvas, 146 × 114 cm.
Drawings department, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich is the leading figure of abstract art. He was a founder of Suprematism and paved the way for Constructivism (which he rejected). He derived his theories mainly from French and German Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism. At the last Futurist Zero-Ten in St Petersburg during the December of 1915, he exhibited his work Black Square on a White Surface, which he himself described as an ‘… icon of the new art.’ Referring to the ‘beautiful corner’ in traditional orthodox homes, he hung his Black Square as if it were an icon high in the corner. Malevich explained:
When in the desperate attempt in 1913 to liberate art from the weight of things, I exhibited a painting that was nothing more than a black square on a white surface. […] It was not an empty square that I exhibited, but rather much more the perception of abstractness. The square = perception, and the white space = the emptiness behind the square.
The Black Square on a White Surface became the icon of modernist art, a key work of abstract art. It has no other meaning than itself. It has no meaning. It is.
Malevich coined the term Suprematism which means the same as ‘totality without a subject’ or ‘new realistic painting.’ Malevich published the Manifesto of Suprematism in 1915. In it he formulated visions that threw overboard all previous ideas about art. He ranked the perception of abstractness above that of shape. A square, a circle, a triangle or a cross on a neutral surface is ‘by its nature no longer an imposing painting.’ His geometric elements were restricted to the greatest simplicity and permitted no relation to reality. He, thereby, had already formulated important concepts at the turn of the century that would be become fundamental for the concept art of the 1970s, American Minimalist art and many contemporary artists. The brothers Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo also spoke out in favour of a new sculpture of the ‘abstract’ in their 1920 manifesto, which they named Realistic Manifesto.
In Suprematism it is not about the shape but rather about sensory impressions. It points the way towards endlessness. In his writing titled From Cézanne to Suprematism, Malevich wrote:
The effort is not directed towards conveying the entirety of the object, but rather the opposite. The pulverisation and dissection of the object into its basic elements is essential in creating contrasts in the painting. The object was understood from its intuitive side.
One should also point to his vision that he expressed in his paper ‘Suprematism’ in 1920. This was, namely, the possibility of interplanetary flight and of earth satellites that would permit man to conquer space.
After the 1917 October Revolution, Malevich taught at the State Art School in Moscow. From 1919 onwards he took part in the creation of the modern teaching institute in Vitebsk. However, in 1921 the official attacks on his art began. Malevich was dismissed from all his official duties; however, he was allowed to travel to the West. He first went to Poland in March 1927 where, he was triumphantly received, and an exhibition was organised. At the end of March, he travelled further onto Berlin and later to the Bauhaus. Here, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Hannes Meyer Lázló Moholy-Nagy and Kandinsky received him with great delight and respect. They had published his works under the title The Abstract World.
With wise foresight, he left all of the works he had brought with him with the architect, Hugo Häring.