1913 -1922 · square, color and non-objective space

With the Black Square, the Red Square, the Black Cross and the moving compositions, Malevich abandons representation to make form and color float in a field without horizon.

Kazimir Malevich coined the term "suprematism" in 1915 to designate a painting that claims the primacy of pure sensation. Presented at the 0.10 exhibition in Petrograd, the Black Square traditionally occupies the upper corner reserved for the icon; its shape is neither perfectly geometric nor empty, but loaded with material and spiritual ambition. The Red Square bears the provocative subtitle of "pictorial realism of a peasant woman in two dimensions", now an ironic connection to the abandoned world. The Black Cross expands the shape in two axes and transforms white into four active fields. In complex compositions, rectangles, trapezoids and lines seem to fall, rise or turn diagonals. After 1918, white on white pushes the reduction further; in Vitebsk, UNOVIS then disseminated suprematist language towards books, posters, architecture and objects. The "Suprematism" selection includes opposite Black Square and Red Square: pictorial realism of a peasant woman in two dimensions. His reading favors figures.

Suprematism does not reduce painting to geometry: it uses few shapes to intensify the sensation of a space without an object.