This week, I chose to focus on abstract art. The style of abstract art I have chosen is called Suprematism. Suprematism is an early expression of abstract art that came out of Russia during the First World War. The style is characterized by simple motifs such as the square, circle, and cross, and employed non-Euclidean geometry, a practice which gave the illusion that geometric forms were floating in space.
The goal of the art style was to achieve the “zero degree” in painting, which was “a point which the medium could not go without ceasing to be art;” its most fundamental form. The image seen on the canvas was meaningless, while the significance came from prioritizing the supremacy of feeling and expression.
The first person to use Suprematism was Kazimir Malevich, in 1913.
If you would like to learn more about Suprematism, there are links to my sources below:
Art Movement: Suprematism, Artland Magazine.
For my own Suprematism piece, I decided to start with an off-white base, even though my image has a much darker background, as that is a common trend that I see in the style. Suprematism also has a lot of very bold, basic colours, whereas my image mainly uses varying tones of blues and purples. This also meant that I had to adapt even further my piece just starting with choosing the colours to use that would still reflect the art style and the image. I tried to stay true to the colours as best I could, but I did adapt the lights especially.
What I liked about painting using Suprematism was that I was much less conscious of how it looked than I was with the sketch. Although I likely could have been more precise, I was less worried about the accuracy of recreation, instead just trying to capture the general idea. Where I think I missed the mark on this painting is in the “non-euclidian geometry” aspect of the style. I only realized halfway through painting that all my lines were perfectly vertical, rather than at an angle; I only corrected this when adding the “people,” so it does not have the same floating visual.
Overall, this was a really interesting experience as I had not heard of Suprematism until I researched for this week’s recreation, and I’m glad I did. I had fun working on this one, even if my lines aren’t as crisp or angled as I would like them to be.
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I find this art form so interesting because it is not an exact copy of the picture but I still understand what I am looking at when I see the picture beside it. Thank you for the images it helps me understand what different art forms look like.