In 1913, Kazimir Malevich painted the well-known abstract art, Black Square, which was the first work of supremacy, marking the birth of Suprematism. Malevich drew a square in a white paper and used the pencil to make it black out.
This extremely simple geometrical abstract painting was exhibited in “0、10 Exhibition” in Petrograd in 1915, causing a great sensation. The audience sighed in front of this painting, “All we love is lost...... In front of us, there is nothing except for a black square in the white!” But for this Malevich Black Square, what the painting showed was not an empty square. Its emptiness was precisely its richness, it contained the abundant meaning.
Malevich thought the reason why the audience was difficult to accept it was they were accustomed to regard this painting as the reproduction of the natural images without understanding the true value of art.
Black Square was of great significance not only for Malevich, but also had far-reaching influence to the entire history of modern art. It was not a milepost on the representational art road. Since then, Malevich further developed a complete language system supremacist painting. He used the basic ingredients of the supremacy, like the round, square, triangle and simple and lively colors to compose many pictures and show the diversity of Supremacist block.
In 1918, after a complicated period, Malevich returned to the simplification and reached the peak. In 1920 Malevich summarized the development of supremacy: “according to the number of black, red and white squares, supremacy can be divided into three stages, namely, black, red and white period. The development process of the three periods was from 1913 to 1918, based on the development of plane development.” (Quoted from Bessarabia Krasnov, Du Yisheng translated: Malevich and the Early Twentieth Century Art”, 1st edition “World Art" in 1990, 11th pages.)
Malevich Black Square
