Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism

Dabbling in fauvism and cubism before founding the Suprematist movement, Russian painter and sculptor Kasimir Malevich (1879–1935) was a leading figure of the avant-garde and a pioneer of the non-objective style that he felt would “free viewers from the material world.” In 1915, the same year he produced his most famous painting, “Black Square,” he published the manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. To critics who accused his work of being devoid of beauty and nature, he responded “art does not need us, and it never did.”