Stylogenyin the style of Suprematism

Avant-garde · 1915–1925 · Eastern Europe

Suprematism

Also known as Suprematizm, UNOVIS, Non-objective art

Kazimir Malevich's non-objective art, unveiled with the Black Square at the 0.10 exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, reduced painting to pure geometric planes floating in white, infinite space. Through the UNOVIS collective in Vitebsk and El Lissitzky's books it became a graphic language of squares, bars and circles tilted on dynamic diagonals, the seedbed of Constructivist layout.

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An off-white cover features a large red circle crossed by a thick diagonal black bar, with a red square, blue triangle, yellow bar, and small green circle. The black uppercase word “DRIFT” angles upward across the upper portion.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Reduce every image to pure geometric planes: square, rectangle, circle, cross and bar.
  • Float the forms on an open white field that reads as infinite space rather than as a background.
  • Tilt the composition on diagonals so planes seem to drift, fly or collide.
  • Represent nothing: let scale, overlap and the intervals between forms carry the feeling.
  • Keep colour flat and sparse: black and red first, with occasional yellow, blue or green.
  • Suggest depth through the relative size and overlap of planes, never through perspective.

Petrograd and Moscow, then Vitebsk (UNOVIS), Russia

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Naturalistic depiction, Stylised figuration, Straight photography, Abundant decoration, Horror vacui, Gradients

Palette

  • #f4f1e8
  • #121212
  • #cf2a27
  • #e9b824
  • #2a4d8f
  • #3f7d4e

Typefaces

  • Russian grotesques (rubleny shrift) as set by Lissitzky

  • Hand-drawn lithographic lettering of UNOVIS publications

Known for

  • Kazimir Malevich

    Black Square, 1915; Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918

  • El Lissitzky

    About Two Squares, designed 1920, published 1922

  • UNOVIS collective, Vitebsk

    1920–22

  • Ilya Chashnik

  • Nikolai Suetin

    Suprematist porcelain for the State Porcelain Factory

  • Olga Rozanova

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Suprematism’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleSuprematism1915–1925 · Eastern Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Aleksandra Shatskikh, Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism (Yale University Press, 2012)
  2. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (Yale University Press, 1983)
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.