Kazimir Malevich

Visual Arts Russian 1879 – 1935 73 quotes

A Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist, he was the founder of the Suprematist movement, known for his iconic 'Black Square'.

Quotes by Kazimir Malevich

When the habit of thought of the artist and the painter was to draw inspiration from the little houses, flowers, or the anecdotes of nature, the artist never thought of creating new forms. The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive reason. The face of the new art. The square is a living, royal infant.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

I have transformed myself in the zero of form and dragged myself out of the rubbish of academic art.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

Art no longer wants to serve the state and religion, it no longer wants to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to be itself.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

I have ripped through the blue shade of the limitations of color, and come out into the white. Follow me, comrade aviators, sail into the chasm—I have set up the semaphores of Suprematism. I have conquered the lining of the sky, torn it down, and, having placed a bag of colors in it, tied it with a knot. Sail forth! The white, free chasm, infinity is before us.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The artist is always a creator, and not a reproducer. He is a creator of new forms and new relationships.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The Suprematist square and the forms of the new world will open up new possibilities for the creation of new forms of life.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

Only with the disappearance of a habit of mind which sees in pictures little corners of nature, Madonnas and shameless Venuses, shall we witness a purely artistic work.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The black square on the white field was the first form in which non-objective feeling came to be expressed. The square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of objects, from the horizon-ring that imprisons the artist and the forms of nature.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The Suprematist canvas is not a surface with a picture on it, but a living, three-dimensional body.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The artist is a free creator, but not a free reproducer.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The square is the zero of form, and in it everything is contained.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The new art is the art of pure feeling, of pure creation.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

Suprematism is the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

I have come to the conclusion that the world is an illusion, and that only pure feeling is real.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The object in itself is meaningless. The object is only a means to an end.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The artist must be free to create new forms, new relationships, new worlds.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The new art is the art of the future, the art of the new man.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The square is the face of the new art. It is the first step of pure creation.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915

The artist is a prophet, a seer, a creator of new worlds.

From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 1915