Suprematism is an avant-garde Russian art movement whose name was coined by Kazimir Malevich in 1913. The name is based on the understanding that abstract art reflects the superior artistic sensibility. Non-objective art is based on a few basic geometric elements, which are represented and combined in a limited spectrum of clear colors. Some works follow the concept of non-Euclidean geometry and visualize forms in motion or in temporal progression. Neither the human nor the object is the focus of attention. The artist is the creator and mediator of the only true reality, the unconditional non-objectivity.

Works of this art movement were first exhibited in Saint Petersburg in 1915. The main works were created in the course of the following three years; however, work in this style continued until the early 1930s. The Supremus group, to which artists such as Exter, Kliun, Suetin, Genke-Meller, and Senkin belonged in addition to Malevich, also met during the core period. In addition to painting, Suprematism also included theater, music, architecture, decorative arts, and literature. Even today, artists are influenced by this style, a significant contemporary representative was the architect Zaha Hadid.

The art movement emerged in the field of tension between the Blue Rider, cubist-futurist currents and traditional Russian folk art. Linked to the Bauhaus movement, Malevich defined his program in its publication. Suprematism clearly distinguishes itself from Constructivism by refusing to be (ideologically) instrumentalized; it does not seek to serve the state or the church, nor to illustrate history, but can exist, detached from the object, entirely in and for itself. Although this opposition seems insurmountable, artists such as El Lissitzky and Rodshenko made the move from Suprematism to Constructivism in the course of their careers. Like all modern art, Suprematism was suppressed under Stalinism and prevented from developing by the doctrine of "socialist realism".