Q 1 Suprematistic
László Moholy-Nagy
LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY, 1923, OIL ON CANVAS
A perfect square, a circle and an equilateral triangle, this was László Moholy-Nagy's holy trinity. He was 27 years-old when he first discovered Suprematism - the avant-garde movement named for the ‘supremacy’ of 'pure, artistic feeling' which its Malevich believed to be the foundation of art as a concept. The Suprematists posited that only through ultimate abstraction could man - as both artist and witness - truly understand the act of creation. His elevation of the basic shapes was central to his understanding of the ‘feeling’ of the world, as opposed to objective reality. Q1 Suprematistic was painted the year Moholy-Nagy was invitated to join the Bauhaus art school faculty, and he combined the two aesthetic values into a work of radical, emotional simplicity. Painting, for Moholy-Nagy, was about "the primal human reaction to color, light and form.