[2] In his manifesto for the Suprematist movement Malevich said the paintings were intended as "desperate struggle to free art from the ballast of the objective world" by focusing only on form.

[4][5][6] A self-taught artist, Kazimir Malevich's early works, created while still a teenager, incorporate the style and motifs of Ukrainian and Russian folk art and Eastern Orthodox icons.

He moved from his birthplace of Kiev (present-day Ukraine) to Moscow in 1907,[5] where he came into contact with leading Russian avant-garde artists such as Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov.

[10] Its libretto was written by the poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), and follows protagonists seeking to "abolish reason" by capturing the sun and destroying time.

However, a number, including those known today as Futurist Strongman, Grave Digger and A Certain Evil Intender, are in colour but contain distinct black squares and rectangles.

In the letters, Malevich claimed that the square "will have great significance in painting" and is the "embryo of all possibilities; in its development it acquires a terrible strength.

[15] Over the following decades, Malevich made three other oil on canvas variants (in 1924, 1929, while the final version is thought to date from the late 1920s or early 1930s).

The title "Suprematism" is derived from the word supremus (Russian: Супремус), which translates as "superior" or "perfected", which Malevich said reflected his desire to "liberate" painting from mimesis (imitation) and representational art.

[7] Although the movement gained many supporters among the Russian avant-garde, it was overshadowed by constructivism, whose manifesto better reflected the ideology of the early Soviet government and which had a larger influence on later 20th century art.

[12][19] Malevich was aware that progressive artists were likely to be suppressed in Russia, and made attempts to relocate to Germany, where the Nazi party was already targeting so-called "degenerate art",[12] that is art that did not conform to the idealised Aryan way of living, which was based around, according to the historian Tony Wood a dedication to "family, home and church", and was "ironically...a mirror image of the socialist realism of the hated Communists.

[12] Although Black Square wasn't exhibited again until the 1980s, today the work is regarded as historically significant in Modern art, and one of the most recognisable 20th century paintings.

[20] According to the American art critic Peter Schjeldahl, "the painting looks terrible: crackled, scuffed, and discolored, as if it had spent the past eighty-eight years patching a broken window.