El Lissitzky

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El Lissitzky, The Constructor, 1924/printed 1985. Based on his self-portrait from 1914. Gelatin silver print from the original glass plate negative on Agfa paper. 20x22cm (40,5x30,5cm).
Born November 23, 1890(1890-11-23)
Pochinok, Smolensk Province, Russian Empire
Died December 30, 1941(1941-12-30) (aged 51)
Moscow, USSR
Lissitzky in Weimar [3]
Lissitzky with his wife Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers and their child
El Lissitzky, Proun 99, water-soluble and metallic paint on wood, 129x99cm, 1924.

El Lissitzky was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.

Life and work

Early years

Born Lazar Markovich (El) Lissitzky (Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий) in 1890 to a Jewish family in Pochinok, Smolensk Province, Russia. 1903 takes lessons with the artist Iurii (Yehuda) Moiseevich Pen in Vitebsk. 1909 turned down by the St. Petersburg Academy of Art; enrolls as a student of architectural engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany. 1912 travels in Germany, France, and Italy. 1914 returns to Russia during the summer, after the outbreak of World War I. 1915-16 works in various architectural offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg. 1916 receives a diploma in engineering and architecture from the Riga Technological University, which is temporarily quartered in Moscow; embarks on an expedition organized by the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society to explore the synagogues along Russia’s Dnieper River. 1917-19 lives and works in Kiev; participates in a national movement to revive Jewish cultural traditions for modern Russian Jews; designs Yiddish books, some for children. 1918 becomes a member of IZO Narkompros (Art Section of the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment) in Moscow. 1919 in Kiev helps to found the Yiddish publishing house Kultur Lige, which becomes a leading force in the dissemination of Jewish culture in the Ukraine.

Vitebsk and Moscow (1919-21)

In May 1919 invited by Marc Chagall to teach graphic arts, printing, and architecture at the People's Art School in Vitebsk; is introduced to Kazimir Malevich's system of nonobjective art, Suprematism, after Malevich arrives in Vitebsk in November to teach painting; works in the Suprematist collective UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art), along with Malevich and other artists; participates in decorating Vitebsk for the revolutionary holidays. 1920 invents the term Proun (Project for the Affirmation of the New) for his new form of abstract art. 1921 returns to Moscow; teaches architecture at the recently established art school VKhUTEMAS (State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops); delivers a series of four lectures at INKhUK (Institute of Artistic Culture) on the topics of new art, Communism and Suprematism, monumental art, and the new city.

Germany and Switzerland (1921-25)

December 1921 travels to Berlin via Warsaw for a mission to establish cultural contacts between Soviet and German artists. 1922 collaborates with the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg to produce the periodical Veshch. Objet. Gegenstand; meets the typographer Jan Tschichold; in May participates in the First Congress of Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf; in September takes part in the Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists in Weimar, where he meets the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters; in October meets Sophie Küppers, widow of Dr. Paul Erich Küppers, who had been the assistant to the director of the Kestner Society in Hanover; in December gives an important lecture in Berlin on Russian art. 1923 lectures on Soviet art in Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague and at the Kestner Society; joins the editorial board of Hans Richter’s journal G and becomes a member of the De Stijl group; becomes a member of ASNOVA (Association of the New Architects), an organization founded in Moscow by Nikolai Ladovsky, Nikolai Dokuchaev, and Vladimir Krinsky, and assumes responsibility for developing connections with foreign architects; in October taken ill with acute pneumonia, a few weeks later diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. 1924 in February relocated to a sanatorium near Locarno, Switzerland; edits the architectural review ABC: Beiträge zum Bauen with Mart Stam and Emil Roth; produces advertising designs for Gunther Wagner's Pelikan office supply company; with the technical help of Roth, begins work on the Wolkenbügel [Cloud Iron], a horizontally expanding skyscraper intended for the Nikitsky Square in Moscow; in November the Swiss authorities turn down his request to renew his visa, but grant him a six-month extension "on humanitarian grounds."

Exhibition work in Germany and Russia

June 1925 returns to Moscow via St Petersburg. 1926 in January appointed head of the Department of Furniture and Interior Design for the wood and metal workshop at VKhUTEMAS; in June receives assignment from Narkompros to travel to Dresden, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Hamburg, and Lübeck to study modern architecture; commissioned by the directorate of the International Art Exhibition in Dresden to design the Room for Constructivist Art; returns to Moscow and, in collaboration with Ladovsky, publishes the single issue of the architectural review ASNOVA. 1927 marries Sophie Küppers on January 27; appointed chief artist for the All-Union Printing Trades Exhibition in Moscow; begins work on the design of the Abstract Cabinet for the Provinzialmuseum (Sprengel Museum) in Hanover. 1928 appointed chief artist for the Soviet Pavilion at the International Press Exhibition in Cologne; meets Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, and Le Corbusier while on vacation in Austria and Paris. 1929 commissioned by the All-Union Society for Foreign Cultural Exchange to construct the Soviet Room at the Film and Photo Exhibition in Stuttgart. 1930 takes part in the competition to design the House of Heavy Industry; appointed chief artist for the Soviet Pavilion at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden; commissioned to design the Soviet section at the International Fur Trade Exhibition in Leipzig; his son, Jen Lissitzky, is born on October 12. 1931 appointed chief architect for the Gorky Park of Culture and Rest in Moscow in March; Sophie’s older sons come to Russia to live with her and Lissitzky in the village of Khodnya, thirty miles from Moscow.

Later years

1932 signs his first contract with the editors of USSR im Bau [USSR in Construction], a Soviet propaganda publication intended for Western audiences and published in Russian, English, German, and French; becomes one of the principal artists for the journal, along with Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and Solomon Telingater; designs seventeen issues, ten of them in collaboration with Sophie Küppers. 1934 appointed chief artist for the Agricultural Exhibition of the Soviet Union in Moscow. 1935-36 frequently hospitalized; convalesces in a sanatorium in the Caucasus. 1940 appointed chief artist for the Soviet Pavilion at the Belgrade International Exhibition, a project left unfinished due to the outbreak of World War II. 1941 works on anti-Nazi posters and other war-related projects until his death in Moscow on December 30.

Portraits

  • Self-Portrait, 1914

  • In Berlin

  • In Weimar

  • In Switzerland

  • Photo by Mikhail Prekhner

Works

Early works

  • With Kazimir Malevich, Study for Backcloth for Vitebsk Committee for the Struggle against Unemployment, 1919.

Proun
Prounenraum [Proun Room], Great Berlin Art Exhibition, 1923. Description.

  • Proun 1

  • Proun 1-A, Bridge, 1919

  • Proun 1 E

  • Proun 2C, oil, paper and metal on wood, 60x40cm, c1920

  • Proun 3 A

  • Proun 4 B

  • Lissitzky El Proun 5.jpg

    Proun 5

  • Proun 8

  • Proun 1-C, 1919

  • Proun 5-A, 1919

  • Proun 10, 1919

  • Proun P23, No. 6, 1919

  • Proun Interpenetrating Planes, 1919-20

  • Proun 30-T, 1920

  • Proun street decoration design, 1921

  • Proun, 1922

  • Proun 19-D, 1922

  • Composition, 1922

  • Proun G7, 1923

  • Proun retrospective, 1923

  • Proun, collage, gouache, ink, graphite, 50x60cm, 1924-25

Design of the Raum für konstruktive Kunst [Room for Constructivist Art], Internationale Kunstausstellung, Dresden, 1926
Kabinett der Abstrakten [The Abstract Cabinet], Provinzialmuseum Hanover, 1928

Lissitzky built this modular and changeable room for abstract art in 1927–28 at the invitation of Alexander Dorner for the Landesmuseum in Hanover. The Abstract Cabinet was destroyed in 1936 during the Third Reich. [4]

  • Design for the Abstract Cabinet, gouache and collage, 1927

  • [2]

  • El Lissitzky 1927-28 The Abstract Cabinet 2.jpg
  • El Lissitzky 1927-28 The Abstract Cabinet 3.jpg
  • Lissitzky El 1927-28 The Abstract Cabinet 4.jpg
Pavilion of the Soviet Union at the Pressa exhibition, Cologne, 1928

  • Sketch, 1927

  • Lissitzky El 1928 Pressa exhibition.jpg

  • "Prawda"

  • "Transmissions" section

  • with Mikhail Plaksin, Woman with a hammer and sickle

Other works

  • Soccer Players, 1926

Collections and Archives

Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) in Moscow possesses the most extensive collection of Lissitzky's work. Its documentary holdings on Lissitzky include a photomontage; a plan of the first skyscraper in Moscow (1924-1928); a poster of Lenin; twelve experimental photos (1920s); photos of exhibitions in Berlin and Leipzig designed by Lissitzky; various articles; a notebook of Lissitzky's with sketches and miscellaneous notes; assorted letters to Lissitzky; his birth certificate, school diploma, contracts and applications; materials on his work with the Association of New Architects; individual photos of Lissitzky (between 1922-1935); group photos with others (between 1928-1934); and two photos of Gorky taken by Lissitzky in 1928. There is a searchable CD-ROM version (1996) of the seven-volume print guide to this collection.

The Lissitzky collection at Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery consists of drawings, watercolours, lithographs, archival documents, photographs, and examples of Lissitzky's original book designs and illustrations. Of the more than 300 items, outstanding examples include his variant designs for exhibition catalogues and periodicals; covers for film scenarios; sketches, drafts, and variants of his Prouns; watercolours and drawings of costume designs; and many sketches, studies, and preparatory materials for unrealized architectural projects and exhibition pavilions.

The Lissitzky collection at Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven consists of 130 artworks (most of which came from the artist's studio in Hanover) and is the largest outside of Russia. The Museum also possesses several archival documents relating to El Lissitzky (postcards and letters, all to architect J.J.P. Oud, dating between April 28, 1923 and December 26, 1928).

The Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University, Boston, has a moderately-sized collection (41 items) consisting of drawings (12), prints (21) and books (8), with a good number of Proun images.

The Sprengel Museum in Hanover has a small collection comprised of sketches and drafts for the Abstract Cabinet, several Proun lithographs, and a few entries by Lissitzky in the 84-page guestbook of Käte Steinitz, 1920.

Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague has letters from Lissitzky to the Dutch architect and artist Theo Van Doesburg, and from Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters to Til Brugman (all dating between 1922 and 1926).

Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris has three letters from 1924 between Le Corbusier and Lissitzky.

Literature

By Lissitzky

El Lissitzky, Ilya Ehrenburg (eds.), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet 1-2 (March-April 1922). Download.
El Lissitzky, Ilya Ehrenburg (eds.), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet 3 (May 1922). Download.
El Lissitzky, Suprematisch worden van 2 kwadraten in 6 konstrukties, 1922. Download.
Vladimir Mayakovsky, El Lissitzky, For the Voice, 1923. Download.
El Lissitzky, Figurinenmappe: Sieg über die Sonne, 1923. Download.
El Lissitzky, 1o Kestnermappe Proun, 1923. Download.
El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters (eds.), Merz 2:8/9 (April-June 1924): "Nasci". Download.
El Lissitzky, Hans Arp, Die Kunstismen/Les Ismes De L’Art/The Isms of Art: 1914-1924, 1925. Download pages I-VII.
  • Editor, with Ilya Ehrenberg, Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet 1-2 (March-April 1922), Berlin: Skythen, 32 pp. (in Russian, German and French)
  • Editor, with Ilya Ehrenberg, Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet 3 (May 1922), Berlin: Skythen, 24 pp. (in Russian, German and French)
  • Suprematisch worden van 2 kwadraten in 6 konstrukties, ed. Theo van Doesburg, Hague, 1922. Produced in 50 copies, appeared in De Stijl 5:10/11 (Fall 1922). (in Dutch). [5]
  • with Vladimir Mayakovsky, Для голоса [Dlia golosa; For the Voice], Berlin: R.S.F.S.R. Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1923, 61 pp. A collection of 13 poems by Mayakovsky, "constructed" by Lissitzky, printed in 3000 copies by Lutze & Vogt, Berlin. [6]
  • Figurinenmappe: Sieg über die Sonne [Figurines: Victory Over the Sun], Hanover: Leunis & Chapman, 1923. The drawings recasting the Russian Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun (1913/20) as an electromechanical show with mechanical puppets. [7] [8] [9]
  • 1o Kestnermappe Proun [Proun. 1st Kestner Portfolio], 1923, 6 plates. A suite of lithographic prints made as a New Year gift for members of the Kestner Gesellschaft, an independent society based in Hanover, which arranged exhibitions of contemporary art. Lissitzky had had a successful exhibition at the society early in 1923 and was commissioned to produce these prints. [10]
  • Editor, with Kurt Schwitters, Merz 2:8/9 (April-June 1924): "Nasci", Hanover, 18 pp. (in German/French) [11] [12]
  • with Hans Arp, Die Kunstismen/Les Ismes De L’Art/The Isms of Art: 1914-1924, Erlenbach-Zürich/Munich/Leipzig: Eugen Rentsch, 1925, 46 pp. "Habe eine Idee für das letzte Merz-Heft 1924: 'Letzte Truppenschau aller Ismen von 1914-24'." schrieb El Lissitzky 1924 in einem Brief. Es gelang ihm, Hans Arp für diese Idee zu begeistern. The book gives definitions by well-known artists of the various movements, or forms of art, of the period. They range from Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Abstract Art, Metaphysicians, Suprematism, Simultanism, Dadaism, Purism, Neoplasticism, Merz, Proun, Perism, Constructivism, to Abstract Film. The definitions are followed by illustrations of examples of each movement. [13] [14] [15]
  • Editor, Union der Sozialistischen Sowjet-Republiken: Katalog des Sowjet-Pavillons auf der Internationalen Presse-Ausstellung Koln 1928, Cologne, 1928, 111 pp, with a foldout. (in German) [16]
  • Russland. Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion, Vienna: A. Schroll, 1930, 103 pp. (in German)
    • Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, trans. Eric Dluhosch, MIT Press, 1970, 239 pp. Excerpt.
Articles

On Lissitzky

Books
Catalogues
  • Franz Roh, Jan Tschichold (eds.), Foto-Auge / Oeil et Photo / Photo-Eye, Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind, 1929, 77 pp, 78 photographs. (in German, French and English). A photobook based on the Film und Foto exhibition organised by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart in 1929. The front-cover shows El Lissitzky's self-portrait (Küppers, plate 114). Includes works by Baumeister, Max Ernst, G. Grosz, Heartfield, Teige, Moholy-Nagy, Edward Weston, Peter Hans, Renger-Patzsch, Hans Leistikow, Willi Baumeister, Walter Funkat, Dsiga Wertoff. The book features various techniques of photography eg. photogram, x-rays-photo, photomontage. Designed by Jan Tschichold. [21] [22]
  • El Lissitzky, Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1976.
  • El Lissitzky, 1890-1941, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1987.
  • El Lissitzky and Alexander Dorner: Kabinett der Abstrakten – Original and Facsimile, Berlin: Museum of American Art, 2009, 32 pp.
Book chapters, Papers, Articles
Theses
Film
  • El Lissitzky: Constructivist of the Russian Avant-Garde, dir. Leo Lorez, 88 min, 1989, video documentary. [29] [30]

See also

External links

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