El Lissitzky

GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / CONSTRUCTIVISM 1 / 36

1890–1941 El Lissitzky

Lissitzky was an important figure of the Russian Avant Garde, designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union.

1890–1941 El Lissitzky

His work spanned the media of graphic design, typography, photography, photomontage, book design, and architecture

Lissitzky’s entire career was laced with the belief that the artist could be an agent for change, later summarized with his edict, “das zielbewußte Schaffen” (goal-oriented creation).

WIKIPEDIA

1890–1941 El Lissitzky

He identified the graphic arts, particularly posters, books, and architecture as effective conduits for reaching the public.

Once the printed page started to seduce the artist, painting slowly died.

– EL LISSITZKY

1920’S Book Design The book is becoming the most monumental work of art: no longer is it something caressed only by the delicate hands of a few bibliophiles; on the contrary, it is already being grasped by hundreds of thousands of poor people.

– EL LISSITZKY

1890–1941 El Lissitzky • Lazar Markovich Lissitzky • Pochinok, Russia (Jewish-populated community in the western region) • Spent childhood in Vitebsk (also Marc Chagall’s hometown) • Lives for ten years stay with his grandparents in Smolensk during high school years • Began his career illustrating Yiddish children’s books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia • Paints “Had Gadya,” a traditional Jewish song, in honor of his culture • Studies under Yehuda Pen, a local Jewish artist, at age 13

1890–1941 Yehuda Pen

Paints with traditional Russian artist, Yehuda Pen

1890–1941 UNOVIS • Attends Vitebsk Art School • Paints with Malevich • Becomes part of UNOVIS in 1919 • “Utverditeli Novovo Iskusstva” • “The Champions of the New Art”

© Kevin Woodland, 2019 A group photo of the students and professors of the UNOVIS group (with Malevich in the center), 1920 in Vitebsk, Russia. GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / CONSTRUCTIVISM / El Lissitzky 13 / 36

© Kevin Woodland, 2019 (left) Boris Zvorykin, The Struggle of the Red Knight with the Dark Force, 1919. (right) El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919. GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / CONSTRUCTIVISM / El Lissitzky 16 / 36

1920 PROUN • Begins his own revolutionary artistic ideology • Exists at “the station where one changes from painting to architecture” • “proekt utverzhdenya novogo” • “Design for the affirmation of the new”

1920 PROUN

In these works, the basic elements of architecture — volume, mass, color, space and rhythm — were subjected to a fresh formulation in relation to the new suprematist ideals.

WIKIPEDIA

1920 PROUN

It was his goal “to create three- dimensional environments in which two-dimensional shapes could exist in direct contrast to the space they inhabited.

THEARTSTORY.ORG

1920 PROUN

The space must be a kind of showcase, a stage, on which the pictures make their appearance as actors in a drama (or comedy). It should not imitate a living space.

EL LISSITZKY

1920 PROUN

Through his Prouns, utopian models for a new and better world were developed.

WIKIPEDIA

1922 About Two Squares

Through his inventive children’s book About Two Squares: A Suprematist Tale in Six Constructions he sought to familiarize the young generation with the revolutionary language of Suprematism and abstract art.

IMJ.ORG

Don’t read this book.

Take paper.

Fold rods.

Color in blocks of wood.

Build…

① here ARE two squares

② flying toward the Earth from far away

③ and see the black restlessly

④ craSH — scattering every- where

⑤ and upon the black the Red establishes itself clearly

⑥ So it ends, further on

It was not enough that the black square had wiped out all reference to the past. One must be the red square as well, asserted Lissitzky, and actively build the future.

– THE CHARNEL HOUSE

1923 – 1925 Architecture • Non-hierarchical architecture • Unlike skyscrapers of the capitalist West • Lissitzky designs “horizontal skyscrapers” • Thoroughly imagined yet mostly unbuilt

1928 Ogonyok Print Shop • Lissitzky’s sole tangible work of architecture • Commissioned in 1928 by Ogonyok magazine to be used as a print shop • Left abandoned for many years • Damaged by fire, 2008

1890–1941 El Lissitzky • Pneumonia October 1923 • Pulmonary tuberculosis February 1924 • “tuberculosis devoured his lungs”

1941 El Lissitzky

Produce more tanks, Anti-tank guns and weapons, Planes, artillery and mortars, Shells, machine guns, rifles!

Anything for the front! Anything for victory!