El Lissitzky

A Russian artist of Jewish origin, a vivid representative of the avant-garde of the first third of the 20th-century art. El Lissitzky is rightly classified as a “pioneer” in exposition design. His famous prouns (short for “projects of the approval of the new”) conquered Europe – the “Prouns’ Room” was created in Berlin, and the principles developed by Lissitzky were used by such artists as V. Tatlin, P. Mondrian, etc.

The role of Lissitzky in building effective bridges between the Western avant-garde and Russian post-revolutionary art in the 1920s was significant. Collaborating with many art magazines published in Berlin and Amsterdam, Lissitzky influenced the development of the international graphic design of the XX century and a whole generation of European artists.

Lissitzky believed that the artist is an agent of social changes, who seeks and implements a new expressive language through posters with a bright visual effect, easily understood by all social layers in all countries of the world. The propaganda side of many of his works does not overshadow what the artist brought into the use of forms, solid colours, and their organization in the space of the work. His creative concept developed the branch when the totality of the work is a unique style that embodies painting, architecture and sculpture.

The artist was an active member of the Jewish national cultural revival, organizer and participant in exhibitions, illustrator of Jewish literature. A valuable contribution to the development of art was his essay “Memories of the Mogilev Synagogue” published in 1923 in Berlin, the only theoretical work by Lissitzky dedicated to Jewish decorative art.

Key ideas:

– The early experiments of El Lissitzky, when he did not use games with three-dimensionality of the image in his paintings, are full of simple geometry. They combined the style of cubofuturism with the style of a popular print, which was most evident later in illustrations, book covers, and poster art.

– Working in Vitebsk at the invitation of M. Chagall, the artist invented and began to develop his version of suprematist three-dimensional compositions, which he called projects of the approval of the new – “prouns”. He used many prouns in graphics. Later the lithographs-prouns were published in Moscow (1921), as well as in Hanover (1923, “Kestner’s Folder”).

– According to the author, prouns synthesized the techniques of Suprematism and Constructivism, served as a bridge between painting and architecture. Later, the famous “horizontal skyscrapers”, projects of pavilions and theater models, decorative and spatial exhibition interiors, poster-book and furniture design with a fundamentally new composition “grew” from them.

– El Lissitzky actively used national Jewish themes and symbols. For example, he created a number of avant-garde drawings for the Jewish folk tale “Goat”. In posters, illustrations and other graphics, he often used Hebrew, usually combining it with the letters of the Russian and Latin alphabets.

– For a holistic understanding of the El Lissitzky phenomenon in installations and architecture, three main aspects are essential. The first one is the connection with the topic of spatial constructions: voluminous works are perceived not from one angle but have to be observed from all sides. Unfolding in space, the designs acquire new meanings. The second feature is an active visual and plastic dialogue of the author with other artists of that era. The third aspect of art is called the need for touch. Lissitzky was interested in touch, as well as in the whole world of things with the properties of specific materials from which it was “made”.