Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (Russian: Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, listenⓘ; 23 November [O.S. 11 November] 1890 – 30 December 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лиси́цкий; Yiddish: על ליסיצקי), 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.[1]
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).[2] Lissitzky, of Lithuanian Jewish оrigin, began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia. When only 15 he started teaching, a duty he would maintain for most of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions, schools, and artistic media, spreading and exchanging ideas. He took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own, Proun, and further still in 1921, when he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador to Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last works – a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany. In 2014, the heirs of the artist, in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum and leading worldwide scholars on the subject, established the Lissitzky Foundation in order to preserve the artist's legacy and to prepare a catalogue raisonné of the artist's oeuvre.
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krasnym bey belykh!) is a 1919 lithographic Bolshevik propaganda poster by ElLissitzky. In the poster, the intrusive red wedge symbolizes the Bolsheviks, who...
1917 and 1919 Russian avant-garde artist ElLissitzky created two variants of the book Had Gadya. Lissitzky's used Yiddish for the book verses, but introduced...
several artists—either directly associated with Suprematism such as ElLissitzky or working under the suprematist influence as did Rodchenko and Lyubov...
Tribune by ElLissitzky (1920), a moving speaker's podium. During the Russian Civil War the UNOVIS group centered on Kasimir Malevich and Lissitzky designed...
age of 56. His art and his writings influenced contemporaries such as ElLissitzky, Lyubov Popova and Alexander Rodchenko, as well as generations of later...
Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy and ElLissitzky greatly influenced graphic design. They pioneered production techniques[citation...
his star students and colleagues, including notable Russian artists ElLissitzky, Lazar Khidekel, Nikolai Suetin, Ilia Chashnik, Vera Ermolaeva, Anna...
designed by ElLissitzky, is likely the only extant building based on Lissitzky's blueprints. Located at 17, 1st Samotechny Lane, it is Lissitzky's sole tangible...
1925, though his group—Unovis, of the Vitebsk art college that included ElLissitzky—exhibited at Vkhutemas as early as 1921. While constructivism was ostensibly...
of the arena of the Monument to the Third International, posters of ElLissitzky, the dynamics of sport and the trajectory of figure skating of Russia's...
operated a drawing school in Vitebsk. At the same time, future artists ElLissitzky and Ossip Zadkine were also Pen's students. Due to Chagall's youth and...
22 – Charles de Gaulle, President of France (d. 1970) November 23 – ElLissitzky, Russian artist and architect (d. 1941) December 5 David Bomberg, English...
Suprematism is almost exclusively associated with Malevich and his apprentice ElLissitzky. Red Square, 1915. Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg White Square (also...
Constructivist and Bauhaus movements. "Prounenraum (Proun Room) (1923), by ElLissitzky, is considered by many art historians to be the first time an artist...
František Kupka Suprematism – Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, ElLissitzky Synchromism – Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Morgan Russell Vorticism – Wyndham...
and holds one of the largest collections of paintings in the world by ElLissitzky. It also has works by Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky. The museum's...
portfolio of prints by Jean Arp, Merz 8/9, 1924, was edited and typeset by ElLissitzky, Merz 14/15, 1925, was a typographical children's story entitled The...
photomontage. Parallel to the Germans, Russian Constructivist artists such as ElLissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and the husband-and-wife team of Gustav Klutsis...
collective took its name from a 1919 poster by Russian constructivist artist ElLissitzky titled Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. Despite this echo of the Russian...
Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, and the Russian ElLissitzky).[citation needed] He worked alongside Lissitzky on the Pressa International exhibition in Cologne...
GrandPre earned it a 2015 Caldecott Honor. In July 2001 Jen Lissitzky, the son of artist ElLissitzky, filed a restitution claim against the Beyeler Foundation...
obvious stylistic nod to the Constructivism of 1920s artists such as ElLissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and László Moholy-Nagy (due to which band members...
visit to the Bauhaus by Russian Constructivist artist and architect ElLissitzky. From 1919 to 1922 the school was shaped by the pedagogical and aesthetic...
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