Ellissitzky

Pictured on the front Cover

Left: PostmanRight: The Announcer

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El lissitzkyTable of Contents

BackgroundProunsPostersExhibits

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BackgroundLissitzky was drawing at a very young age, and at the tender age of 13, he became the student of Yahunda Pen, who is an important Belarusian artist who lived in Vitebsk. At the age of 15, he began to teach other people art, as he would continue to do so for much of his life.

Later on he applied to the St. Petersburg art academy, but was rejected merely due to the fact that the Jewish quota had been filled. He went to the University in Darmstadt, Germany and studied architectural engineering. When the World War broke out, he returned to Russia and finished his degree in architectural engineering at Polytechnic Institute of Riga in 1918.

Lissitzky taught for much of his life. In 1919 he taught graphic arts, printing, and architecture at the People’s Art School in Vitebsk, Russia. It was the same year that he produced his first Proun. He taught architecture in 1921 at the VkhUTEMAS (State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops).

Near the end of his career, he worked on anti-Nazi posters and other wartime projects. He died at the age of 51 from tuberculosis on December 30, 1941, in Moscow.

He played a big role in developing and forming both the constructivism and Bauhaus movements. The constructivism movement was originated in Russia, and it was mostly for art and

El Lissitzky Self-Portrait

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architecture. It revolutionized the way that art was thought about, so rather that being beautiful art merely for art’s sake, aimed for the rich upper class as it was before, he helped push art for the sake of social movement and so it would serve social purpose. Catalog cover by El Lissitzky, in the

Bauhaus asymmetric style.

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prounsProun (pronounced pro-oon), an acronym for “project for the affirmation of the new” in Russian. Lissitzky’s style reflects his training as an architect in Germany before World War I as well as the inspiration of Kazimir Malevich, a fellow teacher at the Vitebsk art school.

His radical changes in the perception of material and space refelected what he believed to be reflections of how the fundamental core of Russian society’s change with the revolution.

Top: Proun 30Bottom: Proun 19d

Right: Proun Room by El Lissitzky

“The image is not a

painting, but a structure

around which we must

circle, looking at it from all

sides, peering down from

above, investigating from

below.”

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Left: Proun 0217Right: Beat the Whites

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PostersLissitzky is also well known for his poster designs. Many of them incorporate type as image as well as photography and a small amount of color to make the type pop.

He designed posters and propaganda for Russia, some in the from of seventeen issues of USSR in Construction, which was a publication that was intended for Western audiences and some as individual works.

His last poster was an anti-Nazi poster, encouraging Russian people to help make tanks and take action against the Nazi threat.

Left: Russian Propoganda PosterRight: Lizzitzky’s Last Poster

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Exhibits

Left: Cover for Artists' Brigade magazine, Moscow

In 1921, Anatolii Luncharskii, the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, nominated Lissitzky to be Russia’s cultural ambassador to the West. While civil war was still ripping through the USSR, the end was near. They sent him to reignite revolution where it had stalled out in the West, and these Exhbits and thier strong political messages did just that.

Lissitzky beleived that he was not just bringing art to the West, but also communism. Some have theories that the idea of cultural change and ideas and the reflection of that in Russian Constructivism is so closely tied together, that these exhibits are a call for social change, for Russia and for the places these exhibits were housed.

El Lissitzky did have help though. When he was designing for the Soviet Pavillion at the Cologne exhibition, he was in charge of the preparations and the on-the-spot assembling. Then each artist would be given individual tasks, after a talk with Lissitzky over what he had in mind.

These were labor intensive, sleep-depriving exhibitions, but Lissitzky was determined to do things his way.

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All are images from Lissitzky’s ‘Pressa’ exhibition, held in Germany.

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Bibliography

Left: Second Demonstration room with works by Mondrian, El Lissitzky, Léger, Moholy-Nagy, and Baumeister.

“El Lissitzky.” Guggenheim. Guggenheim. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

“El Lissitzky.” TATE. TATE. Web. 15 Feb. 2015.

“El Lissitzky. Proun 19D (1920 or 1921).” MoMA.org. Museum of Modern Art. Web. 15 Feb. 2015.

Gmurzynska, Galerie. “Texts on Lissitzky.” El Lissitzky : Ausstellung Vom 9. April Bis Ende Juni 1976 = Exhibition from 9th April until End of June 1976. Galerie Gmurzynska Köln, 1976. Print.

Kurtzman, Amy. “El Lassitzky.” El Lissitzky. 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.

Sarabianov, Andrei. “El Lissitzky | Biography - Russian Artist.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Aug. 2014. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

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