(Lazar Markovich Lissitsky, 1890-1941)
The Russian Constructivist typographer, graphic designer, architect, painter, photographer, and theorist El Lissitsky was influential in the dissemination of Modernism both through his work and theoretical writings. He studied architecture and engineering under Joseph Maria Olbrich and others at the Technical School at Darmstadt between 1909 and 1914, visiting Paris, the hub of avant-garde artistic activity, in 1911. He moved back to Russia to practise architecture in 1914, but also worked in the fine arts and illustration, underlining notions of his concept of the ‘artist-engineer’. In 1919, following an invitation from Chagall, he taught at the art school in Vitebsk and came under the influence of the Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich, who became head of the school (retitled Unovis: ‘New Art’). Strongly committed to the Russian Revolution, which had commenced in 1917, Lissitsky designed a striking Soviet propagandist poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge in 1919, using abstract forms to telling effect, an approach taken further in his children's books Of Two Squares of 1920. In the same period he also worked on the design and layouts for Mayakovsky's poetry, and a book entitled For Reading Out Loud of 1923, one of his most sophisticated typographic achievements. He was also involved in set design as for the electro-mechanical ballet Victory over the Sun of 1920. In 1921 he began teaching architecture at the progressive state art and design school Vkhutemas in Moscow, alongside Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, and in the following year began publishing the journal Veshch (Object). He had produced his first ‘Proun’ artwork in 1919, later designing ‘Proun Rooms’ for exhibition in Berlin (1923) and Hanover (1927). The term ‘Proun’ derived from a contraction of the words ‘Pro’ and ‘Unovis’, meaning ‘For the New Art’, and represented a dynamic union between architecture and Suprematist painting, creating a sense of movement in interior space. In these years he also forged a number of important relationships with European avant-garde artists and designers associated with Dada, De Stijl, and the Bauhaus, meeting Kurt Schwitters and László Moholy-Nagy in 1922 and Hans Arp and Mart Stam in 1924. In the later 1920s he undertook a number of important exhibition designs including the Soviet Pavilion at the 1928 International Press Exhibition at Cologne. He also undertook commercial commissions such as publicity for Pelikan ink. In the 1930s much of his energy was devoted to photography and teaching.
