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El Lissitzky

File:El_lissitzky_self_portrait_1924.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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El Lissitzky

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Also known as El' Lisickij, Ėlʹ Lisit︠s︡kiĭ, El Lissickij, Eliezer Markovich Lissitzky, Lasar Lissitzky, Eliezer Lissitsky, Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, Lazar Markovich Lisitskii

Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect (1890–1941)

OverviewAI-generated

El Lissitzky was a Russian male artist and author. He was born in 1890 and died on December 30, 1941. His recorded works include *Union der Sozialistischen Sowjet Republiken*, *Ḥad Gadya*, *Россия*, *Vystavka i︠a︡ponskoe kino*, and *U ri︠e︡k Vavilonskikh*.

His creative output has been cataloged across various platforms, with counts ranging from five to sixty-two works. Associated tags for his material include spoken word, russian, futurism, Poem, and visited grave.

Synthesized by Vinony from 21 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, Last.fm, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Europeana Sparql, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
1890
Died
1941
Works
62

Top works

  • Union der Sozialistischen Sowjet Republiken
  • [Dli︠a︡ golosa ; Khorosho!
  • Ḥad Gadya
  • Россия
  • Vystavka i︠a︡ponskoe kino

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
Russia
Active from
1890-11-22
Active to
1941-12-30

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
267
Total plays
862

Tags

spoken wordrussianfuturismPoemvisited grave

Born in Windsor, Ontario. Raised like Detroit, Michigan. Sounds like Brazil. Long live Oscar Niemeyer! <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/El+Lissitzky">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · El Lissitzky

Quotes

  • ..into this chaos [after the Bolshevik' revolution] came suprematism extolling the square [referring to the Squares of Malevich] as the very source of all creative expression, and then came communism and extolled work as the true source of man's heartbeat.
  • New space neither needs nor demands pictures - it is not a picture transposed on a surface. This explains the painters' hostility towards us [a. o.: Malevich ]: we are destroying the wall as the resting place for their pictures.
  • We have had enough perpetually hearing MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE. In the repetition of the word MACHINE, we read the modern artist's ambivalent relationship to mechanical reproduction: on the one hand, the rigorous linear order and uniform application of ink presented by the thrice-repeated type written line celebrates sterility; and on the other hand the content of the sentence itself bemoans the transformation of the industrial paradigm into an aesthetic cliché.
  • Proun is the the Step-over from the art of painting to Architecture [original text in German:] (Umsteige-station von Malerei nach Architectur).
  • The term A[rt] resembles a chemist's graduated glass. Each age contributes its own quantity: for example, 5 grams of the perfume 'Coty' to tickle the nostrils of the fine gentry. Or another example, 10 cc of sulfuric acid to be thrown into the face of the ruling classes. Or, 15 cc: of some kind of metallic solution that later changes into a new source of light.. ..[as Lissitzky goes on to say] This A[rt] is an invention of the mind, i.e. a complex, where rationality is fused with imagination.
  • We have named PROUN [the art, stepping over from painting to architecture] a station on the path to the construction of the new form.. .From being a simple depicter the artist becomes a creator (builder) of forms for a new world — the world of objectivity. This does not mean the creation of a rivalry with the engineer. Art has not yet crossed paths with science.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky , ( 1890-11-23 ) 23 November 1890, Pochinok , Smolensk Governorate , Russian Empire
Died
30 December 1941 (1941-12-30) (aged 51), Moscow , Soviet Union
Notable work
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge

via Wikipedia infobox

Works in European collections

25 objects attributed to El Lissitzky, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

El Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лиси́цкий, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky Russian: Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, listen; 23 November [O.S. 11 November] 1890 – 30 December 1941) was a Russian and Soviet artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union.

Lissitzky began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture. He started teaching at the age of 15, maintaining his teaching career 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 moved to Weimar Republic. 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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “El Lissitzky” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (12)