El Lissitzky

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky {{Audio|ru-El_Lissitzky.ogg|listen}} (?????? ???????? ????????, November 23, 1890 – December 30, 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (??? ????????), was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect. He was one of the most important figures of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his friend and mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designed numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the former Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus, Constructivist, and De Stijl movements and experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th century graphic design.

Early years

Lissitzky was born on November 23, 1890 in Pochinok, a small Jewish community 50 km southeast of Smolensk, former Russian Empire. During his childhood he lived and studied in the city of Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, and later spent 10 years in Smolensk living with his grandparents and attending the Smolensk Grammar School. Always expressing an interest and talent in drawing, he started to receive instruction at the age of 13 from Jehuda Pen, a local Jewish artist, and by the time he was 15 began teaching students himself. In 1909 he applied to an art academy in Petersburg but was rejected. While he passed the entrance exam and was qualified, the law under the Tsarist regime only allowed a limited number of Jewish students to attend Russian schools and universities.

Related Topics:
Pochinok - Jewish - Km - Smolensk - Vitebsk - Belarus - Drawing - Jehuda Pen - 1909 - Petersburg - Tsarist regime - Universities

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Like many other Jews living in the Russian Empire at the time, Lissitzky went to study in Germany. He left the Russian Empire the same year to study architecture and engineering at a Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany. During the summer of 1912, Lissitzky, in his own words, "wandered through Europe", spending time in Paris and covering 1200 km on foot in Italy, teaching himself about fine art and sketching architecture and landscapes that interested him 1. In the same year, some of his pieces were included for the first time in an exhibit by the St. Petersburg Artists Union; a notable first step for Lissitzky. He remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I, when he was forced to return home along with many of his countrymen, including other expatriate artists born in the former Russian Empire, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall.

Related Topics:
Germany - Architecture - Engineering - Technische Hochschule - Darmstadt - 1912 - Europe - Paris - Italy - Fine art - 1 - World War I - Expatriate - Wassily Kandinsky - Marc Chagall

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After the war he went to Moscow and attended the Polytechnic Institute of Riga, which had been evacuated to Moscow because of the war. He received an architectural diploma from the school and immediately started assistant work at various architectural firms. During this work, he took an active and passionate interest in Jewish culture which, after the downfall of the openly anti-semitic Tsarist regime, was flourishing and experiencing a renaissance at the time. The new Provisional Government repealed a decree that prohibited the printing of Hebrew letters and that barred Jews from citizenship. Thus Lissitzky soon devoted himself to Jewish art, exhibiting works by local Jewish artists, traveling to Mahilyow to study the traditional architecture and ornaments of old synagogues, and illustrating many Yiddish children's books. These books were Lissitzky's first major foray in book design, a field that he would greatly innovate during his career.

Related Topics:
Polytechnic Institute of Riga - Anti-semitic - Provisional Government - Hebrew - Mahilyow - Synagogue - Yiddish - Children's books

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His first designs appeared in the 1917 book Sihas hulin: Eyne fun di geshikhten (An Everyday Conversation), where he incorporated Hebrew letters with a distinctly Art nouveau flair. His next book was a visual retelling of the traditional Jewish Passover song Had gadya (One Goat), in which Lissitzky showcased a typographic device that he would often return to in later designs. In the book, Lissitzky integrated letters with images through a system of color coding that matched the color of the characters in the story with the word referring to them. In the designs for the final page (pictured right), Lissitzky depicts the mighty "hand of God" slaying the angel of death, who wears the tsar's crown. This representation links the redemption of the Jews with the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. 5 Visual representations of the hand of God would recur in numerous pieces throughout his entire career, most notably with his 1925 photomontage self-portrait The Constructor, which prominently featured the hand.

Related Topics:
1917 - Art nouveau - Passover - Typographic - God - Bolshevik - Russian Revolution - 5 - 1925 - Photomontage

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