El Lissitzky
PERSON

El Lissitzky

Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, made a career of utilizing art for social change. In fact, he made the very first abstract work with a political message. Although often highly abstract and theoretical, Lissitzky's work was able speak to the prevailing political discourse of his native Russia, and then the nascent Soviet Union. Following Kazimir Malevich in the Suprematist idiom, Lissitzky used color and basic shapes to make strong political statements. Lissitzky also challenged conventions concerning art, and his Proun series of two-dimensional Suprematist paintings sought to combine architecture and three-dimensional space with traditional, albeit abstract, two-dimensional imagery. A teacher for much of his career and ever an innovator, Lissitzky's work spanned the media of graphic design, typography, photography, photomontage, book design, and architectural design. The work of this cerebral artist was a force of change, deeply influencing modern art including the De Stijl artists and Bauhaus instructors.
bio

El Lissitzky (1890-1941) was a Russian avant-garde artist.

works

El Lissitzky's Works

A. and Pangeometry (image 5)El Lissitzky1925

A. and Pangeometry (image 5), El Lissitzky, 1925

El Lissitzky

1925

Perspective is nothing but a convention for representing distance, and though the term is sometimes limited to mean the type of projection generally used in the West, it properly includes any and all devices for representing three dimensions in tw …

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proun p23 nr. 6El lissitzky1919

proun p23 nr. 6, El lissitzky, 1919

El Lissitzky

1919

Proun P23 Nr. 6

visual reference image

Collection van Abbemuseum.

in the studioel lissitzky1929

in the studio, el lissitzky, 1929

El Lissitzky

1923

In the Studio

visual reference image

El Lissitzky's somersaulting multiple exposure of himself and several friends in his studio was made in 1923, probably when he was living in Hannover at the invitation of Kurt Schwitters.

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