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El Lissitzky (Eliezer Lissitzky)
Pochinok, 1890-Moscow, 1941
El Lissitzky was one of the leading figures of Russian abstract art. He developed his interpretation of abstract art under the influence of Malevich's ideas, although he soon abandoned them as he considered them too mystical.
He grew up in a completely Jewish environment in Vitebsk. Gifted at art, he took the examination to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg but was rejected on the grounds of being Jewish. His family therefore sent him to study engineering and architecture in Darmstadt in Germany, but he returned to Russia on the outbreak of war. In 1919 Chagall invited Lissitzky to work as professor of architecture and applied arts at the Vitebsk Art School of which he was director: there he met Malevich. Lissitzky's desire to combine painting and architecture led around 1919 to create his first Prouns, a type of work that represented his most important contribution to art. These were geometrical compositions with pronounced spatial and architectural effects in which the artist abandoned all the traditional laws of perspective. Lissitzky soon became the linking figure between the Suprematists and the Constructivists and between them and the other European avant-garde art movements.
Lissitzky was also highly active as an architect and a graphic designer, constantly aiming to integrate art into the mainstream life of society. His aggressive iconoclasm made him one of the pioneers in a search of a new pictorial language that would serve the needs of a new era.
Bowlt, J. E. and Misler, N.: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Twentieth Century Russian and East European Painting. London, 1993.
Lissitzky-Kupers, S.: El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts. London, 1968.
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