Proun, graphite, gouache and crayon, collage, 45 x 41.5cm, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, The Fredric Wertham Collection, Gift of Hesketh Wertham, c1923.
About Two Squares: A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions
(A revolutionary children’s book. Imagination-stretching, ...)
A revolutionary children’s book. Imagination-stretching, radically simple, and yet beautifully sophisticated, About Two Squares tells the story of two squares that take on the mission of rebuilding the world.
Inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s suprematist vision of nonobjective art, About Two Squares stirred up the European art world with its publication in Theo van Doesburg’s avant-garde art journal, De Stijl, and redefined what an illustrated book could be. Left wonderfully open-ended, the book’s final words – "and then" – encourage young readers to reinvent the world for themselves
Lissitsky: Russia Architecture World R (English and Russian Edition)
(It is a classic in architectural and planning theory, as ...)
It is a classic in architectural and planning theory, as well as an important document in social and intellectual history. The book contains an appendix of excerpted writings by his contemporaries M. J. Ginzburg, P. Martell, Bruno Taut, Ernst May, M. Ilyin, Wilm Stein, Martin Wagner, Hannes Meyer, Hans Schmidt, and others all of whom illuminate the architecture and planning of Europe and Russia during the 1920s. There are over 100 plates and drawings
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, mostly known as El Lissitzky, was one of the most prominent Russian avant-gardists and innovators of the nonobjective art of the early twentieth century. Working with Kazimir Malevich, his teacher, the founder of the suprematism art style, he made a great contribution to its development.
Background
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky was born on November 23 in 1890, in Pochinok, Smolensk region, Russian Empire (now Russian Federation). He was a son of Mordukh Zalmanovich Lissitzky, a craftsman and merchant, and Sarah Leybovna Lissitzky, a housewife.
El Lissitzky spent a significant part of his childhood in Vitebsk, Belarus and 10 years in Smolensk, Russia with his grandparents.
Education
Lazar Lissitzky received his secondary education attending the Smolensk Grammar School.
At the age of thirteen, the boy revealed his painting talent and entered the art school of Yehuda (Yury) Pen, a local Jewish artist, who was also a teacher of several famous artists, including Marc Chagall.
Lissitzky tried to enroll at the Saint Petersburg art academy in 1909, but had no success with it because of the Tsarist law which restricted the quantity of Jewish students in Russian educational institutions.
The same year, the artist moved to Germany, where he entered the Darmstadt University of Technology where he had studied for five years.
During the training, Lissitzky travelled to France, Italy, and Belgium, where he explored fine art, architecture and landscapes.
At the outbreak of World War I, Lazar came back to Russia and entered the Riga Technical University (Riga Polytechnical Institute by the time), evacuated to Moscow because of the war, where he studied from 1915 to 1916 and received a degree in engineering and architecture.
Lazar Lissitzky started his career at the age of fifteen when he became a painting teacher in the Yehuda Pen art school. This period, he participated in Semyon Ansky’s ethnographical expedition discovering the Jewish culture monuments in the Pale of Settlement. As an adherent of Jewish culture, Lissitzky made illustrations for Yiddish childrens’ books, including "Profane, or Idle, Chatter" (1917) and "One Kid" (1919). The pictures had the traces of Cubo- and European Futurism, and Russian popular print called "lubki".
Some of Lissitzky’s early paintings were first presented to the public in 1912 with the help of the St. Petersburg Artists Union.
Seven years later, in May, Lazar Lissitzky received an invitation of Marc Chagall, director of the People’s Art School in Vitebsk at the time, to teach architecture and graphics. There, the artist met Kazimir Malevich, who became his principal mentor, colleague and friend throughout the lifetime. Lazar assumed a pseudonym El Lissitzky and took interest in Suprematism, the art style founded by Malevich. Soon, Lissitzky left the position of teacher.
The following years, El Lissitzky performed in a Suprematist style. The artist worked on a design of Malevich’s book On the New System, as well as on a design of the Vitebsk Committee to Combat Unemployment anniversary celebration. His most popular propaganda poster, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919–20), was also created at this period. Besides, Lissitzky elaborated his own variant of Suprematism by combining graphics, architecture, photography and painting. It was a series of abstract, geometric paintings named a "proun", the acronym for Russian definition proyekt utverzhdeniya novogo ("project for the affirmation of the new"). These works were exhibited for the first time at Suprematist collective Unovis (Utverditeli Novogo Iskusstva, "Affirmers of New Art") and marked the artist’s gradual passage to the Constructivism. Although once turned to Suprematism, Lissitzky continued to use the elements of Jewish culture in his artworks, such as the cover for the book Four Billy Goats and illustrations for the Shifs-Karta (Passenger Ticket) book.
On January 17, 1920, Malevich and Lissitzky established the suprematist association Molposnovis (Young followers of a new art) which remained only one year. It gathered students, professors, and other artists, and later was transformed to UNOVIS (Exponents of the new art).
A year later, El Lissitzky occupied the post of a professor at the state art school in Moscow but soon left it for the five-year trip to Germany in order to consolidate the links between Russian and German artists.
Abroad, Lissitzky wrote and published some books, including About Two Squares: In 6 Constructions: A Suprematist Tale (1922) and the three-language The Isms of Art (1925). The artist joined there the Dutch group De Stijl and befriended the artist-designer László Moholy-Nagy who taught at the Bauhaus and helped to widespread Lissitzky’s art ideas to western Europe and the United States. There, the painter fell into photography.
After his return to Moscow, Lazar Lissitzky remained his propagating activity by cofounding several thematic periodicals and collaborating with Aleksandr Rodchenko on the sensational propaganda magazine USSR in Construction. He released his idea of horizontal skyscrapers in the essays published in the Moscow review ASNOVA and in the German art journal Das Kunstblatt. The artist also created many Soviet pavilions for several international expositions, including the Internationale Kunstausstellung art show in Dresden, Room for constructivist art, and Abstraktes Kabinett shows in Hanover.
In 1924, the artist came to Switzerland to cure his pulmonary tuberculosis. Despite his illness, Lissitzky worked on designs for Pelikan Industries, translated Malevich’s articles into German and created photographic artworks.
A year later, Lazar Lissitzky came back to Moscow where he had taught interior design and architecture at VKhUTEMAS (State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops) until 1930. Later, he designed a Moscow building of a print shop at 17, 1st Samotechny Lane by the commission of Ogonyok magazine in 1932.
One of the last Lissitzky’s work became "Give us more tanks!", a propagandistic poster related to World War II.
Book cover for 'Suprematic tale about two squares'
Proun 30
Proun 4 B
There is over
Wendingen
Cover of the avant guard periodical 'Vyeshch'
Cover of the book 'Teyashim' ('Four billy goats')
Proun
Proun 19D
Announcer
Catalog cover
Cover of Broom
New Man
Proun G7
Proun
Merz' Magazine Layout
Proun
Iron in clouds', for Strastnoy Boulevard
Cover for 'Good!' by Vladimir Mayyakovsky
Cover for 'Good!' by Vladimir Mayyakovsky
Printing industries
Chair for the exhibition
Building in Moscow
Proun 3 A
Proun 30 T
Proun 8
Proun 43
Proun Interpenetrating Planes
illustration
Chad Gadya
Book cover for 'Ingle-Tsingl-Khvat' by Mani Leib
Insert the red and clear on black
Illustration to Aggadah
Illustration to 'Suprematic tale about two squares'
Illustration by El Lissitzky to 'The hen who wanted a comb'
Illustration for Jewish folk tale 'The Goat'
Illustration to Aggadah
Illustration to 'Chad Gadya'
Beat all the scattered
Black Anxious
Do not read, grab bars, paper, pieces of wood, fold, paint, build
Flying to earth from a distance
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'For the voice' by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Illustration to 'Suprematic tale about two squares'
Illustration to 'Suprematic tale about two squares'
Lenin Tribune
Suprematic tale about two squares
To all the children
Four (arithmetic) actions
painting
Tatlin at Work
Reminiscence of Ravenna
Flying Sun
Composition
Preliminary sketch for a poster
Untitled
Tatlin at Work
photo
The Constructor
Photomontage for dustjacket of Frankreich
The Runner
poster
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
Cover for catalogue of the Russian Exhibition, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Zurich
Give us more tanks!
Victory over the Sun: All is well that begins well and has no end
Basic Calculus
Cover of booklet of Soviet Division of the International Exhibition of Hygiene in Dresden
Central Park of Culture and Leisure Sparrow Hills
All for the front! All for Victory!
Politics
Lazar Lissitzky was a leading figure in the related constructivist movement, which sought to integrate aesthetic concepts with Marxism. He was a propagandist for the Stalinist regime through his artworks.
Views
Quotations:
"Every piece of work I did was an invitation not to make eyes at it but to take it as a spur to action, to urge our feelings to follow the broad aim of forming a classless society."
"The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything that is already finished, already made, or already existent in the world – it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by the way of the people."
"The room is there for the human being - not the human being for the room."
"Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography."
"The purpose of architecture is to transmute the emptiness into space, that is into something which our minds can grasp as an organized unity."
"The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the infinity of the book, must be transcended."
"We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age."
"The sun as the expression of old world energy is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who by virtue of his technological superiority creates his own energy source."
Interests
ancient Jewish culture
Connections
In 1927, Lazar Markovich Lissitzky married Sophie Küppers, a widow of Paul Küppers, an art director. The couple had a son Jen (Boris) Lissitzky who was born on October 12, 1930. He became a cameraman and photographer.