El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky in a 1924 self-portrait
Born
November 23, 1890
Pochinok
Died
December 30, 1941
Moscow
Occupation
Artist
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky
(Russian:
Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий) (November 23
[O.S. November 11] 1890 – December 30, 1941),
better known as El Lissitzky (Russian: Эль
Лиси́цкий, Yiddish: על ליסיצקי), was a Russian
artist, designer, photographer, typographer,
polemicist and architect. He was an import-
ant figure of the Russian avant garde, help-
ing develop suprematism with his mentor,
Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous
exhibition displays and propaganda works for
the former Soviet Union. His work greatly in-
fluenced the Bauhaus and constructivist
movements, and he experimented with pro-
duction techniques and stylistic devices that
would go on to dominate 20th-century graph-
ic design.[1]
El Lissitzky’s entire career was laced with
the belief that the artist could be an agent for
change, later summarized with his edict, "das
zielbewußte Schaffen"
(goal-oriented cre-
ation).[2] A Jew, he began his career illustrat-
ing Yiddish children’s books in an effort to
promote Jewish culture in Russia, a country
that was undergoing massive change at the
time and that had just repealed its anti-semit-
ic laws. When only 15 he started teaching; a
duty he would stay with for most of his life.
Over the years, he taught in a variety of posi-
tions, schools, and artistic media, spreading
and exchanging ideas. He took this ethic with
him when he worked with Malevich in head-
ing the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when
he developed a variant suprematist series of
his own, Proun, and further still in 1921,
when he took up a job as the Russian cultural
ambassador to Weimar Germany, working
with and influencing important figures of the
Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his
stay. In his remaining years he brought signi-
ficant innovation and change to typography,
exhibition design, photomontage, and book
design, producing critically respected works
and winning international acclaim fo