Lissitzky, El (Eliezer Markovich Lissitzky) (lyĭsyēts`kē), 1890–1941, Russian painter, designer, teacher, and architect. Lissitzky studied at Darmstadt and later taught at the Moscow Academy of Arts, collaborating with avant-garde artists and architects. Begun in 1919, his series of abstract geometric paintings entitled Proun (an acronym for "project for the affirmation of the new"), as well as his many prints, were key works in Russia's suprematist movement (see suprematism suprematism, Russian art movement founded (1913) by Casimir Malevich in Moscow, parallel to constructivism . Malevich drew Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky to his revolutionary, nonobjective art.
..... Click the link for more information. ). Lissitzky left Russia (1921) after Lenin issued an edict against the avant-garde. Living in Germany, he introduced suprematist and constructivist ideas to László Moholy-Nagy Moholy-Nagy, László (lä`slō mô`hôlē-nŏ`dyə)
..... Click the link for more information. and had a significant influence on the Bauhaus Bauhaus (bou`hous), school of art and architecture in Germany.
..... Click the link for more information. movement. Before returning (1928) to the Soviet Union he designed the Russian section of the Cologne Newspaper Exhibition, one of his many severely abstract exhibition designs. Lissitzky was also an important innovator in typography and advertising. His writings about architecture include Russia: The Reconstruction of Architecture in the Soviet Union (1930).

Bibliography

See biography by his wife, S. Lissitzky-Küppers (tr. 1968, repr. 1980); studies by V. Margolin (1997), M. Tuppitsyn (1999), and N. Perloff and B. Reed, ed. (2003).

Lissitzky, El

or El Lisitsky orig. Lazar Markovich Lisitskii

(born Nov. 10, 1890, Pochinok, near Smolensk, Russia—died Dec. 30, 1941, Moscow) Russian painter, typographer, and designer. As a teacher at Marc Chagall's revolutionary art school in Vitebsk, he met Kazimir Malevich, whose influence is seen in a series of abstract paintings that were Lissitzky's major contribution to Constructivism. In 1922, after the Soviet government turned against modern art, he went to Germany. There Theo van Doesburg and László Moholy-Nagy transmitted his ideas to the West through their teaching at the Bauhaus. In 1925 he returned to Russia and devoted himself to devising new techniques of printing, photomontage, and architecture.