El fox artificial selection. How to watch (and understand) the works of El Lissitzky

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (El Lissitzky) is a famous Soviet avant-garde artist. Known as one of the main artists who influenced the development of the Russian avant-garde, non-objective art and Suprematism, in particular.

El Lissitzky, who also signed as Leiser Lissitzky and Eliezer Lissitzky, was born in 1890 in the village of Pochinok (Smolensk region). He studied at the Higher Polytechnic School and the Riga Polytechnic Institute at the faculties of architecture. He was a member of the avant-garde art community Kultur-League. He was familiar with and even at his invitation moved to live in Vitebsk for a while, where he taught for a year at the People's Art School. In addition, he was a teacher at the Moscow Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops) and Vkhutein (Higher Artistic and Technical Institute). For some time he lived outside of Russia - in Germany and Switzerland. He also worked together with the development of the basics and subtleties of Suprematism.

In addition to his paintings, made in the style of Russian avant-garde and Suprematism, El Lissitzky is famous for his architectural developments. So, a series of his paintings "Prouns"(new art projects) subsequently became the basis for furniture design, layouts, installations, and so on. It is also worth mentioning that the printing house of the Ogonyok magazine was built according to the project of this particular artist and architect. In addition, he created furniture design, drew propaganda posters, was fond of professional photography and photomontage. One of the most famous avant-garde artists of the Soviet Union died in 1941. He was buried in Moscow at the Donskoy cemetery.

Artist El Lissitzky paintings

Here are two squares

Everything for the front! All for victory! (Let's get more tanks)

Illustration for the book by V. Mayakovsky

Beat the whites with a red wedge

New person

Magazine cover Thing

Project of horizontal skyscrapers for Moscow

Born in the family of craftsman Mordukhai Zalmanovich (Mark Solomonovich) Lissitzky and Sarah Leibovna Lissitzky in a small village in the Smolensk province. The family soon moved to Vitebsk.

In Smolensk, Lazar Lissitzky graduated from a real school in 1909.

He entered the Faculty of Architecture of the Higher Polytechnic School in Germany and later transferred to the Riga Polytechnic Institute, which was evacuated to Moscow during the First World War in 1914.

In 1916, Lazar Lissitzky began to participate in the work of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Arts, including exhibitions in 1917-1918 in Moscow. He was engaged in illustrating books published in Yiddish. In the same period, he went on ethnographic trips to Belarus and Lithuania, collecting materials about the Jewish decorative arts and traveled in France and Italy.

He graduated from the Riga Polytechnic Institute in 1918 with the title of engineer-architect. In the same year, Lazar Lissitzky became one of the founders of the Kultur League ( League of Culture) is an avant-garde artistic and literary association.

He worked in the architectural bureau of Velikovsky and Klein in Moscow.

In 1919, he signed a contract for the illustration of 11 children's books with the Kyiv publishing house "Yidisher Folks-Farlag" ( Jewish People's Publishing House). In the same year, at the invitation of Marc Chagall, he came to Vitebsk to teach at the People's Art School until 1920. He decorated the city for the holidays and participated in the preparation of the celebrations of the Committee for Combating Unemployment, designed books and posters.

In 1920, El Lissitzky began to sign his works with this pseudonym and work in the style of Suprematism under the influence of K. Malevich. He created several propaganda posters in the style of Suprematism.

Later joined State Institute Artistic Culture(INHUK). In his workshop, the project "Lenin's Tribune" was completed.

He began teaching at the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (VKhUTEMAS) in 1921 in Moscow. In the same year he left for Germany and later moved to Switzerland.

In 1922-1923, he actively illustrated books of Jewish publishing houses with his graphics, while living in Berlin.

In 1923-1925, El Lissitzky was engaged in vertical zoning of urban development, creating projects of "horizontal skyscrapers" for Moscow.

In 1926 he began teaching at the Higher Artistic and Technical Institute (VKHUTEIN).

In 1927, he created new principles of exhibition exposition as a whole organism, which were implemented at the All-Union Printing Exhibition in Moscow in 1927.

In 1928 - 1929, El Lissitzky was engaged in the creation of transformable and built-in furniture. During this period, he was engaged in photomontage, creating for the "Russian Exhibition" in Zurich in 1929 the poster "Everything for the front! All for victory! (Let's have more tanks)."

In 1930-1932, according to the project of El Lissitzky, a printing house for the Ogonyok magazine was built in 1st Samotechny Lane. The building of the printing house was built on the principle of a "horizontal skyscraper".

In 1937, El Lissitzky's photomontage was presented, dedicated to the adoption of the Stalinist constitution, in four issues of the USSR in Construction magazine.

El Lissitzky died of tuberculosis in 1941 and is buried at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.

Lissitzky can equally be regarded as an artist of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s, one of the founders of Jewish modernism in 1916–1919, and a classic representative of the international European avant-garde of the 1920s.

He studied at the 1st city school in Smolensk. In 1909, after an unsuccessful attempt to enter the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, he left for Germany, where he studied at the Faculty of Architecture at the Higher Polytechnic Institute in Darmstadt (1909–1914), one of the leading centers of German modernism. During summer holidays comes to Smolensk and Vitebsk, where his parents lived, gets acquainted with Yu.M.Pen.

L.M. Lissitzky. Proun #4. 1923. 60.1 × 43.5. GTG

L.M. Lissitzky. Proun #2. 1923. 60.4×44. GTG

L.M. Lissitzky. Bully. Sheet from the folder “Figures from the opera by A.E. Kruchenykh “Victory over the Sun””. 1920–1921 Paper, gouache, ink, graphite and colored pencils. 49.4×37.9. GTG

L.M. Lissitzky. Cover of the pamphlet "Committee on Combating Unemployment". Vitebsk. 1919. Color lithograph

In 1911 he visited one of the oldest synagogues in Europe in Worms. In 1912, in Paris, he met O. A. Zadkine. For the first time he shows his works at the exhibition of the Artistic Association in St. Petersburg. In 1913 he wandered around Italy. He graduated from the institute in 1914 and, in connection with the outbreak of the First World War, went to Russia through Switzerland, Italy and the Balkans.

Since a diploma from a Russian institute was required to work in Russia, he entered the architectural faculty of the Riga Polytechnic Institute in 1915, which was evacuated to Moscow during these years. Works as an assistant in the architectural bureau of B.M. Velikovsky and R.I. Klein, helping in the architectural design of the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

Lissitzky is rapidly entering artistic life: he participates in a variety of exhibitions and events, such as the creation of the Circle of Jewish National Aesthetics; he is one of the activists of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Artists, secretary of the organizing committee for the exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Jewish artists in Moscow in March-April 1917 at the Lemercier Gallery. He was invited to show his works at the exhibition of the Society of Artists "Jack of Diamonds", where he first neighbors with K.S. Malevich, at the exhibitions "World of Art" in 1916 (Moscow) and in 1917 (Petrograd, Moscow).

But, perhaps, the main thing at this time is books - a completely new phenomenon in the Jewish graphics of these years, for the design of which Lissitzky masterfully uses the traditions of Jewish popular prints, ancient miniatures, and calligraphy. In the spring of 1917, bibliophiles enthusiastically greeted the release of M. M. Broderzon’s “Prague Legend” (“Sihat Khulin”), twenty out of one hundred and ten copies the artist himself painted and laid like old scrolls-ribbons in wooden cases. The Prague Legend was followed by The Goat (Had Gadya) by Moshe Kulbak (1919) and The Mischievous Boy (Ingl-Zingl-Khvat) by Mani Leib (1919). In 1916, he designed in the spirit of cubo-futurism "The sun is running out" by K.A. Bolshakov. In addition to books, Lissitzky illustrates various periodicals.

A special chapter in the artist's biography is a trip to the synagogues of the Western Territory (he makes sketches from the murals of the Mogilev synagogue). In February 1919 Lissitzky discussed with I.B. Rybak in Pushcha-Voditsa near Kyiv the forthcoming first exhibition of the Kultur-League. It seemed that his artistic program was predetermined for years. But in May 1919 he received an invitation from M.Z. Chagall to come to Vitebsk and teach classes at an art school. Chagall hopes that Lissitzky will continue to develop the foundations of Jewish modernism within the walls of VNHU. But Lissitzky is already interested in other problems. In the workshop of architecture led by him, they begin to work in terms of Suprematism. Lissitzky with I.G. Chashnik in Moscow persuades Malevich to come to Vitebsk. On November 8, at the 1st state exhibition of paintings by Moscow and local artists, Vitebsk residents saw for the first time a Suprematist painting by Malevich.

During these months, Lissitzky is actively working on abstract compositions, which he will soon call prouns. The cover of the pamphlet "Committee on Combating Unemployment" reproduces one of the master's first prouns. In December, Lissitzky with Malevich and students make a curtain in the city theater, decorate the podium and three buildings. In January 1920, Lissitzky and Malevich created the Posnovis group (Followers of the New Art), which from February 14 will become Unovis. At the same time, Lissitzky does not break ties with the Kultur-League. In February-March, he shows Jewish graphics of 1917-1919 in Kyiv, becomes one of the organizers of the multilateral work of Unovis. Under the influence of Lissitzky, a serious interest in architectural projects arose in Unovis (N.M. Suetin, Chashnik, L.M. Khidekel). One of the most unusual projects of this period is the lithographic poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1920).

Lissitzky made the cover and layout of the almanac "Unovis No. 1" (1920). It was at this time that he chose the pseudonym "El" for his works. In June 1920, prouns were exhibited in Moscow at an exhibition for the First All-Russian Conference of Teachers and Students. In the summer he travels with Malevich to Orenburg, where they meet I.A. Kudryashov.

In 1921, work continued on the lithographs of Prouna. Lissitzky is finishing the first folder of eleven lithographs (fifty copies). In the spring of 1921, he gave a lecture on "Architecture and monumental painting" at the Vkhutemas, the prouns were shown at the one-day exhibition of Unovis in Vitebsk (March 28), in June - at the exhibition for the III Congress of the Comintern at the Continental Hotel in Moscow.

On September 23, Lissitzky makes a report on "Prouny" in Inkhuk, and in December he shows them at the second Unovis exhibition in Inkhuk. In 1922 "Prouns" were included in the exposition of the First Russian art exhibition in the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin (in 1923 - in the UMA).

In 1922 Lissitzky was in Berlin. Together with I. G. Ehrenburg, he edits the magazine "Thing". It turns out, conceived back in Vitebsk, "Suprematist tale about two squares." Designs various publications in German and Russian-language publishing houses. Supports attempts to create an international style in the 1920s. Participates in the International Congress of avant-garde artists in Düsseldorf. September 13 in Weimar participates in the Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists.

In 1923 he met in Berlin with V.V. Mayakovsky and designed his collection "For the Voice". This edition will become a classic example of modern printing. In Hannover, the second folder of Proun lithographs is published - “1st Kestnermappe”. According to the sketches of 1920–1921, the “figurine” folder “Victory over the Sun” was published.

The Great Berlin Art Exhibition exhibits Proun Space, perhaps the first installation in 20th-century art.

In February 1924, due to illness (pulmonary tuberculosis), he was forced to leave for Switzerland. Despite his illness, he continues to work actively - writes articles, prepares an anthology of contemporary art "Kunstisms" (1925) with Hans Arp. Makes one of the most original photographic works “Self-portrait. Designer "(1924). Begins to develop the idea of a horizontal skyscraper for Moscow. Maintains contacts with ASNOVA.

June 13, 1925 sails on a ship to Leningrad, where he meets with Malevich, Suetin, Chashnik.

In the West, Lissitzky's works are shown at many exhibitions in different countries. In 1926, the Goltz Gallery in Munich hosted the Lissitzky-Mondrian-Man Rey exhibition. In 1926, he was an exhibitor at the 4 Arts exhibition in Moscow (since October 31), where he shows Tribune for the Square (1920), a project of the Cabinet of Abstract Art for the museum in Hannover and a photo portrait of Hans Arp.

In January 1927, S.Kh. Kuppers arrived in the USSR, with whom Lissitzky entered into marriage. Designs Mayakovsky's poem "Good". One of the organizers of the All-Union Printing Exhibition, where he proposes new principles for the exhibition space. This work had a great resonance. He teaches at Vkhutemas. In 1928, he supervised the design of the Soviet pavilion at the International Press Exhibition in Cologne.

He continues to design books (I.L. Selvinsky. "Notes of a Poet". M., 1928) and exhibitions ("Film and Photo". Stuttgart. 1929; Küppers-Lisitskaya took part in the work). During a short stay in Austria, he makes a project for the book-film Four Arithmetic Operations (1928).

In Moscow, he joins the Oktyabr group. V.E. Meyerhold invites Lissitzky to arrange a play based on the play by S.M. Tretyakov “I want a child”. One of the unusual projects is a poster of the Russian exhibition in Zurich at the Museum applied arts(1929). In Vkhutemas, he works with students on furniture and interior projects.

In the early 1930s, he continued to work on the design of various exhibitions (International Hygiene Exhibition, 1930, Dresden). In the 1930s, he made photo albums and designed a number of issues of the magazine "USSR at a Construction Site".

Lissitzky's works are kept in many museums around the world and in Russia - in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, RGALI, MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum and others.

Literature:
El Lissitzky. Maler, Architect, Typograf, Fotograf. Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften. Übergeben von Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers. Dresden, 1967;
El Lissitzky. Koln, Galerie Gmurzynska, 1976;
El Lissitzky. Proun und Wolkenbügel. Schriften, Briefe, Documente. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers und Jen Lissitzky (Hg.). Dresden, 1977;
Kai Uwe Hernken. El Lissitzky. Revolution and Avantgarde. Koln, 1990;
El Lissitzky. Jenseits der Abstraktion. Ausst-Kat. hg. M.Tupytsin. Hannover, 1999;
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky. 1890–1941 Exhibition dedicated to the centenary of the birth. M.-Eindhoven, 1990. [Catalogue] Eindhoven, 1990;
El Lissitzky. 1890–1941 To the exhibition in the halls of the State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow. 1991. [Catalog] M., 1991.;

What kind of person was he

Against the background of the noble provocateurs of the Russian avant-garde, El Lissitzky seems to be a modest man: he did not paint his face and did not fasten a spoon to his suit, he was not afraid that his Suprematism would be stolen, he did not drive other artists out of his house - and did not make fun of them. He worked phenomenally hard, in parallel taught all his life and was friends not only with Russian artists, but also by famous foreigners: in 1921 he was appointed cultural emissary of Soviet Russia in Germany and actually became a liaison between the great artists of both countries.

Constructor (self-portrait), 1924. From the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery

For Lissitzky great importance his Jewish origin played - and the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center knew from the very beginning that it was about Lissitzky that they would prepare their first large exhibition project about a Jewish artist for the anniversary. Lissitzky was born in a small Jewish town near Smolensk, studied under Yu.M. , antique miniatures and calligraphy. After the revolution, he became one of the founders of the Kultur League, an avant-garde association of artists and writers who wanted to create a new Jewish national art. He will cooperate with the Kultur League for many years, which will not be hindered by his passion for Suprematism, and then the invention of his own style: even in his famous prouns, he will include Yiddish letters.

Tatyana Goryacheva

Art critic, specialist in Russian avant-garde, curator of the exhibition

There was not a single bad review about Lissitzky: he was a wonderful and kind person, with an incendiary character, he could ignite everyone around him. Even though he was not such a charismatic leader as Malevich, who always gathered around him a group of students. He was a perfectionist, he brought everything to perfection - and in those of his later works, where, like any master in the Stalin era, he was overtaken by the problem of the entropy of creativity. Even in montages and collages with Stalin and Lenin: apart from the character, from the point of view of photomontage, they are made flawlessly.

Flying ship, 1922

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Glove, 1922

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Shifs card, 1922

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Garden of Eden, 1916. Copy of decorative motif for Torah crown or tombstone

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A lion. Sign of the zodiac, 1916. A copy of the painting on the ceiling of the Mogilev synagogue

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Triton and bird, 1916. Based on the painting of the synagogue in Druya

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Sagittarius. Sign of the zodiac, 1916. A copy of the painting on the ceiling of the Mogilev synagogue

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Great synagogue in Vitebsk, 1917

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Maria Nasimova

Chief Curator of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center

Lissitzky was a very pleasant and kind person, he was not seen in any scandals. He was actually monogamous: he had all two big loves, and both of them fantastically influenced his work. In the Russian avant-garde among artists, eccentric behavior was considered the norm, but he did not spend his strength on this at all. Lissitzky studied with Chagall and Malevich - and was a good student, and then worked hard to create an environment around him. We were not able to show his inner circle at the exhibition, but we will certainly tell about him in other projects: in Lissitzky's notebooks, among the phones of Mayakovsky and Malevich, one could find the numbers of Mies van der Rohe and Gropius. He was truly an international artist and was friends with big and big names.

How to understand the works of Lissitzky

Lissitzky traveled extensively in Europe, studied in Germany as an architect, and then continued his education at the Polytechnic Institute evacuated from Riga. The foundation of his work is precisely architecture and Jewish roots, attention to which he developed throughout his life, exploring the ornaments and decoration of ancient synagogues. In his early works, they are reflected along with the traditional popular print. Then - successively - Lissitzky was strongly influenced by the mystical works of Chagall and the Suprematism of Malevich. Soon after his passion for Suprematism, he, according to his own statement, "became pregnant with architecture" - in his short period of life in Germany in the 1920s, he met Kurt Schwitters and was fond of constructivism and created his famous "horizontal skyscraper", as well as many other architectural works, which, unfortunately, remained on paper: he comes up with a textile mill, a commune house, a yacht club, a complex of the Pravda publishing house, but by and large remains a paper architect: his only building was the Ogonyok printing house built in 1- m Samotechny Lane.

Tatyana Goryacheva

“Lissitzky was fond of Suprematism for a very short time - then he began to work on the basis of constructivism and Suprematism, synthesizing them into his own style: he created his own system of prouns - projects for the approval of the new. He came up with these works as a universal system of building the world, from which one could get anything - a composition of architecture and book covers, in which these motifs can be guessed. In the Tretyakov Gallery, we show architecture in which the design of the prouns is also guessed, and in the Jewish Museum there will be many of his photographic works, montages and photograms. His exhibition design remains in some of the sketches and photographs and is an important part of his work."

New approval projects

Skyscraper on the square near the Nikitsky Gate. General view from above. Proun on the theme of the project

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Proun 43, circa 1922

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Proun 43, circa 1922

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Proun 23, 1919. Sketch, version

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Proun 1E (City), 1919–1920

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It was the prouns - invented over several weeks on the basis of Malevich's Suprematism and the plastic principles of constructivism - that brought Lissitzky world recognition. They combined the techniques of architectural thinking and geometric abstraction, he himself called them "a transfer station from painting to architecture." The ambitious title of the “Project for Approving the New” also served to separate Lissitzky’s works from Malevich’s mystical non-objective world (Malevich himself was very disappointed that his best student nullified Suprematism in the theory and practice of his experiments). Lissitzky, unlike Malevich, solved completely different spatial problems - and described them as "a prototype of the architecture of the world" and in this sense he understood by them much more than just volumetric Suprematism - but the utopian and ideal relationship of space in the world: these ideas he will continue to implement both its architecture and design.

“Lissitzky worked within the trend of geometric abstraction of the early 20th century, and the main works of our large exhibition are his prouns and figurines, incredibly beautiful works and, perhaps, the most significant thing that Lissitzky did in his life. It is difficult to single out his main works: he worked so hard and fruitfully in various directions. But it seems to me that picturesque prouns should be especially interesting - the viewer has never seen them in Russia. I really like his figurines: he came up with them for an electromechanical production, where instead of actors, puppets were supposed to move, which were set in motion by the director in the center of the stage - which, unfortunately, did not materialize.

Print design

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Design of the collection of poems by V.V. Mayakovsky "For the voice", 1923

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Lissitzky was engaged in books all his life - from 1917 to 1940. In 1923, he published a manifesto in Merz magazine, where he affirmed the principles of a new book, the words of which are perceived by the eyes, and not by ear, expressive means are saved, and attention shifts from words to letters. In this principle, his famous and standard edition of Mayakovsky's collection "For the Voice" is framed: on the right side of the pages were cut, like letters in a telephone book, the names of poems - so that the reader can easily find what he needs. As such, Lissitzky's printing work is usually divided into three stages: the first is associated with the illustration of books in Yiddish and publications of the Kultur-League and the Jewish branch of the People's Commissariat of Education, then a separate stage is given to the constructivist publications of the 1920s and, finally, his most innovative photo books of the 1930s, which arose at a time when Lissitzky was fascinated by photomontage.

Photograms, photomontage and photocollages

Photo montage for the magazine "USSR in Construction" No. 9–12, 1937

Moving installation "Red Army" at the international exhibition "Press", Cologne, 1928

Many avant-garde artists were fond of photo collage in the 1920s and 1930s. For Lissitzky, this was at first a new artistic means of designing a book, but then the possibilities of photography for the artist expanded, and in 1928 Lissitzky, at his famous exhibition "The Press", uses photography as a new artistic means in exposition design - with photo panels and active photo montage. It should be noted that Lissitzky's experiments with editing were more complicated than those of the same Rodchenko: he created a multi-layered image from several photographs when printing, obtaining frame depth due to the influx and intersection of images.

Architecture

Project for a skyscraper at the Nikitsky Gate, 1923–1925

Lissitzky is an architect by education, and all his works are about space in one way or another. At one time, German critics noted that the main thing in Lissitzky's works was the struggle with the old architectural understanding of space, which was perceived as static. Lissitzky created a dynamic space in all his works - exhibitions, typography, art design. The idea of a horizontal skyscraper, far ahead of its time, was never realized, like many of his other projects - but entered the history of avant-garde architecture.

Exhibition design

Proun space, 1923. Fragment of the Great Berlin Art Exhibition

Lissitzky's exhibition design techniques are still considered textbook. If he was not a pioneer in architecture and painting, then it can be said about exhibition design that Lissitzky invented it - and came up with new principles of art installation. For his first exhibition, Spaces of the Prouns, Lissitzky replaced the paintings with their enlarged plywood models for the “space of constructivist art,” and came up with an unusual wall treatment that made the walls change color if the visitor was in motion. For Lissitzky, it was important that the viewer become a participant in the exhibition process on a par with works of art, and the exhibition itself would turn into a game, for this he, like modern curators, selected exhibits to enhance the effect of their statements, arranged their spectacular compositions, reminiscent of prouns. In the Hall of Constructivist Art in Dresden, the viewer could open and close the works they wanted to see - directly "communicating with the objects on display" in the words of Lissitzky. And at another famous exhibition of Lissitzky, "The Press", in Cologne, he actually created new exhibits with his exhibition solution - a huge star and moving installations on which he showed his work.

About the fate of the artist in the great history of art

El Lissitzky. Beat the whites with a red wedge, 1920. Vitebsk

Lissitzky shared the fate of all the great avant-garde artists. By the 1930s, with a change in state policy in the field of culture, he began to receive less and less work, after his death his wife was completely exiled to Siberia, and the name of the artist himself was forgotten. Given Lissitzky's close connections in the European art world, it is not surprising that his influence abroad is much more appreciated than in Russia. His exhibitions are regularly held in the West, there are also more opportunities to get his works, many of which have settled in America - with picturesque prouns, for example, the Russian audience is practically unfamiliar, and the RSL poster "Beat the wedge" has not been given to exhibitions for the past 40 years - meanwhile, in its importance for the history of the Russian avant-garde, this work is equal in rights with Malevich's Black Square.

It is not easy to judge how exactly Lissitzky changed the world: he worked in all conceivable directions at once, but it is difficult to associate a single author's concept with his name. Lissitzky is associated with the invention of Jewish modernism, and with the development of constructivist architecture, and with the invention of constructivist techniques in printing, his merits are undeniable - perhaps just the first - in the design of exhibitions and photo experiments, where he really was ahead of his time. And the short period associated with the invention of prouns had a strong influence on all Western fine arts - first of all, on the Bauhaus school, but also on the Hungarian avant-garde.

Tatyana Goryacheva

“Without Lissitzky, modern exhibition design would be impossible: his works have become a textbook. It is easy to refer to Malevich's Suprematism, Mondrian's neoplasticism, but it is difficult to refer to Lissitzky's exhibition design - that's why, probably, no one refers to it anymore: how can one be the author of the arrangement of objects in space? And it was he who came up with the techniques of photo friezes and moving installations. He was rather an artist of integrating talent: he snatched the leading trends from contemporary art and created completely utopian architectural projects on their basis, always bringing his own style to them. His projects within the framework of constructivist printing can always be easily and unmistakably recognized. Horizontal skyscrapers were a breakthrough, but they were never built - so we can say that Lissitzky achieved more success in printing. He made a lot of posters and book covers, designed books all his life. We show absolutely fantastic books in Yiddish, which he designed back in 1916 and 1918, even before he became an adherent of contemporary artistic systems, although he was already trying to introduce modern techniques into them. But the Jewish tradition is also preserved in his works until the end of his life: among the books of 1921 there are those whose cover is completely constructivist, and inside there are ordinary subject illustrations, gravitating towards popular stylization.

Maria Nasimova

“Lissitzky began precisely as a Jewish illustrator, this is quite known fact, but he is still associated primarily with prouns. Although he worked in a completely different genres! One typographic chapter of our exhibition occupies a whole hall - 50 exhibits. The Jewish period is very important for Lissitzky, although he abruptly switched from it to his constructivist decisions - he was a great graphic artist, designer, illustrator. Created photo collages one of the first in history.

Lissitzky turned photography and design upside down. I saw at one of the exhibitions how his project of a residential unit was recreated - and he simply struck me: pure IKEA! How was it even possible to come up with a hundred years ago? He studied his models of space from Malevich, but completely reworked them and showed them in his own way. If you ask designers today who is the basis for them, then everyone will answer that Lissitzky.