Essay: El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky was born in Russia, 1890 and passed away in the year 194 he was a Russian designer, also a critical character within the Russian avant-garde. His significance is mostly seen through his status as a pioneer of Suprematism wherein he created exhibition artworks for the Soviet Union. He had contributed extensively to graphic arts through his utilization of a minimalist colour palette and geometric constructions. Lissitzky employed these as processes which would effectively reach his target audience, he believed that art and life could mesh, and that the former could deeply affect the latter. The following case study will explore El Lissitzky’s context in history and their role as a designer.
El Lissitzky had a broad approach to design in the interest of his strong relation enclosed by art and life, he believed that artists work is important and could be life changing to the world. His belief led to fields that brought his artworks into the public serving as architecture and graphic arts. El Lissitzky’s work appointed an important effect to modern art today and different art design styles used. In the year 1918, El Lissitzky was inspired by a Russian artist, named Kashmir Malevich to start creating suprematism art, a style of abstract art using geometry and bold colour to maintain an area and art elements of the image. He used strong use of geometric shapes including triangles, circles, squares and rectangles which gave a sense of energy and space. The colours that Lissitzky mainly incorporated within his work were bold colours such as reds, blacks, blues and whites to set the mood and to make strong political statements.
The period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, attained its creativity at which points the ideas of the avant-garde encountered the newly emerged sponsored leadership of socialist realism. He moved around in the 1920s and spent time in both Germany as a cultural representative of Russia. El Lissitzky was one of the most innovative designers of the constructivist ideal, he created his own painting style which he called “prouns” a project for new art. El Lissitzky quotes “The image is not a painting, but a structure around which we must circle, looking at it from all sides, peering down from above, investigating from below.” (Zurakhinsky, 2009) claims that his approach to art was distinctive in the interest of creating works that have an effect on the viewer.
Lissitzky’s artistic interests at the time were completely attracted by Jewish themes and culture. He took part in Semyon Ansky’s ethnographical expedition inspecting the masterpieces of Jewish culture in the Pale of Settlement, he also illustrated Yiddish books (for example; Moyshe Broderzon’s Sikh’s Kulin, 1917) Figure one. The illustrations for these books show the influence of both Cubo-Futurism, a Russian offshoot of European Futurism, and lubki (hand-coloured popular prints). He also began creating figurative art for Suprematism for a two-year anniversary celebration of the Vitebsk committee to Combat Unemployment under the name El Lissitzky, which also led to designing a series of propaganda posters in the years 1919 to 1920. It is evident that figure one displays a Yiddish erotic poem, that uses double columns of Hebrew language in Jewish script with figures that are imitated from the ornamental style of Jewish folk art. The published result was created by text that is rolled like a scroll and boxed like a mezuzah a typically small box that is placed on the doorpost of Jewish homes with verses from the Torah engraved inside. El Lissitzky’s work represents the first modern Jewish art book, combined with Hebrew tradition of modernist describing figure and line.
El Lissitzky had a major impact for social change, he generated work throughout three overlapping periods: Jewish from 1915- 1923, Suprematist from 1917 to the early 1920s and Stalinist in the 1930s. He participated in the Jewish art renaissance in Russia and helped accordingly in its development. El Lissitzky studied engineering and architecture, his sketches weren’t achievable due to his complicated structural designs, of all his architectural designs, only one building was constructed by him.
One of El Lissitzky’s most famous pieces was a propaganda poster titled (“Beat the whites with the red edge” created around 1919 Figure 2). A propaganda poster is typically used to promote a specific social or political issue, Lissitzky’s poster was in the style of constructivism addressing the Russian civil war. It is clear that this poster became popular in the year 1921 in Germany, within the western publications it has become a symbolic image due to its meaningful approach. The red triangle aiming towards the white circled area symbolises the Bolshevik’s a part of the Russian social labour party which are evidently defeating the white movement. The colours used throughout this image are very simple, bold colours that represent the issue and compose us to understand the image accordingly.
In 1921, El Lissitzky was also an inventive exhibition designer, he worked as a Russian cultural ambassador in Weimar Germany, working and guiding important characters of the Bauhaus movements whilst his time spent as an ambassador. As years passed, Lissitzky lead important change to the typography field, exhibition design, abstract field and book design field, he helped to create admired work and to win the international recognition for his exhibition designs. Between the years 1923 and 1928, El Lissitzky altered many of his proun pieces into three different experiences, they consisted of “abstract rooms”, the “proun room” (recreated by Stedelijik-Van-Abbe museum, figure three) and a collection of exhibition spaces for the Soviet pavilions at a number of various international annotations. Figure three is a wall-size abstract artwork designed to allow the visitors to acquire and feel a 4D physical effect as if they were floating in space. El Lissitzky designed this room with frames at uneven heights placed on the plain white wall with assorted works upside down and traditional backgrounds in most of his exhibitions. Overall, El Lissitzky was a man who loved to experiment with a variety of design elements and principles to create eye-catching art.
The Russian avant-garde was a dominant movement of modern art in the Russian empire that occurred primarily throughout the years 1890-1930. Russian Avant-garde Artist El Lissitzky, made a career of utilizing art for a social and political change.
El Lissitzky inspired many people to create constructivism and suprematism art and designs, it is evident that El Lissitzky’s radical approach of designs and artworks were considered a progress to help shape and grow graphic design as we know today. His work may be considered fundamental to the development of modern abstract art and a great influence on modern architecture and design. John Clifford, the author of the novel Graphic Icons: Visionaries Who Shaped Modern Graphic Design, portrays Russian designer El Lissitzky, whose work often connected elements of design on a strong diagonal axis, giving his designs a new quality ( Clifford,2013).  It is clear that El Lissitzky’s work influenced designers to shape and create modern designs.