El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky – Studies in Germany; witness of the October Revolution

Elieser ‘El’ Lissitzky was born in the small Russian town of Potschinok on 22 November 1890. His childhood and teenage years however were spent in Smolensk before studying in Germany architecture and engineering at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. Prior to that, he had applied to the art university in St Petersburg but was rejected because of his Jewish background. In 1917, El Lissitzky was a witness of the October Revolution in which he saw an artistic and social new beginning for fallen humanity. This insight had a lasting effect on his art and characterised the configuration of his pictures, creating probably the first propaganda poster in an abstract style in 1920: Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge is considered by connoisseurs to be the artistic consequence of his acquaintance with Kasimir Malevich, whose supremacist principles Lissitzky did not entirely adopt, but from whom he drew inspiration for his own abstract avant-gardism. Malevich was a teacher at the art school at that time in Belarusian Wizebsk, whose then director, Marc Chagall, had also recruited El Lissitzky. 

Between painting and architecture

Alongside Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky cultivated contact with many other greats of the international art scene of his time. Illustrious acquaintances included names such as Hans Arp, Jan Tschichold and Willi Baumeister, and he designed the art journal Merz with Kurt Schwitters. During a stay of many years in Germany and Switzerland, he met the art historian Sophie Küppers in 1922 and married in 1927. Lissitzky himself saw his creativity as domiciled between architecture and painting; he moved in this field of tension and also often designed avant-garde architectural projects such as the Lenin Tribune or the so-called ‘skyscrapers’, which he saw as a counter-design to the capitalist skyscrapers in the USA. Despite all his criticism of capitalism, Lissitzky was also not averse to commercial commissions and designed an advertising poster for the Pelikan AG in Hannover in 1929. In essence, art for Lissitzky should appeal to the general public; the idea that it had become a “private affair of art scholars, critics, lovers” was abhorrent to him. He also liked to work for the smallest people and designed the covers of several children’s books. 

Health problems; numerous exhibitions

El Lissitzky was much recognised as an artist during his lifetime, but his career was hindered by health problems: He suffered from tuberculosis from 1921, necessitating ever longer stays in sanatoria and hospitals. However, his extremely versatile and alert mind was not limited by this physical indisposition, and he repeatedly found the opportunity to impart his knowledge and vision as a teacher at various colleges. He published magazines and created an impression of sculptural depth with his two-dimensional drawings that few painters achieved in a similar way. Through it all, he was fueled by the vision of a better world that he strove to achieve through his art. 

El Lissitzky died in Moscow on 30 December 1941. More than 70 years after his death, works by El Lissitzky sell for considerable prices for which collectors have to dig deep for one of his much-coveted originals.