Lazar Markovich Lissitzky
(1890-1941)

In the galaxy of "people first" Russian avant-garde place El Lissitzky in his own way unique. He was not the discoverer of a preacher of the system (such as Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin ), but was rather a promoter of the language, it saved the artist from scholasticism and fanaticism, but his work has provided an extraordinary breadth of application.

The name of Lissitzky to the greatest extent due to the spread of a new aesthetic as a "style-time" like no other, he contributed to its international recognition, actively participating in international projects.

Lissitzky's childhood passed in the provincial Vitebsk, but from the very first creative steps, he established himself as a European (though his father already knew two languages ​​and a translation of Heinrich Heine and Shakespeare) received his engineer-architect in the Higher Polytechnic School in Darmstadt in Germany (1909-14), in Paris, spoke with artistic bohemia, studied the old art on a journey to Italy.

Returning to Russia was in some way "pripadeniem to the roots": Lissitzky moving closer to Moscow circle of Jewish national aesthetics and Kiev "Culture-League", draws some books in Hebrew ("Prague legend" Broderzon M., 1917, "Chevrette "1919," Ukrainian folk tale ", 1922, etc.), connecting them to the tradition of handwritten scrolls with the methods of" miroskusnicheskoy "graphics.

But the "national" phase did not last long - the very time of revolution intensified cosmopolitan and thirsty universal language of art. During the teaching of architecture and printing business in the People's art school in Vitebsk (1919 - 20) Lissitzky comes to non-objective art. In Vitebsk invited him to Moscow 3. Chagall , but the "left turn" occurred under the influence of Malevich , displacing Chagall from the scene and turned the quiet town in the "Suprematist capital."

Lissitzky, Malevich became a member-based society have hung ("affirmative new art"); formative principles of Suprematism not only adapted them in mass genres (poster "Beat the Whites with the red wedge", 1920; book "Suprematist tale about two square", 1922), but and in a way evolved into the "Proun" ("approval of new projects," 1919-24). As the spatial models of utopian architecture, "Proun" Suprematist allowed to translate the geometry of the plane into the volume in real urban environment - they formed the basis of unrealized architectural projects Lissitzky (horizontal skyscraper, communal housing, a yacht club).

Another form of development Suprematist laws were "figurines" (scenographic sketches) for an unrealized production of the opera "Victory over the Sun" (1920-21), conceived by the artist as "electro-show." The machinery, inventive practices generally held Lissitzky (one of the best of his inventions - the project of mobile speaker's rostrum, 1924).