Lisitsky, Lazar Markovich. El Lissitzky paintings Family and Fate

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Collectors and dealers also love El Lissitzky for his poster “Beat the whites with a red wedge!” - the most expensive Soviet poster. Care: $182,500. Sotheby's auction. Prints. April 26-27, 2012. New York. Lot No. 131. The mystery artist and “eternal” wanderer of constructivism Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (El Lissitzky) (1890 – 1941) lived several lives in art. A graphic artist, illustrator, typographer, architect, photographer, theorist and architectural critic, as well as one of the creators of a new art form - design, Lissitzky is one of the key figures of the Jewish Renaissance,Russian avant-garde, photo avant-garde AndSoviet constructivism. He is a world-class man. In Russia they know him very, very poorly: ask on the street what prouns, Kestner folders, figurines, photograms, etc. are. - You will not hear the answer. Lazar Lissitzky has cheaper posters:

El Lissitzky. USSR. Die russische Ausstellung

(USSR: The Russian exhibition),

lithographed poster for exhibition

at the Kunstgewerbemuseum,

Care: 25,000 GBP Sotheby's Auction.

Lazar Lissitsky. Moscow is the capital of the USSR.

Moscow, 1940. 89x58.5 cm.

Lazar Lissitsky. Let's get more tanks

anti-tank rifles and guns,

airplanes, guns, mortars,

shells, machine guns, rifles!

Everything for the front!

Everything for victory!

Moscow - Leningrad, 1941. 43x59 cm.

El Lissitzky. TsPKiO. Sparrow Hills.

Ski station "Ice Mountains". Poster.

Lissitzky showed himself brightly and brilliantly in the photo avant-garde, where he was the first in many ways and won a leading position in the world. His photomontages for the album "Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. (RKKA)" - Moscow: Izogiz, Goznak printing house, 1934- simply fantastic:

Very noteworthy for the history of Soviet constructivist political posters was the publication of the famous folder: A. M. Rodchenko, El Lissitsky and others, “History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Posters.” Moscow, ed. Comacademy and the Museum of the Revolution of the USSR, 1926. Folder with 25 propaganda color offset posters 72.5x54.5 cm, made using photomontage techniques using museum materials, photographs and documents. They were also published in the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR. Most of the posters and covers were designed by the artist Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (1891-1956).This publication undoubtedly belongs to the genre of constructivism, in its most striking manifestations - propaganda.On the world antique market, the price for this publication is off the charts - under 100,000 “green”! After all, a symbiosis of two great constructivist artists... Grooming: £61,250. Sotheby's. December 01, 2010. Music, Continental and Russian Books and Manuscripts . London. Lot No. 220. One of the famous “ceremonial” photo editions of the Stalinist period of Russian history, when the Great Tyrant created history from events that did not happen, he documented what did not happen, cemented the non-existent in the minds of people.Propaganda publications were also published in other totalitarian states, great importance was attached to them, huge amounts of money were spent, but only the Soviet propaganda book became an artistic phenomenon.

Leafing through illustrated propaganda publications of the twenties and thirties of the last century, we feel not only a feeling of fear and horror, but also admiration. This ambivalence arises every time you open books designed by Lissitzky, Rodchenko, and Telingater. What is the phenomenon of Soviet propaganda printing products? The answer is obvious - time! A time terrible in its fanaticism, but also romantic, a time of unconditional faith and dreams.Later, these posters were banned and removed from storage, because they depicted those leaders who later became enemies of the people.

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko highly valued advertising posters made together with V.V. Mayakovsky. The brothers G. and V. Stenberg have film posters.

2 Stenberg 2. Exhibition

"Poster in the service of the Five Year Plan."

Moscow - Leningrad, 1932. 106x75 cm.

Alexey Gan. First exhibition

Modern Architecture.

Poster. 1927. 107.5x72.5 cm.

There was also a purely Jewish constructivist political and advertising poster. First of all, this was connected with the settlement of Jews on earth and with Jewish pogroms. This was also connected with OZET (Society for Land Management of Jewish Workers) - a public organization that existed in the USSR from 1925 to 1938, and which initially set the goal of settling Soviet Jews through “agrarianization”. Historically, the main sources of food for Jews in the Russian Empire were crafts and small trade. The existence of the Pale of Settlement led to poverty and overcrowding of the masses of the Jewish population in the towns.

Famous poster in constructivist style

"Who is anti-Simite?"

These people, from the rage of the beast,

the dark ones are incited to attack the Jew.

OST edition. Poster No. 2.

Moscow, "Mospoligraph", 1928.

Anti-Semitism is a conscious counter-revolution.

Antisimite is our class enemy.

OST edition. Poster No. 1.

Moscow, "Mospoligraph", 1928.

After the October Revolution and the Civil War, the pogroms and subsequent devastation, traders and artisans turned into class enemies of the new system. According to various sources, from 100 to 200 thousand Jews were killed in pogroms in the period 1918-1920. About two million Jews immigrated from the Russian Empire (including the Kingdom of Poland) to the United States from 1881 to 1915; immigration to Palestine, Argentina, Brazil and other countries was also significant. By the beginning of the 1920s, more than a third of the remaining Jewish population of the USSR found themselves in the category of disenfranchised. A significant part of the Jews left the shtetls in search of work in large cities, but unemployment reigned there too.On January 17, 1925, the Society for Land Management of Jewish Workers (OZET) was created in Moscow, which collected and distributed funds to help displaced people, mobilized public opinion, promoted propaganda, organized general and vocational education, cultural life, medicine for displaced people, and interacted with international Jewish organizations. . OZET lotteries were held in 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932 and 1933. Numerous posters were produced.

2,000,000 members of the Jewish commune.

Moscow, 1929. 49x69 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. Jewish farmer

every turn of the tractor wheels

participates in socialist construction.

You will help him!

Second OZET lottery.

Published by CPU "OZET".

Moscow, Sovkino, 1929. 62x47 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach.

Build a socialist Birobidzhan!

Moscow, 1932. 105x69 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. 5 lottery OZET.

Let's build Birobidzhan,

let's turn it into a model

socialist outpost in the Far East.

OZET publication.

Moscow, 1933. 69x49 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. 3rd lottery - OZET.

Moscow. 1930. 101x71.3 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. 4th lottery - OZET.

In the amount of 750,000 rubles.

ticket price 50 kopecks.

Total 40198 winnings.

Build a socialist Birobidzhan -

area of ​​the future Jewish Autonomous Unit.

Moscow, 1932. 69x49 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. 2nd OZET lottery.

Moscow, 1929. 71.3x108.5 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. We will give the third OZET lottery

3 million for land development and

industry involvement

new masses of Jewish poor.

Moscow, 1930. 104.3x70.3 cm.

Mikhail Dlugach. Machines, tools, raw materials

can receive:

unemployed, artisans and artisans

through the ORT ferband of the Society of Crafts and

agricultural labor among the Jews of Russia."

Moscow, 1930. 71x107 cm.

A.O. Barsch. Sketch for a poster on the Jewish lottery.

Gouache, ink, paper.

Moscow, 1927. 30x25 cm.

Soviet constructivist political posters were created by many, many artists.

A. Vedeneev. 10 years.

Industrialization is the path to socialism.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1932. 105.5x70.5 cm.

N. Kotov. Construction of socialism.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1932. 72x54 cm.

Sergey Senkin and Dmitry Moor.

Workers of all countries unite!

Long live the great, invincible

the banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin!

Long live Leninism!

Moscow, 1932. 93.5x60.5 cm.

A. Deineka. China is on the way

liberation from imperialism.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1930. 72x107.3 cm.

I. Ganf. Religion is the enemy of industrialization.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1930. 102x69 cm.

E. Zernova. Down with the imperialist war.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1930. 103x70 cm.

Long live liberated labor. (c. 1930).

71x106.5 cm.

On International Women's Day

unite, workers of cities and villages.

(c. 1930). 71.3x107 cm.

Mikhail Khazanovsky. At a fast pace

full swing,

for a five-year period of four years.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1930. 108x70 cm.

Nikolai Dolgorukov and Dmitry Moor.

"Soviet power is now

the most durable power of all existing

authorities in the world." (Stalin).

Moscow, 1932. 69x102 cm.

The posters were “baked like pies” - the young Soviet state spared no money on propaganda:

TsPKiO. August 18. Holiday of Soviet aviation.

Moscow, b.g. 85x61 cm.

A. Bukhovsky. Aerochim Museum named after. M.V. Frunze.

Moscow, b.g. 50x35 cm.

Georgy Rublev. Aviakhim is our protection!

Moscow. b.g. 48x34 cm.

Georgy Rublev. TsPKiO.

The summer hall of factories and collective farms has 1,400 seats.

Season 1932.

Moscow. 1932.

Georgy Rublev. TsPKiO. Winter base

schoolboy and pioneer.

Moscow, 1931. 100x70 cm.

Georgy Rublev. Guys! To fight for the workers' cause -

be ready!

A winter children's camp opens at the Central Park of Culture and Culture

schoolboy and pioneer.

Moscow, 1930. 92x64 cm.

All for the elections of factory committees!

Moscow Provincial Council of Trade Unions.

Moscow, b.g. 105x70.5 cm.

Nikolai Dolgorukov. Metropolitan.

Moscow, 1931. 73x103.5 cm.

All efforts to increase labor productivity.

Moscow - Leningrad, b.g. 107x71 cm.

I.I. Fomina. THE USSR. Leningrad.

Moscow - Leningrad, b.g. 44x30 cm.

Victor Koretsky.

Soviet athletes -

the pride of our country.

Moscow-Leningrad, 1935. 107.5x78.5 cm.

A. Deineka. "Healthy mind

requires a healthy body." K. Voroshilov.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1939. 87.5 x 59 cm.

Samokhvalov A.N. Long live the Komsomol!

A young army is replacing the elders.

To the seventh anniversary of the October Revolution. 1924.

Typographical imprint. 93.2x59.6 cm.

Vasily Yolkin.

Long live the Red Army -

armed detachment of the proletarian revolution!

Moscow - Leningrad, 1933. 133x86.5 cm.

Vasily Yolkin created a collective portrait of the country's leadership and displayed it on a poster: “Long live the Red Army - an armed detachment of the proletarian revolution!” a grandiose picture of the festive parade on Red Square (1932). In the early 30s, the ranks of followers of constructivist artists were joined by V. Koretsky and V. Gitsevich. They developed a form of poster in which photographs were tinted and combined with hand-drawn images. The poster by V. Gitsevich “For the proletarian park of culture and recreation” (1932) and the sheet by V. Koretsky “Soviet athletes are the pride of our country!” stand out. (1935), which clearly and succinctly reflected the most important ideological guidelines of those years. It should be noted that in the photomontage poster of the mid-30s, G. Klutsis, V. Elkin, S. Senkin, V. Koretsky and other artists abandoned the constructivist experiment with fonts and test blocks, focusing on the image. Poster slogans occupied mainly the place at the bottom of the sheet (G. Klutsis “Long live our happy socialist homeland...”, 1935).

“In painting, painting was replaced by photomontage and other types of posters, which are still needed along with the design of things (industrial production),” - stated on the pages of the “Cinema Magazine” of the Association of Revolutionary Cinematography.“Posters, in the sense of their “mass appeal,” are replacing easel painting,” - wrote the author of the magazine “New Spectator”. “The coming proletarian poster is intended to become a “street painting”... Will we not have “proletarian easel painting” in it?- asked a pressing question in the magazine “Soviet Art”. And it was answered primarily by the constructivists grouped around the magazine “LEF” and its editor Mayakovsky - A. Rodchenko, V. Stepanova, A. Lavinsky, L. Popova and others, explaining to readers:

“Resolutely rejecting room-museum easel art, “Lefs” fight for posters, illustrations, advertising, photo and film editing, i.e. for such types of utilitarian pictorial art that would be mass-produced, feasible by means of machine technology and closely related to the material life of urban industrial workers.”

Grigory Shegal. Give away kitchen slavery!

Give me a new life!

Poster. 1931. 103x70.5 cm.

Yuri Pimenov. Everything is on display!

Poster. 1928. 108x73 cm.

Consistently embodying these ideas in artistic practice, they created posters that were completely new in style, one of the brightest examples of which was a sheet promoting Rubber Trust products - “There have never been better nipples” (1923). His hero, instead of the traditional and touching image of a baby with a pacifier, whose realistic image always and unmistakably influenced the audience, became a certain “homunculus” constructed from geometric parts, devoid of everything familiar, but nevertheless vividly memorable and striking in its unusualness. The “rekpam-constructors” also geometricized to the utmost the traditional figures of oriental people in dressing gowns, also giving them a huge triangle of galoshes. It stood out effectively against the bright yellow background, contrasting with the red and white colors that set off the graphic script of the Persian text on the sheet, which was dedicated to the export of galoshes (1925).

Sergey Senkin. For multi-million dollar

Leninist Komsomol!

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 106x73 cm.

Sergey Senkin. Under the banner of Lenin

for the second five-year plan.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 146x103 cm.

Dmitry Bulanov. We will remove the fields on time.

Moscow-Leningrad, 1930. 102x72.5 cm.

The composition of the poster promoting Mosselprom’s “Trekhgornoe Beer” (1925) also looks very schematic. However, the victory of this drink over the bursting bottles of “hypocrite” and moonshine was ingeniously shown on the sheet with the help of typographic rulers, different-scale fonts and effective coloristic techniques. The basis of A. Lavinsky’s poster “Export-Import of the USSR” (1925) is also a varied font, the “blocks” of which are placed in a complex circular composition. On the sheet, however, there are also pictorial elements - at the top and bottom there are wagons with goods moving on rails, which very clearly and simply explain to the viewer the basis of exports and imports in the country. The same A. Lavinsky created 1925 and a catchy sheet “Accepting subscriptions for 1926” for the State Publishing House (GIZ), the center of which is the graphic logo. Capacious in meaning, it looks laconic, although it is “constructed” from a number of elements - a letter abbreviation, images of a book, a proletarian symbol - a sickle and a hammer, as well as a cogwheel, denoting an element of the machinery beloved by constructivists. The necessary information is clearly grouped in the poster composition on geometrically shaped planes that contrast in color and give a visually dynamic effect. Several posters for the State Historical Institute in 1925 were created by V. Mayakovsky in collaboration with V. Stepanova - “The Path to Communism - Books and Knowledge”; “Students, the State Publishing House will deliver all textbooks on time this year”; “Remember GIZ! This brand is a source of knowledge and light.” All of them are devoid of visual elements and, along with the GIZ stamp, the composition of the sheet consists only of letter sets that contrast in scale and color. However, the poster, also invented by Mayakovsky in collaboration with Stepanova, “Only subscribers of “Red Pepper” laugh with all their hearts” (1925) is already enriched with a unique visual detail - a photograph of a laughing young guy. This technique of combining type elements with a photo image was first used in poster compositions by A. Rodchenko, who in 1924 created a sheet dedicated to the newsreel film by Dziga Vertov “Kinoglaz”, and in 1925 - an advertisement for LenGIZ, in which he effectively shaded a black-and-white photo portrait screaming Lily Brik, as if calling on the viewer to buy books. In 1926, A. Lavinsky would create a similar composition on a sheet dedicated to the publication of the State Historical Institute “Working Faculty at Home.” And very soon the installation method born in these constructivist posters will be adopted by the majority of professional and amateur artists in the country.

Victor Koretsky. Free collective farm workers for industry.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 74x104 cm.

Victor Koretsky. Trade unions of the USSR

the vanguard of the world labor movement.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1932. 71x100 cm.

Many book publishing posters created by constructivists in the 1920s also showed a characteristic feature of the time associated with the development of technical progress in the country. The cult of machinery was an important aesthetic attitude of adherents of “industrial art”. He was supported in every possible way by the Lefovites, who called themselves “industrialists”, in advertising of various factory publications. In the poster by V. Mayakovsky and A. Levin, dedicated to a subscription to the newspaper “Working Moscow” (1924), a generalized silhouette of an industrial building with a pipe was drawn, and the basis of the sheet by V. Mayakovsky and A. Rodchenko with an advertisement for the magazine “Smena” (1924) was a composition with a detailed port crane and iron fittings. Constructivists actively included illusory or schematized images of industrial objects, machine tools, and machines in posters, combining them with photographic and font fragments.

Antipenko V. For mechanized coal mining!

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 105x72.5 cm.

Nikolai Dolgorukov. Transport worker,

armed with technical knowledge,

fight for the reconstruction of transport!

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 104x73 cm.

Yakov Guminer. Arithmetic of the counter industrial financial plan

2+2=5 plus the enthusiasm of the workers.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 90x62 cm.

If the supporters of “industrial art”, who collaborated in LEF, considered the poster as “the most expressive form of ingenuity and skill” and believed that “the role of the master poster artist is quite adequate to the role of the design engineer,” then the champions of traditions in the fine arts approached the poster from completely different positions. For example, the famous researcher of Russian graphics, Professor A. Sidorov, demanded to “raise the question of the “aesthetics” of the poster,” in which he primarily valued the bright figurative principle characteristic of the best works of the past.

“In the intensifying struggle between figurative and non-figurative art, which we foresee in the near future, the poster and its art will, of course, be one of the most firmly defended citadels of imagery,” - wrote Sidorov, proclaiming the poster to be nothing less than a "modern icon."

Dmitry Bulanov. 5 in 4. Impact work

transport cooperation we will help fulfill

and overfulfillment of the Transportfinplan.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 71x51 cm.

Dmitry Bulanov. Five-year plan

catering L.S.P.O.

Leningrad, 1931. 69x54 cm.

Dmitry Bulanov. Our goal,

raising the cultural level of the worker,

bring the world revolution closer.

Leningrad, 1927. 95x67 cm.

Dmitry Bulanov. From schools and clubs like a hurricane

open fire on the hooligans.

Leningrad, 1929. 67.5x98 cm.

Dmitry Bulanov. Don't break the dishes -

Handle with care

inventory of your dining room.

Moscow - Leningrad, 1931. 77x55 cm.

Born into the family of artisan Morduchai Zalmanovich (Mark Solomonovich) Lisitsky and Sarah Leibovna Lisitskaya in a small village in the Smolensk province. The family soon moved to Vitebsk.

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

He entered the architectural faculty of the Higher Polytechnic School in Germany and later moved to the Riga Polytechnic Institute, 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. During the same period, he went on ethnographic trips to Belarus and Lithuania, collecting materials about Jewish decorative art, and traveled to 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 Culture League ( League of Culture) - 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 Yiddisher 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 to Combat 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 he joined the State Institute of Artistic Culture (INHUK). The Lenin Tribune project was completed in his workshop.

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 from 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 Art and Technical Institute (VKHUTEIN).

In 1927, he created new principles for 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 a poster for the “Russian Exhibition” in Zurich in 1929: “Everything for the front! Everything for victory! (Let's have more tanks)."

In 1930-1932, according to the design of El Lissitsky, the printing house of the Ogonyok magazine was built in 1st Samotechny Lane. The printing house building was built on the principle of a “horizontal skyscraper”.

In 1937, a photomontage by El Lissitzky dedicated to the adoption of the Stalinist Constitution was presented in four issues of the magazine “USSR in Construction”.

El Lissitzky died of tuberculosis in 1941 and was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Poster for El Lissitzky’s lecture “Modern Art in Russia” in Hannover 1923
Paper, lithograph 41.3 x 58.5 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Introduction. How Lissitsky ended up with Shukhov

These days, a retrospective exhibition of El Lissitzky is taking place in Moscow. The organizers decided on an interesting step to divide it into 2 parts, territorially separate: Part I - in the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, and Part II - in the New Tretyakov Gallery.

I decided to write down my impressions immediately after visiting the Jewish Museum, without going to the Tretyakov Gallery. I suppose there will be 3 notes: I, II - dedicated to the Tretyakov exhibition and containing the chronology of the artist’s life, and III - I would like to devote to EL book graphics.

Placing part of the exhibition in the Jewish Museum seems symbolic. It's not about nationality, but about the museum space itself. The Tolerance Center occupies the building of the former Bakhmetyevsky Garage, an architectural monument of the Soviet avant-garde. It was built in 1927 according to the design of Konstantin Melnikov and Vladimir Shukhov for English Leyland buses. That is, the building itself puts the viewer in the right mood.

The Jewish Museum is the most technologically advanced in Moscow (interactive technologies, etc.). I’m sure Lissitzky the engineer would have liked it.

"Constructor". Self-portrait

According to Nikolai Khardzhiev, the impetus for the creation of this self-portrait was Michelangelo’s quote from Giorgio Vasari: “The compass should be in the eye, not in the hand, for the hand works, but the eye judges.” According to Vasari, Michelangelo “adhered to the same thing in architecture.”

Lissitzky considered the compass to be an essential tool for the modern artist. The motif of the compass as an attribute of the modern artistic thinking of the creator-designer repeatedly appeared in his works, serving as a metaphor for impeccable precision.

In his theoretical writings, he proclaimed a new type of artist “with a brush, a hammer and a compass in his hands,” creating the “City of the Commune.” In the article “Suprematism of World Building,” Lissitzky wrote:

“We, who have gone beyond the picture, have taken into our hands the plumb line of economy, the ruler and the compass, because the splattered brush does not correspond to our clarity, and, if we need it, we will take the machine into our hands, because to reveal creativity, both the brush and the ruler, and the compass, and the machine are only the last joint of my finger, drawing the path.”

Holy Trinity Church, Vitebsk, 1910
Paper, graphite pencil, gouache 30 x 37.7 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Vitebsk branch of the Russian avant-garde

I've always had trouble with terminology. The huge number of -isms invented by art critics confused me. But if we assume that the first third of the 20th century is the era of the avant-garde (without delving further). You might be surprised how many artists of this era the Belarusian land produced. , Chagall (Vitebsk), Soutine (Smilovichi) and finally our hero, born at the Pochonok stop in the Smolensk region, but raised in Vitebsk.

Lissitzky and Soutine are now separated by a distance of literally two kilometers (an exhibition of Soutine is being held at Pushkinsky).

Probably, at the beginning of the 20th century there was a special air in Vitebsk: Chagall (who remained to live in Vitebsk in his paintings), Lissitzky, Repin (who had an estate near Vitebsk and worked there), and immediately after the revolution the landing party led by K. Malevich and M. Kerzin .

Organization of the exhibition

What struck me most was the entrance to the exhibition (see photo in the title of the note). A huge space, two walls (one black, formerly written “Lisitsky”, the other snow-white with raised letters “El”), formed a corner. There are two white inconspicuous doors in the white wall: entrance and exit. Very... constructivist :)

There are 4 halls allocated for the exhibition itself. The first graphic - I really liked the work with views of Italy (I had not seen them before). There are also illustrations and the book itself “Sihat Hulin” (“Prague Legend” 1917); R. Kipling “The Tale of the Curious Little Elephant” (in Yiddish) Berlin, 1922 - I got carried away, we’ll talk about book graphics separately. Sketches for painting the ceiling of the Mogilev synagogue.

Moishe Broderson. Prague legend. Moscow, 1917
State Tretyakov Gallery

The second room is graphics design. Characters from the opera "Victory over the Sun". An interesting advertisement for the Pelikan stationery company, which he produced to pay for his treatment.

The rest are allocated: to his famous “prouns”, to the magazine “USSR in Construction”, which he headed; photo experiments and design projects for international exhibitions.

I really liked that next to each book there is an iPad with the book downloaded into it, and you can flip through it and watch it in its entirety. Just great. An excellent option for book exhibitions, although expensive.

You can take pictures. But the quality, taking into account the glass in all works, is average. Be sure to go yourself and see it live.

I would especially like to mention the excellent joint publication of the Jewish Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery, “El Lissitzky,” prepared for the exhibition. Made in the style of constructivism, with colored edges. Contains a lot of information (336 pages) and excellent printing (all exhibited works, many rare photographic materials). Costs 2500 rubles. - inexpensive for such a publication.

A lion. Zodiac sign. Copy of the ceiling painting of the Mogilev synagogue 1916
Paper, black chalk, watercolor 22 x 24.5 cm. Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Collection of Boris and Lisa Aronson Posthumous gift of Yards Kohen, Apheka, Israel

I have no goal of telling the biography of the artist (especially since I will give a chronology of his life in the second part). I have an ambiguous attitude towards his work. It's too different. As he himself wrote: "The path of creativity is invention". He is an engineer, his constancy is in diversity, in the synthesis of all kinds of techniques. In the field of book graphics, I consider the most ingenious edition: Mayakovsky, V. For voice / book designer El Lissitzky. Berlin: Gosizdat, 1923.

Avant-garde artists were captivated by the idea of ​​the expansion of art into everyday life. All these -isms (Suprematism, Constructivism, Neoplasticism) were transferred to design, theater, and book graphics. And this is definitely about Lissitzky. But there is another side.

He himself wrote: “Each state had its own David, who, depending on the need, could write the “Oath of the Horatii” today, and the “Coronation of Napoleon” tomorrow. David is missing today.". He spoke of Jacques-Louis David, a republican revolutionary who later became an imperial court artist. Apparently, he, the editor of the magazine “USSR in Construction,” saw himself this way.

Ravenna. 1913
Paper, graphite pencil, gouache, chalk 31.8 x 23.7 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Memories of Ravenna. 1914
Paper, engraving 33.9 x 36.6 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Pisa. 1913
Paper, sepia 24.9 x 32.5 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Preparation of firewood. Drawing for a calendar for November - December. Late 1910s
Paper, ink, whitewash, pen, brush, drawing instruments 10.2 x 24.7 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery Gift of A. A. Sidorov in 1969

Proun. 1920–1921
Paper, graphite and black pencils, watercolor 24.35 x 22.1 cm. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art

“Remember, proletarians of communications, 1905”
Sketch version of a poster for the festive decoration of Vitebsk for the 15th anniversary of the 1905 revolution. 1919-1920. Paper, gouache, ink, graphite pencil 18.2 x 22.9 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery

Hit the whites with a red wedge. Poster. 1920
Paper, lithograph 53 x 70 cm. Russian State Library

They fly to the ground from afar. Building No. 2. 1922
Paper, lithograph 25.5 x 21 cm. Collection of Vladimir Tsarenkov

"New person". Not dated
Parchment, graphite pencil, gouache 35 x 35.5 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Design (layout) for the play “I Want a Child.” Inscription inside: a healthy child is a future builder of communism

“To help party study.” Magazine cover layout 1927
Cardboard, graphite pencil, ink, gouache 26.55 x 18.1 cm. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art

Sketch for the cover of the magazine “Thing” 1922
Paper, collage, ink 31.3x23.5 cm. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Constitution of the USSR. Poster 1937
Insert in the magazine “USSR under construction”, 1937. No. 9-12 To the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution Museum of the History of Jews in Russia

“Peace, peace at all costs! Reforge the swords! 1940
Paper, ink, pen 32 x 29.6 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery

Lazar Markovich (Mordukhovich) Lisitsky (book graphics in Yiddish signed with the name Leizer (Eliezer) Lisitsky - אליעזר ליסיצקי‎, also widely known as El Lisitsky and El Lisitsky; November 10 (22), 1890, Pochinok, Smolensk province erniya - December 30, 1941, Moscow ) - Soviet artist and architect.

El Lissitzky is one of the outstanding representatives of the Russian and Jewish avant-garde. Contributed to the emergence of Suprematism in architecture.

Lazar Mordukhovich Lisitsky was born into the family of a craftsman-entrepreneur assigned to the Dolnovsky burghers, Mordukh Zalmanovich (Mark Solomonovich) Lisitsky (1863-1948) and housewife Sara Leibovna Lisitskaya. After the family moved to Vitebsk, where his father opened a china shop, he attended the private Yudel Pan School of Drawing.

He graduated from the Alexander Real School in Smolensk (1909). He studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Higher Polytechnic School in Darmstadt, and during his studies he worked as a mason. In 1911-1912 traveled extensively in France and Italy. In 1914 he defended his diploma with honors in Darmstadt, but due to the outbreak of the First World War he was forced to hastily return to his homeland (via Switzerland, Italy and the Balkans).

In order to engage in professional activities in Russia, in 1915 he entered the Riga Polytechnic Institute as an external student, having been evacuated to Moscow during the war. In Moscow during this period he lived at Bolshaya Molchanovka 28, apartment 18, and in Starokonyushenny Lane 41, apartment 32. He graduated from the Institute on April 14, 1918 with the title of engineer-architect. The diploma issued to Lissitzky on May 30 of the same year is still kept in the State Archives of Russia.

In 1916-1917 worked as an assistant in Velikovsky's architectural bureau, then with Roman Klein. Since 1916, he participated in the work of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Arts, including in collective exhibitions of the society in 1917 and 1918 in Moscow and in 1920 in Kyiv. At the same time, in 1917, he began illustrating books published in Yiddish, including modern Jewish authors and works for children. Using traditional Jewish folk symbols, he created a stamp for the Kyiv publishing house “Yidisher Folks-Farlag” (Jewish folk publishing house), with which he signed a contract on April 22, 1919 to illustrate 11 books for children.

During the same period (1916), Lissitzky took part in ethnographic trips to a number of cities and towns in the Belarusian Dnieper region and Lithuania with the aim of identifying and recording monuments of Jewish antiquity; the result of this trip was the reproductions of the paintings of the Mogilev synagogue on Shkolishche published in Berlin in 1923 and the accompanying article in Yiddish “װעגן דער מאָלעװער שול: זכרונות” (Memories of the Mogilev synagogue, Milgr magazine Oym") is the artist’s only theoretical work dedicated to Jewish decorative art.

In 1918, in Kyiv, Lissitzky became one of the founders of the Kultur League (Yiddish: League of Culture), an avant-garde artistic and literary association whose goal was to create a new Jewish national art. In 1919, at the invitation of Marc Chagall, he moved to Vitebsk, where he taught at the People's Art School (1919-1920).

In 1917-1919, El Lissitzky devoted himself to illustrating works of modern Jewish literature and especially children's poetry in Yiddish, becoming one of the founders of the avant-garde style in Jewish book illustration. In contrast to Chagall, who gravitated towards traditional Jewish art, from 1920 Lissitzky, under the influence of Malevich, turned to Suprematism. It is in this vein that later book illustrations of the early 1920s were made, for example for the books of the Proun period “אַרבעה תישים”
(see photograph, 1922), “Chiefs Card” (1922, see photograph), “ייִנגל-צינגל-כװאַט” (poems by Mani Leib, 1918-1922), Rabbi (1922) and others. It was to Lissitzky’s Berlin period that his last active work in Jewish book graphics dates back to (1922-1923). After returning to the Soviet Union, Lissitzky no longer turned to book graphics, including Jewish ones.

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El Lissitzky, real name Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890 – 1941) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical High School in Darmstadt (1909–14), and the Riga Polytechnic Institute, which was evacuated to Moscow (1915–18). Lissitzky, despite his devotion to the Soviet system, was known and in demand in the West. Personal exhibitions were held in 1922 in Hanover, in 1924 in Berlin and in 1925 in Dresden. A wonderful catalog designed by the artist himself was published for the Berlin exhibition. In 1965 in Basel and Hanover, in 1966 in London.

In 1958, a book by Horst Richter was published in Cologne, significantly titled: “El Lissitzky. Victory over the sun." In 1967, the album “El Lissitzky. Artist, Architect, Typographer, Photographer,” in which the artist’s main works were reproduced in color. Among them is the book “For the Voice,” although in a greatly reduced size. In 1977, a collection of selected works by L.M. Lisitsky was published in Dresden, but for some reason articles related to the art of books were not included in it. Works about Lissitzky are published abroad today, and the last of them appeared in Hannover in 1999.

Lissitsky is an architect.

Lissitzky interacts with different architectural movements (modern, constructivism, etc.), combining them in his work, but preserving the individuality and freedom of each. Lissitzky designed a considerable number of architectural objects, but all of them, for the most part, remained only projects that were not destined to come to fruition. Including because there were not sufficient technologies and funds. Some of them were built as part of temporary exhibition spaces abroad and have survived only through photographs.

The most famous architectural projects of Lissitzky:

Large cantilevered platforms were supposed to be raised on high supports made of glass, concrete and metal, which would give the building lightness. The object was planned as an element of a series of buildings at the main urban planning nodes of Moscow. All skyscrapers are oriented towards the Kremlin and are located above intersections.

The project was unusual for several reasons:

• the materials used dictated its delicate proportions;
• the position on the main highways took into account the problems of historical development, which the author did not violate; one of the vertical supports went underground and connected the building with the metro station, providing direct access to people.
• The construction of this structure did not stop the life of the intersection.

This is a diagonal structure, the base of which is a glass cube with a built-in elevator mechanism. The elevator carries speakers to a staging area where they wait in line to take the upper pulpit and become the center of attention of the audience. The facility is completed by a screen onto which various images and texts accompanying the performance are projected.

Of particular interest are Lissitzky’s studies on cabinet furniture and economical apartment project, which were included in the all-Union collections of housing recommendations. By designing the space of the apartment, taking into account its small area, Lisitsky creates a dynamic system - he allows the resident to determine for himself which part the bedroom and living room will occupy. This is realized with the help of a rotating partition that accommodates a bed, a wardrobe and a desk.

Lissitzky is an artist.

In 1919, Lissitzky became close to Kazimir Malevich and became imbued with his Suprematist ideas of depicting simple geometric forms. The passion for Suprematism is visible in Lissitzky’s poster “Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge”, built on the interaction of the simplest figures: rectangles, circles and triangles in a bright dynamic composition.

In 1920, he, together with Malevich and Ermolaeva, founded the art association “Unovis” (“Advocates of New Art”). The main objectives of the group were to update the possibilities and forms of art based on Suprematism.

Lissitzky’s most striking contribution to artistic culture was his Prouns (“PROJECTS FOR APPROVAL OF THE NEW”) - volumetric-spatial compositions that combine the possibilities of plane and volume. The compositions did not have a clear vertical and horizontal orientation, but were intended to be viewed from four or six sides. Prouns were for the artist an attempt to overcome the boundaries of various types and genres of art. Lissitzky himself spoke of them as “stations along the path of constructing a new form... from painting to architecture.” It is no coincidence that the names were given as “bridge” and “city”.

Lissitzky is a book artist.

Being primarily an architect, Lissitzky viewed a book like a building, where each spread is like a room. Lissitzky sought to involve the viewer so much that he would not miss a single page.

“Suprematist tale about two squares”, 1922).

The main semantic load in this small book is not the text, but a constructive drawing that occupies almost the entire space of the sheet, composed of clear geometric shapes - squares, circles and parallelepipeds, and all the figures are either black, red, or gray. The drawings are emphatically dynamic, they are dominated by diagonal lines, directed from the lower left corner to the upper right corner, they hurry the viewer, arouse his curiosity, forcing him to move to the next page. The text of the book, not counting the title, consists of only 33 words, but the story here is told using visual rather than verbal means.

This is a constructor book that requires active perception of the author's thoughts; it forces the viewer to study what is in front of his eyes. The word “tale” in the title of the book is not used without reason: when forming the space of the sheet, the artist tries to reproduce oral speech using graphic means, a combination of vertical, horizontal and oblique lines and arcs, imitating the intonation transitions and facial expressions of the narrator characteristic of oral speech. The text turns into a graphic element and becomes an integral part of the visual series. It is not aligned along a straight line, not parallel to the bottom edge of the sheet, the letters in one word jump and dance, their size changes within the word, setting the rhythm of reading, semantic stress.

Lissitzky proposed highlighting places where meaning is concentrated using expressive means of typesetting, condensing, thinning and enlarging the font in the right places. But sometimes he deliberately complicated the perception of the text, turning it into a charade - he placed some letters inside others, included title fonts in the typesetting line.

Drew attention to the exceptional role of typographic typesetting, dies and other attributes of printing production. The book contains a register cut-out, which is used for some reference publications, and this gave the book additional volume, and Lissitzky marked each poem with a special pictogram. The book is printed in red and black inks. The typesetting used was a flat grotesque font. Due to the multi-level asymmetrical arrangement of letters, variations in size and font style within even one word, a special convexity of the page is created here, which is unattainable with any other typesetting method. It is also significant that all other elements of page construction were also taken from the typesetting department - these are the rulers and arcs with which Lissitzky built images (anchor, man), and individual large letters, which Lissitzky specially left gaps between the constituent elements when constructing them.

In 1923, Lissitzky published the article “The Triumph of Topography,” where he formulated 8 principles for book design:

1. Words printed on a sheet of paper are perceived by the eyes, not by hearing.

2. With the help of ordinary words concepts are represented, and with the help of letters concepts can be expressed.

3. Economy of perception - optics instead of phonetics.

4. The design of a book body using typesetting material, according to the laws of typographic mechanics, must correspond to the forces of compression and tension of the text.

5. The design of a book body using clichés implements new optics. Supernaturalistic reality improves vision.

6. Continuous sequence of pages - bioscopic book.

7. A new book requires new writers. The inkwell and goose feathers are dead.

8. A printed sheet conquers space and time. The printed page and the infinity of the book themselves must be overcome.

“I believe,” he wrote to Kazimir Malevich on September 12, 1919, “that we must pour in the thoughts that we drink from a book with our eyes through all forms perceived by our eyes. Letters and punctuation marks that bring order to thoughts must be taken into account, but besides this, the flow of lines converges on some condensed thoughts, they also need to be condensed for the eye.”

Lissitzky is a reformer of the exhibition space.

Lissitzky was also involved in the design of the exhibition space. Lissitzky designed the USSR pavilions at international exhibitions of the 1920s and 1930s in Germany.

In the design of the exhibition, in addition to the already traditional arrangement of objects - paintings or sculptures - he uses new means of influencing people: complex lighting, film tools, moving mechanisms; for Soviet pavilions he often uses giant photo collages, which invariably attract attention. When creating proun rooms (a project for approving something new), he develops space as a system of interconnected planes, assigning to each of them a certain abstract composition and uniting them with one or two elements. The viewer entering this hall actually enters the space of the space, which was previously flat.

Decoration of the introductory hall of the Soviet pavilion at the exhibition in Cologne 1928.

Lissitzky makes a revolution in the design of exhibition space by designing an abstract office in a similar way. If the proun room was an independent work of art, then the office served as an exhibition hall for the works of contemporary artists, sculptors and designers - Piet Mondrian, Vladimir Tatlin and others.

The complex solution of the wall planes according to the principles of avant-garde painting connected the content of the exhibition and its form. Lissitzky reduces the number of art objects simultaneously perceived by the viewer in order to draw attention to each of them separately. The author includes the exhibition in interaction with the viewer, using simple decoration techniques: wooden slats painted black and white, when moving along which the color of the wall changes from dark to light; textile screens separating this room from others; moving tablets that give the exhibition dynamics.