El (Lazar) Lissitzky

El (Lazar) Lissitzky in the early soviet days he was the most innovative amongst the other avant- garde. His approach came from architectural background, and, whether in graphic design and photography, furniture and exhibition design or architecture, most of his designs reflected space and abstract. Lissitzky was born near Smolensk, he studied architectural engineering in Darmstadt from 1911 and returned to Russia on the outbreak of the war in 1914.

His first works, experimentations were related to the jewish origins and took the form of secular illustrated scrolls, with a loose, figurative style of painting. In 1919, on the invitation of Marc Chagall, he started to teach architecture and graphic art at the Vitebsk People's Art School. Here he met Kasimir Malevich, then developing Suprematism and abstract paintings of flat colour that was intented to give a spiritual meaning. Lissitzky responded with his own abstract paintings, sculptures and room installations, which called it Project for the Affirmation of the New "Proun"

After the Revolution of 1917, Lissitzky, along with other Constructivist artists and designers, they tried to find another artistic language, developed from Cubism and Russian Futurism. In a time of high illiteracy, designers believed that graphic design based on geometry and simplified Cyrillic script would prove more simple message to its consumers. Aiming to take art into life, Lissitzky used abstract forms floating in space for a series of posters and book designs in a style often called Elementarism. He believed that this would be a universally understood visual language by using primary colours and pure geometry.

 

Beat the Whites with the red wedge - 1920

This famous piece by El Lissitzky shows the influence of the new avant garde modernist art movements on beginnings of the Soviet propaganda. In fact there is a clear political message behind this design. He used the dynamism of geometric forms and spatial illusion to suggest its narrative political content; a large red triangle pierces a white circle, while splinters of geometric shapes are thrown off into space.