Bidspirit auction | El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky - 1890 - 1941. Cover of brochure for Pelikan company in Germany, 1924, gouache and bronze powder on paper, 24x17 cm. Provenance: Jen Lissitzky Archive, the artist’s son. Literature: Sophie Lissitzky- Kuppers ”El Lissitzky”, p. 124, Dresden, 1967. El Lissitzky was an architect, painter, photographer, designer, and the founder of a new trend in advertising. At the same time, he considered himself first and foremost an inventor. He constructed his new world and invented new laws of art. Lissitzky made a special contribution to the development of avant-gardism and eventually became an influential figure in world art. One of the most striking works that showcases his versatile talent is the design of a brochure for the Pelikan company in 1924. The cover of this brochure was created by stenciling gouache and bronze color on thin pencil tracing paper. It stands out for its technical perfection. The work is made by hand in an art studio under minimal technical conditions. At the same time, it combines the skills of a printmaker with those of the inventor of a new font. As an image and language of advertising, the Pelikan font was ahead of its time in the 1920s. Even today, a century later, it looks quite modern. Simplicity in complexity and complexity in simplicity - a combination inherent in Lissitzky's work. The aggressive color palette, multi-vector and multi-scale fonts make the Pelican brochure cover memorable and stand out from the ”juvenile” printed matter of the 1920s. Once again, Lissitzky's work is ahead of its time.  Doron Polak, International Artist Museum David Spektor, photographer, specialist in analog photography El Lissitzky is known not only as an avant-garde artist, but also as an art theorist, architect, theatre designer, book illustrator, designer and photographer who was ahead of his time. He was a Master of Graphic Design and photomontage. In each of these fields, he left a luminous mark, thanks to which his name has entered the practice and theory of 20th-century art. Lissitzky was characterized by a universal approach, innovation and the attempt to work in several directions at once. He is rightly considered one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian and Jewish avant-garde. His name is closely associated with the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the last century - Suprematism and Constructivism - and Lissitzky's ideas greatly influenced the founders of the Bauhaus. El Lissitzky not only embraced the ideas of Suprematism, he helped to embody it in architecture. Lissitzky also developed radically new principles of display, presenting the exhibition space as a unified whole. Lazar Lissitzky was born in 1890 to a Jewish family in the Smolensk province of the Russian Empire. After the family moved to Vitebsk, he attended the school of Yudel Penn. He graduated from the science school in Smolensk (1909). He studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Higher Polytechnic School in Darmstadt and at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, and after graduating he worked in an architectural office. In 1917 he began to illustrate books published in Yiddish, including Jewish authors of his time and works for children. In 1919, at the invitation of Marc Chagall, he moved to Vitebsk, where he taught at the People's Art School. Like most young Jewish artists, he welcomed the revolution. Unlike Chagall, who was drawn to traditional Jewish art, Lissitzky turned to Suprematism from 1920, under the influence of Malevich. Working at the intersection of architecture and the visual arts, he did much to transfer to new architecture the formal and aesthetic insights that had helped to shape modern artistic culture. Between 1919 and 1921 he created his famous PROUNs (Projects of Approval of the New) - images of variously shaped geometric bodies in equilibrium, resting on a solid base or floating in space. Between 1921 and 1925, Lissitzky lived and worked in Germany and Switzerland with the permission and encouragement of the Soviet authorities. In fact, he was the first representative of the Russian avant-garde to meet many famous European artists, who were influenced by his ideas and found support and understanding. It was in Germany that Lissitzky met his future wife, Sophia Küppers (Schneider), a gallerist and art historian. They married in 1927 in Moscow, where Lissitzky returned at the end of his European ”business trip”. Sophie and her two sons from her first marriage also moved to the USSR. In 1930 the artist's only son, Jen Lissitzky, was born in Moscow. The fate of the artist and his family was tragic. They were victims of Stalin's repressions in the USSR, which intensified in the 30s and 40s, and of the rise of fascism in Germany. In 1941, El Lissitzky died of tuberculosis in Moscow at the age of 51. Two years later, Sophie Küppers -Lissitzky and her son Jen were interned in Novosibirsk as ethnic Germans. The fate of much of the artist's work was sad.