Year: 1992
Place: New York
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
Printer: -
Edition: Reprint
Language: EN
Pages: 412
Condition: FN
Cover condition: FN
Binding: HC
Series: -
Illustrated: with 284 plates (103 in colour)
- Introduction by Herbert Read.
- EL (LAZAR) LISSITZKY exercised a crucial influence on the course of the visual arts - especially the applied arts - after 1918. Born near Smolensk, he was trained first as an engineer, then as an architect. In 1918 he became Professor of Architecture and the Graphic Arts at the Vitebsk School of Art, of which his friend Chagall was Director. Together with Naum Gabe, Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, he founded the constructivist movement, and in his work achieved a synthesis of constructivist principles with the refined version of cubism which had become known as suprematism. His creative versatility was prodigious: in painting, book illustration, typography, theatre and exhibition design, photography and architectural projects. He lived in the USSR until his death in 1941, but paid frequent visits to France, Germany, Holland and Switzerland, where he met the leaders of the modern movement in art and architecture. His work forms the major point of contact between Soviet art and Western Europe, and its influence persists, notably in typography and industrial design, to the present day.
This book, compiled by Lissitzky's widow, is the first full-length, fully documented study of the artist to appear. It opens with a long biographical section, largely based on his letters, which throw a great deal of light on his aims and on the circles in which he moved. This is followed by a series of plates in which every field of his activity is handsomely represented, and by two valuable collections of literary documents theoretical writings by Lissitzky himself, and accounts of him by contemporaries and by later critics.
'An indispensable study of one of the great figures in post-revolutionary Russian art' The Sunday Times.
'One of the most important books on twentieth century art for years' The Illustrated London News.
- CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION by Herbert Read.
FOREWORD.
LIFE AND LETTERS.
THE PLATES:
Early Works.
Prouns.
Typography andphotomontage.
Exhibition rooms.
Architecture.
Last works.
TEXTS BY LISSITZKY:
Personalia: The film of El's life - Lissitzky speaks.
Art in the 1920s:
suprematism in world reconstruction - New Russian Art: a lecture - The blockade of Russia moves towards its end - Exhibitions in Berlin.
Prouns.
PROUN: NOT world visions, BUT world reality - From a letter - Wheel-Propeller and what follows - Element and invention - Nasci - The plastic form of the electromechanical peepshow 'Victory over the sun' - A. and Pangeometry - From a letter.
The book: Topography of Typography - Typographical facts - Our Book.
Exhibition rooms: Proun room, Great Berlin Art Exhibition - Exhibition rooms.
Architecture: The Catastrophe of Architecture - Architecture in the USSR - 'Americanism' in European Architecture - Ideological Superstructure.
TEXTS ON LISSITZKY:
Ernst Kallai: Lissitzky.
Ernst Kallai: El Lissitzky.
Traugott Schalcher: El Lissitzky, Moscow.
Sigfried Giedion: Live museum.
N. Khardzhiev: El Lissitzky, book designer.
Jan Tschichold: El Lissitzky (1890-1941).
Joost Baljeu: The new space in the painting of El Lissitzky.
Mart Stam: El Lissitzky's conception of architecture.
Schuldt: El Lissitzky's photographic works.
Ossip Zadkine: El Lissitzky in Vitebsk.
Hans Schmidt: Memories of L. Lissitzky.
Notes to 'Life and Letters'.
Bibliographical note.
List of illustrations.
Index.
