El Lissitzky 1890-1941
El Lissitzky was a Russian artist, designer, photographer,typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the former Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design. Lissitzky's entire career was laced with the belief that the artist could be an agent for change. In 1920 he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador to Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. Lissitzky soon devoted himself to Jewish art, exhibiting works by local Jewish artists, traveling to Mahilyow to study the traditional architecture and ornaments of oldsynagogues, and illustrating many Yiddish children's books. His first designs appeared in the 1917 book Sihas hulin: Eyne fun di geshikhten (An Everyday Conversation), where he incorporated Hebrew letters with a distinctly art nouveau flair. His next book was a visual retelling of the traditional Jewish Passover song Had gadya (One Goat), in which El Lissitzky showcased a typographic device that he would often return to in later designs. In the book, he integrated letters with images through a system that matched the colour of the characters in the story with the word referring to them. In the designs for the final page, El Lissitzky depicts the mighty "hand of God" slaying the angel of death, who wears the tsar's crown. This representation links the redemption of the Jews with the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. An alternative view asserts that the artist was wary of Bolshevik internationalisation, leading to destruction of traditional Jewish culture. Visual representations of the hand of God would recur in numerous pieces throughout his entire career, most notably with his 1925 photomontage self-portrait The Constructor, which prominently featured the hand. In development since 1915, suprematism rejected the imitation of natural shapes and focused more on the creation of distinct, geometric forms. most famous work by Lissitsky from the same period was the 1919 propaganda poster "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge". Russia was going through a civil war at the time, which was mainly fought between the "Reds" (communists and revolutionaries) and the "Whites" (monarchists, conservatives, liberals and socialists who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution). The image of the red wedge shattering the white form, simple as it was, communicated a powerful message that left no doubt in the viewer's mind of its intention. The piece is often seen as alluding to the similar shapes used on military maps along with its political symbolism.
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