Research Project/ El Lissitzky            

Everything in this world that we see is Graphic Design. We breath and sink in all the messages and different layers of what Graphic is. It is very important to understand the meaning of design and where it comes from and also the passion and confidence these artists do to send their message to the world of their piece of artwork. Graphic Design is a life style that we deeply show to our audiences and to hook them as well with pieces of our work including, layers, typography, color, size, spacing, texture, etc. There are many great graphic designers all around the world that attract people and changes their lives as well. When we think about Graphic Design, we think about the great artists that we really look up to and been inspired by. Some of the greats include Paul Rand, Paula Scher, Ellen Lupton, and Phillip Meggs. One Graphic Designer I really look up to and been inspired is the great El Lissitzky. El Lissitzky was an iconic figure in the graphic design world and really blow up during the Russian Constructivsm during the 1920’s. Many of his great pieces of work include “The Constructor” (1924), and “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1920). Graphic Design is not only just a thing but a lifestyle it brings to people and people take it to the next level to show the world. It is all about patience, timing, skill, and believing in yourself. “We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age”- El Lissitzky (IZ Quotes, 2^nd quote)

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky was born in Pochinok, Pochinkovsky District, Smolensk Oblast Russia. He lived in a small heavily Jewish population community. As a little boy, he stayed most of his time with his grandparents in Smolensk. Drawing was all he did and scribbling with whatever he had in his hand. He was founded by a Jewish artist Yehuda Pen who found a school of drawing and painting in Vitebsk. By the age of fifteen, Lissitzky was already teaching other upcoming passionate artists, which most of them were Jewish. He did not enjoy his teaching career as how he did drawing and painting pieces of artwork himself. By 1909-1910 Lissitzky travelled to Germany to enroll in a University of Technology called Technische Hochschule. In Germany, he was studying what he later fell in love with, Architectural Engineering. During his time there he just drew till his hand were going to fall. He loved it so much that he drew building and landscapes of Vitebsk where he had visit. In 1916-1917 Lissitzky got his diploma from another University called Riga Technological. As a Jewish boy, he was he knew that he had to go back to studying Jewish culture and even doing Jewish national art. In 1919 When Chagall was appointed as the commissar of the Arts in Vitebsk (An academy he started) he hired Lazar Lissitzky to be an instructor for Architecture and Graphics. Later down the months something came to him that would later consider him one of the greatest artists of his generation and is what known as Suprematism. Lissitzky was inspired and idolized by another called Kazimir Malevich. He knew that this was the type of pieces of work he wanted to do for many years and would be turning point for the man’s developmentSuprematism is a type of artwork that is composed of a lot of squares, triangles, and other flat geometric shapes, (The Art Story- Lissitzky).

In the 1920’s Lissitzky began using his talents and started to develop his own work of Suprematism. He started to expand his own brand of Suprematism to give messages to people all around the world. He wanted the people to feel what he felt and to make the people believe what he believed. One of his most iconic pieces of work was during his early days using the art of Suprematism was “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919-1920). This piece of artwork from El Lissitzky was very important to people because it was a direct message to the Russian Civil, during the period of which is known as the Russian Constructivism. “Russian Constructivism was a movement that was active from 1913 to the 1940s. It was a movement created by the Russian avant-garde, but quickly spread to the rest of the continent. Constructivist art is committed to complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often geometric, experimental and rarely emotional” (arthistoryarchive.com). He wanted political change to his native country because it was being taken over by Joseph Stalin and conquering it.

El Lissitzky had many accomplishments in his life, creating movements during the 1920’s in Russia using his talent of Suprematism. More of his greatest works included “Poster for the Russian Exhibition” (1929), “Layers” (1920’s), “The Constructor” (1924), and “Of Two Squares” (1923).  In his artworks he used two primary shapes and three colors, those were squares and triangles, and colors of black, red, and white. All these colors had a meaning a message during the Russian Constructvism. For example in “Beat the Whites with Red Wedge” “The Bolshevik army emblem, a red wedge, slashes diagonally into a white sphere signifying A. F. Kerensky’s “white” forces”. Every little detail he used everything had a meaning to him for political reason.

Lazar was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1923. The pace of Lissitzky’s work gradually slowed. The illness prevented him from taking on multiple projects as had been his custom for much of his life. During the 1940’s when Contructivsm was slowy fading away, so was Lazar from his illness. His final piece of work was a propaganda photomontage produced at the onset of the Soviet Union’s entry into WWII. On December 21^st, 1941, El Lissitzky passed awat at his home in Schodnia in Moscow.

I chose El Lissitzky as one of the greatest artists of his time because he knew what to do to make his native country move forward and help spread messages all around the world with his artwork, especially the art known as Suprematism. With Suprematism being used by him, he managed to use his talents with shapes and solid colors to give meaning on what was going on in his country Russian during the 1920’s Civil War. Constructism is one of my favorite pieces of artwork because it is a simple kind of a design with a lot of meaning heart put into it. It can attract a lot of people with its solid colors and shapes, not a lot of words but in the end of the day they already know what the work means. El Lissitzky’s accomplishments are so appealing to COMG and CDMG because in today’s Graphic Design, a lot of artwork send different messages in many different ways, it can be political, nature, deaths, education, and sports, and that’s what Lazar did with his work during his time, sending messages to the world.  “We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age”- El Lissitzky (IZ Quotes, 2^nd quote)

As a graphic Designer, I remember doing a piece of artwork for one of my design class called Type and Media. For one of our assignments that we had to do, we had to make or so call create a poster for the Museum of Modern Art. What I did was a Russian Contructivsm poster influenced by the great El Lissitzky. I remember going through his work for some inspiration and feeling very satisfied and excited that this artist was a legend but most importantly a natural talent when it came to Supremitsm. The way he used his shapes and colors is what really inspired me to love him and to send political messages not only to his country but the world during a very crazy period of the 1920’s (Great Depression, Russian Civil War, and the end of WWI).  Lazar committed to complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity.

Resources/Bibliography

1. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-lissitzky-el.htm
2. http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/constructivism/
3. http://www.csun.edu/~pjd77408/DrD/Art461/LecturesAll/Lectures/lecture07/Constructivism.html
4. City Tech Library
5. https://prezi.com/s9mu4esl-a5n/el-lissitzky/