Elizar Morduchivitch Lissitzky was born on November 23 1890 in a village
Pochinok several miles southeast of Smolensk into a well-to-do Jewish family.
He spent his childhood in Vitebsk, and in his secondary school days he
lived with his grandparents in Smolensk. His father was a westernized Jew
with the ideals typical of the turn-of-the-century assimilated Jews
(1): He acquired his place in the society by accepting a secular
job, and as soon as he had enough money, he emigrated to the United States
and asked his wife to join him. Lissitzky's mother was much more orthodox
than his father, and first she went to ask the rabbi for advice, and he
told her to stay. So the father came back, and El grew up in Russia.
(2) His wife Sophie Küppers wrote that he inherited traits of
both his parents; actually, Lissitzky's identity consisted of many different
parts, and the Eastern Jewish tradition contributed to a certain extent
to this conglomerate.
As a child, Lissitzky already demonstrated his undoubted talent in
free drawing: at the age of thirteen he received instruction from a Jewish
painter Jehuda Pen, and as early as fifteen he began to teach drawing himself
(1, p. 14). In 1909 he went to Germany to study architecture after he had
been refused the entry to the arts academy in Petersburg: Only a limited
number of places was offered to Jews in the universities at that time.
(ibid.) It is not surprising that Lissitzky chose to study architecture,
not only because he was "ein guter Mathematiker" (2, p.12), but
also because of his consequent interest in the applied arts. In a letter
to Sophie Küppers (August 1923), he wrote: " [...] ich habe Notizen
von 1911 gefunden (also vor 12 Jahren) über meine Kunstanschauungen, -
deren Sinn und Ausdruck ich heute noch unterzeichnen kann." (2, p.
26) He came back to Russia in 1914, after the war began. In 1915 he received
the diploma in architecture in Moscow. During his study in Darmstadt he
visited France and Italy and "cover[ed] more than 1200 km in Italy
on foot - making sketches and studying." (1, p. 8) Strangely enough,
Lissitzky lived for long periods in Germany that was turning fascist (especially
in the 1920s), in that cradle of anti-Semitism, seemingly without experiencing
any problems with his ethnicity. From a psychological point of view, Lissitzky's
personality is an interesting case: He was equally at home in Soviet Russia,
in Weimar Germany, and in neutral capitalistic Switzerland; he was equally
brilliant as a Jewish book illustrator, a painter, an architect, a typographer,
a photographer; he spoke three languages fluently (although his written
German has several characteristics of Yiddish influence), quite opposite
to, for instance, his Hungarian Bauhaus colleague László Moholy-Nagy. He
succeeded in integrating Jewish elements to his drawings in the Figurinnenmappe
(e.g. Puteshestvennik po vsem vekam, in English, Traveler All
Over the Time, is obviously an allusion to Ahasver, the everlasting
Jew), and, as Nancy Perloff and Eva Forgacs point out, in a number of Prouns,
where Hebrew letters built a part of composition (3, p. 4) Also in his
illustration to Ilja Ehrenburg's short story "Shifs-Karta" (1922)
Lissitzky uses the same motif, placing two Hebrew letters on a raised palm.
'Pei nun' means 'here lies': in them Perloff and Forgacs see the declaration
of "the end of the old Eastern European Jewish life, and of the pre-revolutionary,
pre-Soviet world." But I would suggest a more obvious interpretation:
Ehrenburg's collection of stories was titled "Shest' povestey o ljogkikh
koncakh" ("Six Stories about Light Endings"), hence, 'here
lies' can be read literally, in the sense of an ending; here, again, he
uses the Hebrew letters in a syncretic way, combining them with a diagram,
a line of English text, a silhouette of a motor ship, and an American flag.
(an illustration in 3, p. 5)
This illustration is also remarkable in regard to the superimposed
palm: this image would wander from one Lissitzky's work to another, including
his famous photographic self-portrait, a commercial for Pelikan,
the cover page for the VKhUTEMAS yearbook. The raised palm, together with
the compass, appeared on his photographs and paintings in association with
the new artist, the "Constructor", whose paintbrush was replaced
with a technical device.
An illustration for Ehrenburg's "Six Stories" is titled "Tatlin
working on a monument" and shows Tatlin with a huge compass in the
place of the right eye. This drawing, made in 1922, corresponds to Raoul
Hausmann's collage "Tatlin at Home" (1920), and, along with similarities,
shows differences in the interpretation of Tatlin's personality. K. Michael
Hays in an essay on relations between Lissitzky and the Berlin Dada points
out:
The artist, represented [in Lissitky's drawing] by Tatlin, becomes
Zhiznestoitel', or "constructor" of a new way of life,
working actively to bring about a new order. That order is itself given
form by the Proun compositions, diagonally layered, geometric abstractions
embodying the sense of dynamic change unleashed by the Revolution. In Hausmann's
Tatlin, too, the artist is surrounded by images of dynamism and,
perhaps, science (the map? the anatomical manikin?), including two of Lissitzky's
favorite symbols, the wheel and the propeller. (4, p. 174)
The difference between these two images is that Lissitzky's Tatlin
is a "constructor of the new life", while from the point of Hausmann's
view he is a Monteur of the new Maschinenkunst. Both Hausmann
and Lissitzky extend Tatlin's vision with a technical utility, although
Hausmann's Tatlin is an anonym with an extraordinary vision (he can see
the innards of a mannequin), while Lissitky's Tatlin is a declaration of
the engineer-artist (he has a conceptual mathematical sketch by hand, a
technical drawing on the blackboard, and he uses the compass to build the
'monument' on the basis of these materials). In case of Hausmann it's impossible
to characterize the 'device' for the extension of vision, in case of Lissitzky
it's a usual compass, the rational architect's device, which he himself
was most used to. In 1926 Lissitzky wrote:
«Meine Augen
Die Objektive und Okulare, die Präzesionsinstrumente und Spiegelreflexkameras,
das Kino mit der Zeitlupe und Zeitraffer, die Röntegen- und X, Y, Z Strahlen
haben in meine Stirn noch 20, 2000, 2 000 000 haarscharfe, geschlifene,
abtastende Augen gesetzt.» (5, p. 329)
He did not mythicize the machine, like the Dadaists did, with a mix
of admiration and fear, nor did he praise the pure technology; he wanted
to use the technological innovation for the sake of art, and the art for
customer (in his Pelikan commercials), society (the propagandistic
photographs), life; he promoted the applied art in its most transcendental
sense: "Ist denn die Radiowelle 'abstrakt' oder 'naturalistisch'?"
(ibid.) He intended his works to be essences, that would penetrate every
aspect of life to create a new world. For him, the whole history of art
led to Malevitch's black square; from then on it was the time to begin
with constructions upon this flat black surface (3),
using the knowledge of the past and the modern technical potential.
Lissitzky's Visit to Germany in 1921-23
When Lissitzky came to Germany in the very end of 1921, he already
was an experienced artist with the articulated revolutionary tendencies.
Since the beginning of the Revolution, he had been a member of the art
commission, he had created the first Soviet flag (at least he claimed that)
and designed (together with his students of the Vitebsk Art Labour Cooperative)
the Lenin Tribune (1, p. 12). Also his Prouns and
illustrations for Jewish books were completed in this period.
There were numerous speculations (based on a suggestion made by Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers) that Lissitzky had been officially sent for his first
trip to Germany, but Kai-Uwe Hemken performed some archive research and
found evidence that Lissitky's visit was not planned by officials
(4). (6, p. 12) Yet in spite of this, Lissitzky can (to a certain
extent) be considered a Russian cultural representative in Germany; Hemken
thinks that for him the role was an opportunity to get himself known by
Berlin artistic circles, and points out that the Novembergruppe
took advantage of having Lissitzky's works included in their exhibitions,
because by the mere fact of his participation the group was able to repel
the accusation in becoming apolitical (ibid.) Moreover, Lissitzky was one
of the first revolutionary Russian artists, who could provide information
about new movements in Russian politics and art.
The Russian community in Berlin in 1922 amounted to approximately 100,000
residents. Due to the blockade of Russia, these emigrants scarcely had
a chance of obtaining enough authentic information about what was going
on in their home country; Lissitzky took part in the heated debates about
the future of the USSR in the cafés and ateliers of the Russian district
(e.g. in the cabaret Das blaue Vogel and the café Nollendorfplatz,
that Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers mentioned in her memoir (2, p. 21)),
and by doing that struck many new acquaintances, among them of Ilja Ehrenburg.
As soon as the spring of 1922, Ehrenburg and Lissitzky organized the trilingual
(Russian, German, French) magazine Vetsch'. Gegenstand. Object.
That periodical was meant to be the means of the cultural exchange between
the "russischen und westeuropäischen Meistern" (4, p. 345), aimed
at informing Russians about the West and vice versa. Thus, Lissitzky accepted
the role of a "messenger of the new Russia", while remaining
oriented more towards Russia: The majority of texts in Vetsch' were
written in Russian. Sophie Lissitzky described the goal of the journal
in the following way:
«1. Die in Rußland Schaffenden mit der neuesten westeuropäischen Kunst
bekannt zu machen und 2. Westeuropa über die russische Kunst und Literatur
zu informieren.» (2, p. 21)
It is significant that the first mission of Vetsch' would be
the information of Russian artists about the West European ones and not
other way round: This indicates Lissitzky's own desire to learn more about
his colleagues rather than to propagandize the Revolution in Germany. Hemken
claims, that the content of the journal was concentrated on propaganda:
"Ihre propagandistische Intention steht außer Zweifel." (6, p.
24) This is true to a great extent, but doesn't cover the whole agenda:
along Lissitzky's declaration of the new art, emerging only within the
political context, the issue included essays on international cultural
events (e.g., exhibitions in Venice, Berlin), Russian and Italian literature,
theatre reviews, Raoul Hausmann's article "Optophonetics" etc.
Hemken might be right, when he suggests that Lissitzky addressed mainly
the Russian emigrants in Berlin, but what he was seeking was the audience
interested in the developing new art and in the ways, how this new art
could be applied and how it could contribute to a certain political milieu.
In the introductory part to the first issue of Vetsch' , he wrote:
The appearance of Veshch is an indication of the fact that the
exchange of 'objects' between young Russian and West European Masters has
begun. [...]
We consider the negative tactics of the 'dadaists' [...] to be anachronistic.
The time has come to build on open ground. Whatever is exhausted will die
anyway, without assistance from us. [...]
We consider the triumph of the constructive method to be essential
for our present. We find it not only in the new economy and in the development
of the industry, but also in the psychology of our contemporaries of art.
Veshch will champion constructive art, whose mission is not,
after all, to embellish life, but to organize it.
(5)
In May 1922 Lissitzky took part in the artists' congress in Düsseldorf,
where the "Union der Konstuktivisten" was supposed to be formed;
that never happened, but a new group of international constructivists appeared
as a by-product of the congress, including Lissitzky, Hans Richter and
Werner Graeff. They launched a new magazine, "G - Material zur elementaren
Gestaltung". (6, p. 30)
The introduction to Vesch' and the fact of participation in
an international project of G itself, show that Lissitzky's interests
clearly outstepped the propaganda. In the first issue of G Lissitzky
published his design of the Prounen-Raum, made during the Große
Berliner Ausstellung in 1923. Hemken points out that the Prounen-Raum
was the clear demonstration against the Weimar culture politics - not
only in form, but also due to the participation of a revolutionary Russian
artist in the largest Weimar art exhibition.
In the same year Lissitzky took part in the 1. Russischen Kunstausstellung.
During the exhibition he presented a lecture, from which Victor Margolin
in his book The Struggle for Utopia quotes:
Only now do we realize that in Europe the same problems were arising
at the same time as in our country. I refer to De Stijl in Holland,
the new Hungarian movement, Germany, and so on. [...] After the period
of great impetus the world is now moving into a stagnant rut. Yet we are
sure that our vitality and our instinct for self-preservation will again
set all our forces in motion. Then not only our achievements but also our
unsuccessful experiments will bear fruit for those masters in every country
who are consciously creating. (6)
This made Lissitzky's position somewhat ambivalent:
Although he represented himself as a man who had participated actively
in creating new art forms in Russia, he was also attempting to champion
an art that transcended political differences, thus taking a stance in
opposition to the Russian Constructivists.(7, p.70)
In 1923 Lissitzky visited Hannover together with his Dadaists friends
and made acquaintance of Sophie Küppers, his wife-to-be, who run
(7) at that time the Kestner-Gesellschaft. Sophie Küppers was
fascinated with Lissitzky's works, which for her presented an opposition
to the techniques and ideas of both the Dadaists and the Expressionists.
(2, p. 25) From the Kestner-Gesellschaft Lissitzky received an offer to
compile a collection of the lithographs and in the spring of 1923 the first
Kestner-Mappe with Prouns was ready. All items from the 1.
Kestner-Mappe were almost immediately sold, and Lissitzky was asked
to put together a new collection of lithographs; he already had materials
for it from his time in Vitebsk, sketches of the costumes for the opera
"Pobeda nad solncem" ("Sieg über die Sonne"), which
was a team-work by Kruchyonykh, Malevitch, Matyushin and Khlebnikov. Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers recalls that "Lissitzky war mit dem Druck zufrieden,
der seiner Grafik neue Vollkommenheit gab." (2, p. 25) Lissitzky would
not have found these technological possibilities in post-Revolutionary
Russia at that time, as he would not have met any understanding for his
abstract Prouns. In 1922 Anatoly Lunacharsky, head of the People's
Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narkompros) said to a group of foreign
delegates to the Comintern:
In bourgeois society, the futurists [avant-garde artists] were to some
extent persecuted and considered themselves revolutionaries in artistic
technique. It was natural that they soon felt some sympathy for the revolution,
and were attracted to it when it extended a hand to them. [...] It must
be confessed that, above all, it was my hand. I extended it not because
I admired their experiments [...] but because in the general policy of
Narkompros we needed to depend on a serious collective of creative artistic
forces. I found it almost exclusively there, among the so-called 'left'
artists. Indeed this was repeated in Hungary; it also took place in Germany.
[...] Yes, I extended a hand to the 'leftists', but the proletariat and
peasantry did not extend a hand to them. (8, p. 172)
Lunacharsky means that this 'leftist' art meant nothing for the proletariat
and peasantry, and as K. Michael Hays puts it:
By proposing forms of uncompromising mechanization, agitation, or negation,
by consciously eliminating any reference to the past, and by criticizing
the present, oppositional art often appeared destructive or hostile, not
only to the older order but to the life itself. (4, p. 187)
The Figurinenmappe for "Sieg über die Sonne" can serve
as a good example for this: these figures don't represent human beings,
but 'constructs', hybrids between humans and robots (especially in the
examples of the Globetrotter and the Ansager). The point
is that the Figurinnen were not meant to be costumes for the actors
- they were supposed to be actors themselves, a part of the Bühnen-Maschine
(the stage machine). Although the stage machinery should represent
the idea of industrialization, for a proletarian or a peasant (as was Lunacharsky's
concern) most probably it was difficult to understand.
In the early 1920s, Lissitzky was much more concerned with the revolution
in art, then with the Revolution; he came to Germany in search for the
new contacts with artists and their art and for the audience for his own
works, because they fitted to the Weimar Germany context much better, and
he found the desired recognition; with certain reservations he can be considered
an envoy of revolutionary Russia, because he undoubtedly accepted the Revolution
and because the role of such a representative helped him to find a place
in the German artistic circles.
1924-1928
Approximately at the time of his first encounter with Sophie Küppers,
Lissitzky contracted tuberculosis; the illness required treatment in Switzerland,
and in 1925 Lissitzky went to Zürich, where Hans Arp with his wife and
Mark Stam picked him up. From there he went to Locarno. During his stay
in the sanatorium, he worked on commercials for Pelikan: The medical
treatment had to be paid for. In a letter to Sophie Küppers he complains
about this work: "Diese ganze Affaire tut mir überhaupt leid. Aber
sie kriegen doch eine Reihe guter Entwürfe." (2, p. 37) In creating
those commercials, Lissitzky put to use the experience he had gained designing
book-covers for Skythen-Verlag in Berlin (a Russian publishing house).
Hemken points out that those books required the "applied graphic"
("angewandte Grafik" (6, p. 54)), because in time of the inflation
it was too expensive to publish books with high-quality plates; the books
of Skythen-Verlag were mass-produced ("Massenware"), therefore
those orders meant a reliable source of income for Lissitzky. On one hand,
that work (along with the "Skaz pro dva kvadrata" ("Story
of two squares")) was revolutionary in regard to the entire book concept,
summarized by Lissitzky in an article published in Merz in July 1923. The
new concept was based on optical effects applied to the text: "Optik
statt Phonetik", "die Wörter des gedruckten Bogens werden abgesehen,
nicht abgehört" (9, p. 360); both in the "Skaz" and in Mayakovsky's
book "Dlja golosa", Lissitzky uses pictograms - in the first
case as part of the text, in the second -- instead of page numbering. But
the innovative approach didn't preclude Lissitzky from using his ideas
for making some money. Probably his attitude went side by side with political
processes in his native country: In 1922, Lenin implemented the New Economic
Policy that was supposed to help the newly established country in its economic
development. The NEP can be summarized as a version of "applied capitalism"
- the young Soviets needed initial capital. Jean Leering also emphasizes
this aspect in the essay Lissitzky's Dilemma:
When he [Lissitzky] returned to Moscow, in the middle of 1925, he found
that the latter work [typography, photography and Wolkenbügel] was
a good preparation for the changed situation in the visual arts since he
had left the country (in late 1921 or early 1922). This change was, although
not directly, in part a result of the New Economic Policy which Lenin introduced
in 1921 in response to the growing unrest throughout Russia caused by the
shortages of food and other necessities. Lenin and his advisors wanted
to stimulate production, and that meant that less money was available for
the arts. The newly established cultural institutions had to be self-supporting
as far as possible, and artists were forced to obtain their income through
the old market principle. (10, p. 58)
With the Pelikan commercials, Lissitzky makes a step towards
the image advertising, that is, to the usage of a certain image or a constellation
of images connected on a psychological basis, with the idea of how to make
people believe that the advertised product is "up-to-date". For
the advertisements of Pelikan ink, Lissitzky borrowed the photogram
technique from Moholy-Nagy, which was something new, thus he could express
the essence of being "modern." In the third issue of ABC
in 1924 Lissitzky (in collaboration with Mark Stam) wrote:
«Die Reklame ist in der heutigen Gemeinschaftsordnung eine Notwendigkeit
geworden, eine Folge des Konkurenztriebes. Die Reklame wirkt auf das Publikum
durch Mitteilung, - noch stärker durch Propaganda, - stärker
noch selbst durch Suggestion. Für eine zielbewußte Reklame ist außer
einem klaren Einblick in das gegebene Material, vor allem pszchologisches
Erkennen notwendig.» (11, p. 7)
One word in this statement (which could serve as a perfect subject
for Theodor Adorno's Kulturkritik), "zielbewußt", «task
oriented», seems to be the key word to Lissitzky's method.
In 1925 Lissitzky's Swiss visa was not prolonged and he came back to
Moscow in June of the same year. As soon as July, he began working on the
magazine ASNOVA and soon after that became a professor in VKhUTEMAS.
Ever since that time, Lissitzky had been receiving more and more official
orders, mostly architectural. Initially, he was quite overwhelmed with
the nature of work and complained to Sophie Küppers: "[...] ich habe
wirklich gearbeitet: der Entwurf für den Jachtklub ist nicht ein Plakat
für Pelikan. [...] Aber nicht die technische Lösung, nicht das Problem
macht mir Kopfzerbrechen - das Künstlerische!" (2, p. 63) But these
initial difficulties disappeared with time; Lissitzky got involved in all
kinds of Soviet art, he designed pavilions for the Gorky Park, worked on
plans and organization of a typographical exhibition in Moscow (1927),
took part in the competition for designing the new building of Pravda,
taught at VKhUTEMAS. He still maintained contacts with Germany
(8), but his principal interests shifted back to Russia. In his
person, the USSR "hatte [...] einen eminenten Propagandisten gefunden"
(2, p. 73)
On the Front Line of the First Five-Year Plan
The revolutionary Russia became more or less a settled state with clearly
articulated goals of frantic economic development. The period of NEP passed
by; the new program of industrialization, collectivization and electrification
began. The impetus for the five-year plans' completion could be only the
enthusiasm of the people; it was achieved by 1) propaganda, and 2) the
spirit of the competition with the rest of the world. The mainstream art
had to provide the propaganda, and to represent the achievements of the
young Soviets to the world at large.
The year 1927 was the preparatory one for the coming first five-year
plan. The main task of Lissitzky's works at that time and later (architectural
designs, the model of theatre for Meyerhold, books for children, and especially
- the exhibitions abroad) contributed to the fulfillment of the propagandist
goals of the first pjatiletka.
The typographical exhibition in Moscow was a great success, although
the exposition was limited. This work may have made Anatoly Lunacharsky
to pay attention to Lissitzky. Jeremy Anysley points out in an article
on "Pressa" Exhibition:
«In December of 1927, Lissitzky was commissioned to design the Soviet
contribution to Pressa by Anatolii Lunacharskii, the Head of Narkompros,
the People's Commissariat of the Enlightment, for its opening in May of
1928. [...]
Lissitzky headed a 38-member 'collective of creators', who produced
most of the display material in the workshop for stage design in Lenin
Hills in Moscow. The center piece was a 'photofresco' [...], entitled 'The
Task of the Press is the Education of the Masses.'» (12, p. 71)
The technique primarily used by Lissitzky in his Pressa design
was the photomontage. While the Dadaists in Germany found materials for
their photomontages in the everyday life and put them into a new context
to criticize the society, "[b]y 1926-28 Lissitzky and Klucis were
applying the principles of the filmic 'montage of attraction'." (12,
p. 71)
Those attractions consisted of a mix of Soviet symbols and a declaration
of industrial development with the clear propagandistic task: "Die
Presse der Roten Armee" is represented with the series of pillars
pasted over with newspapers used as a background for the figures of absolutely
identical soldiers. The rhythm of their arrangement reminds of ancient
Egyptian drawings, and the idea of mass-production is obviously present;
"Die Presse und die Sowjetfrau" is an anthropomorphic construct,
a Gestalt with the hammer and sickle, bearing a quote from Lenin:
"Each cook must learn how to rule the country," instead of the
face. (2, plates 209-210) The "Lenin's Corner" contained Lenin's
oeuvre in fifty languages. There also was a proletarian caryatid: A huge
statue of a worker who carried a beam segment that seemed to support the
exhibition hall's ceiling. The entrance was decorated with the three-dimensional
red star and moving belt conveyors. The propagandist effect of these installations
can be attributed to the mix of Soviet symbolism with dynamic presentation
of facts. Anysley writes:
«By 1926-28, Lissitzky and Klucis were applying the principles of the
filmic 'montage of attractions', as formulated and practised by directors
Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, to two-dimensional graphic display,
as well as exhibitions environments. As 'factography', it attempted to
assemble facts: an intended scientism was inherent in the term.» (12, p.
71)
Despite of the huge success of the exhibition, Lissitzky expressed
several reservations in regard of the displays: "The extreme hurry
and the shortage of time violated my intentions and the necessary completion
of the form - so it ended up being basically a theatre decoration."
(9) But actually it were these "pseudo-scientific"
representations that made the exhibits attractive: Lissitzky's genius was
in his ability to create dynamic aesthetic arrangements resulting in a
synthesis with several layers of meaning. The already mentioned "Tatlin
working on a monument", and the monumental photofrieze from the Pressa
can serve as examples. In this 23,5 m long and 3,8 m wide rhytmical
photomontage (in the sense of Vertov's "optical rhythm of the montage"),
Lissitzky pasted side to side the Lenin's portrait and the photograph of
a reporter in the middle of some gathering: "Neben der charismatischen
Führerfigur Lenin ist ein Pressefotograf bei der Arbeit zu sehen, der [...]
mit seiner Umgebung, der gesellschaftliche Realität, untrennbar verbunden
ist." (13, p. 54) In the described piece of the photomontage frieze,
Lissitzky attached Lenin to the everyday work of a press photographer -
and in this way manifested the political meaning of a real life scene.
The Lenin figure served as a symbol of the Soviet mythology (in the same
vein with the hammer and sickle) not only for Lissitzky; for example, Mayakovsky
made this symbolical implication clear in the line: "When we say Lenin,
we mean the Party". Lissitzky definitely contributed a lot to the
formation of the Lenin's cult of personality.
Myroslava Mudrak and Virginia Marquardt wrote:
«Lissitzky's pavilion at Cologne contrasted markedly with his earlier
exhibition environments in its political impact. Unlike the stealthy manner
of the Proun Room and the exhibition spaces of 1926, spaces designed
as utopian 'instructions for action', the Cologne pavilion hindered the
spectator's free passage through the display and bombardered the viewer
with a synopsis of mundane socialism at work.» (14, p. 86)
Mudrak and Marquardt see in the Pressa-Köln, with its innovative
display, starkly realistic images of Soviet life, and bold political slogans
a turning point for all further Soviet exhibitions in the West: "The
artist was no longer the organisator or the creative force behind the design
of exhibition pavilions of superpowers; instead, he or she was implemented
dogmatic, totalitarian dicta." (18, p. 88)
But one idea of Lissitzky's Pressa pavilion corresponds to the
Prounen-Raum: the idea of competition between the Russian art with
the West European one. Another similarity is the usage of imported materials
- his young assistants were as much fascinated with them as he was with
the quality of his lithographs from both Kestner-Mappen. Elena Semenova
was a younger artist, who worked with others on the Pressa assembling.
In 1976, she recalled:
«It was thanks to Lissitzky that we had the chance of seeing and working
with the real, imported materials. This was the first time that we laid
hands on plexiglass or that we used good-quality, colored paper, good-quality
paints which didn't alter their colors and grey, factory-dyed pasteboard
which could take oil, tempera, or whatever.» (15, p. 23)
The Film- und Foto-Ausstellung in Stuttgard (FiFo) followed
the Pressa in 1929. This time Lissitzky was organizing an exhibition
side by side with George Grosz, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch and others;
as Pohlmann points out, the latter were concerned with the photomontage
not only for advertising, but also for the political agitation. The difference
between their and Lissitzky's political impact can be described with his
own words written in 1925: once back in Moscow, he wrote to Sophie Küppers
that the Soviet art was still in birth, while the German one only in abortion.
Hemken (along with other critics) implies that Lissitzky's artistic skills
decreased in the years of the Soviet mass-culture production. But it was
very likely due to his illness, and his propaganda 'child' was dear to
him; otherwise he wouldn't have created a birth announcement presenting
his son Jen superimposed with a factory chimney of Russia going industialized.
Conclusion
Until the very end, Lissitzky kept producing architectural plans, drawings,
sketches; in the 1930s, he directed the permanent architectural exhibition
in the Gorky Park, created designs for several exhibitions (the fur exhibition
in Leipzig and the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1930,
the International Aviation Exhibition in Paris in 1932), co-edited the
magazine "USSR im Bau", took part in the exibition of international
Constructivists in Basel in 1937. The last work he completed was a propaganda
poster "Vsjo dlja fronta, vsjo dlja pobedy!" ("Give more
tanks!")
Ever since his early years, Lissitzky had been looking for the opportunities
to influence life with art. For that purpose he went to study architecture
in Germany; the architectural studies with the compass in the hand and
the Suprematism, which he adopted a lot, brought him to the Prouns,
utopian, abstract models for the new and better world. Along the way, he
used any opportunity and all new techniques of art application; be it the
Jewish books typography or the advertisements for Pelikan, his main
concern was "das zielbewußte Schaffen" ("the task oriented
creation").
His return to Moscow in 1925 was the turning point of his artistic
life. In the Soviet Russia, he found the area where he could apply his
creative forces recognizing himself as an artist in the service of society
- and, on the other hand, for him Russia was the source of material, that
he could promote in Germany. In this sense, he used Russia as a motif for
his artistic works - and Germany as the venue for them. In his autobiography
written in June, 1941, Lissitzky wrote: "1926. My most important
work as an artist begins: the creation of exhibitions."
The works cited
Henk Puts. "El Lissitzky (1890-1941): His Life and
Work." El Lissitzky: Architect, Painter, Photographer, Typographer,
ed. Jan Debbaut.
Eindhoven: Municipal Van Abbemuseum, Madrid: Fundacion
Caja de Pensiones, Paris: Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC,
1990. (14-26)
Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie. "Errinerungen und Briefe."
El Lissitzky: Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften, Dresden: VEB Verlag der
Kunst, 1976. (11-99)
Perloff, Nancy and Eva Forgacs. Monuments of the Future:
Designs by El Lissitzky, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998.
Hays, K. Michael. "Photomontage and Its Audience:
El Lissitky Meets Berlin Dada." The Avant-Garde Frontier: Russia Meets
the West, 1910-1930, ed. Gail Harrison Roman and Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. (169-196)
Lissitzky, El. "Der Lebensfilm von El bis 1926."
Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie. El Lissitzky: Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften,
Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1976. (329)
Hemken, Kai-Uwe. El Lissitzky: Revolution und Avantgarde,
Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1990.
Margolin, Victor. The Struggle for Utopia, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Comissariat of Enlightment:
Social Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October
1917-1921. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.
Lissitzky, El. "Topografie der Typographie."
Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie. El Lissitzky: Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften,
Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1976. (360-361)
Leering, Jean. "Lissitzky's Dilemma." El Lissitzky:
Architect, Painter, Photographer, Typographer, ed. Jan Debbaut. Eindhoven:
Municipal Van Abbemuseum, Madrid: Fundacion Caja dePensiones, Paris: Musee
d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, 1990. (56-66)
Lissitzky, El and Mark Stam. "Reklame." 1924.
ABC - Beiträge zum Bauen, ed. Mark Stam and Hans Scmidt. Reprint der Technischen
Hochschule Eindhoven. Eindhoven, 1969, 1. 1924, 3-4.
Anysley, Jeremy. "Pressa Cologne, 1928: Exhibitions
and Publication Fesign in the Weimar Period." Design Issues 3 (1994):
52-77.
Pohlmann, Ulrich. "El Lissitzkys Ausstellungsgestaltungen
in Deutschland und ihr Einfluß auf die faschistischen Propagandaschauen
1932-1937." El Lissitzky: Jenseits der Abstraktion, ed. Margarita
Tupitsyn, Munich: 1999. (52-65)
Mudrak, Myroslava and Virginia Marquardt. "Environments
of Propaganda: Russian and Soviet Expositions and Pavilions in the West."
The Avant-Garde Frontier: Russia Meets the West, 1910-1930, ed. Gail Harrison
Roman and Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt. Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 1992. (65-102)
Interview with Elena Semenova, ed. Szymon Bojko. "From
My Reminiscences of Lissitzky." El Lissitzky: Exhibition from 9th
April until end of June 1976, Cologne: galerie gmurzynska, 1976. (23-24)
1. Yiddish films "Jiddl mitn
Fiddl" (1936), "East and West" (1923), both starring the
cabaret actress Molly Picon, or Elias Canetti's novel Juden auf Wanderschaft
clearly show the geography of Ashkenazi emigration: Out of the Stedl (small
East European town populated by Jews), via West Europe, with the final
destination in the USA.
2. All information from Lissitzky-Küppers,
Sophie, El Lissitzky: Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften, Dresden: VEB Verlag
der Kunst, 1976.
3. Compare with the Suprematist
Story of Two Squares
4. On this occasion Hemken cites a
letter from David Sterenberg to Edwin Redslob, April 10 1923, Bundesarchiv
Koblenz.
5. From the translation of Lissitzky,
El. "Die Blockade Rußlands geht ihrem Ende entgegen." El Lissitzky:
Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften, Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1976. (344-345)
6. Lissitzky, El. "New Russian
Art: A Lecture", in Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky: Life,
Letters, Texts, 334- 344
7. After the sudden death of Paul
Erich Küppers, she actually took over the Kestner-Gesellschaft, that she
had used to manage together with her first husband; yet the official director
became Eckard von Sydow. (2, p. 23)
8. He participated in several events:
created the "Abstraktes Kabinette" in Hannover (1926/27), participated
in the Großer Berliner Ausstellung and in the exhibition in the Goltz gallery
in Munich (1926). (6, p. 200)
9. Jeremy Anysley quotes this passage
in his article from Lissitzky's letter to J.J.P. Oud, published in Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers and Jen Lissitzky, eds., El Lissitzky: Proun und Wolkenbügel.
Schriften, Briefe und Dokumente. Dresden: VEB Verlag, 1977. (135)
