El Lissitzky

El Lissitsky was a leading figure within the Russian avant-garde movements of Suprematism and Constructivism. As a teenager, he had shared an art teacher with Marc Chagall, whom he later worked alongside. From 1909 to 1914, he studied engineering and architecture in Germany and by 1919 had been made Professor of Architecture at the art school in Vitebsk. It was here that he came under the influence of Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematism and began to incorporate the use of simplified geometric shapes in a series that he titled ‘Proun’. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet authorities gave him the task of organizing a series of exhibitions in the West to promote the latest Russian progressive art. Whilst in Germany he fell in with members of the Dutch De Stijl movement and integrated elements of their Neo-Plasticism into his work. His talent for synthesis, seen in his union of Constructivism with the innovations of Bauhaus, would profoundly shape the course of 20th century Modernism.