In one of Lazar Lissitzky’s early works, a series of colour lithographs for The Tale of a Goat, in the opinion of Nikolai Khardzhiev, “the stylistic features of popular art are reworked from a modernist viewpoint.” The artist also positions the text as if it were an element of the illustration itself.

Lissitzky Lazar

Lissitzky (El Lissitzky) Lazar Markovich (Pochinok, Smolensk Province, 1890 - Moscow, 1941)

Architect, graphic artist, painter and designer. El Lissitzky took Y.M.Pen’s painting classes in Vitebsk, then studied at the Faculty of Architecture at Darmstadt Polytechnic (1909-1914) and at the Polytechnic Institute in Moscow (1915-1916). He worked in a number of architectural studios and participated in the activities organised by the Centre for Jewish Ethnography and History. Be-tween 1919 and 1921 he lived in Vitebsk, where he ran a design and typography workshop as well as the Faculty of Architecture at the Institute of Practical Arts. He was a founding member of the UNOVIS group. In 1921, El Lissitzky returned to Moscow, where he gave classes at the Workshops for Higher Education in Technical Skills and the Arts. Between 1920 and 1921 he was a member of the Institute for Artistic Culture. In 1921, he left for Berlin where he participated in publications on art and architecture, such as Object, Brum,De Stijl (Amsterdam), and Mertz. In 1925 he returned to Moscow, and became a member of the New Architects Association. He worked on skyscraper projects (1925), and the group of buildings that house Pravda publishing house (1929), and was active in the design of exhibitions and exhibition spaces.