EL LISSITZKY
1890-1941
Considered to be one of the leading figures of the Russian avant-garde, an eclectic and innovative spirit, EL Lissitzky was an architect, painter and graphic artist. He manifested his expressive strength in the most diverse fields, revealing himself from time to time as an inventor, thinker, photographer and printer. His enthusiasm for the exact sciences, for engineering in particular, and for contemporary technology in general, is evident in all his works. The importance of his paintings, according to him, lay in the fact that they were descriptions of technical visions: spectrally clear colours, emptying of matter, identity of function, material and form. All his works are fables of a technical era to come, visionary anticipations of forms of the future, apotheosis of engineering technique and possess the unrepeatable magic of revolutionary attempts. In 1920 he drew The Story of Two Squares, a symbolic story set in a red circle (the earth), whose protagonists are a red square and a black square fighting against chaos, represented by a confused set of geometric figures.
photo © El Lissitzky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons