num_pages: 288
description: Situating El Lissitzky reassesses the complex career of one of the most influential yet controversial experimental artists of the early twentieth century. A prolific painter, designer, architect, and photographer, El Lissitzky (1890-1941) worked with the Soviet and the European artisticavant-gardes in the 1920s and as a propagandist for the Stalinist regime in the following decade.Taking readers into the thick of current debates about Lissitzky's artistic personae, Situating El Lissitzky reconstructs aspects of his elusive identity across different periods, places, and media. Following an introduction in which Nancy Perloff distills and draws together the volume's eightessays, Christina Lodder, Éva Forgács, and Maria Gough offer revisionist accounts of Lissitzky's years as an international constructivist and exhibition designer in Europe. John E. Bowlt then investigates the role of handicraft and the symbol of the hand in Lissitzky's artistic production, and LeahDickerman and Margarita Tupitsyn elucidate the interplay between physicality and opticality at different stages in Lissitzky's development as a photographer. Finally, T. J. Clark and Peter Nisbet address the disconcerting balance of aesthetic value and political expediency in Lissitzky's overtlyCommunist art. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait of Lissitzky as Bolshevik visionary, craftsman, modernist, internationalist, and Soviet propagandist.
language: English
title: Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow
titlecomplete: Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow (Issues & Debates)
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Getty Research Institute