El Lissitzky, or El Lisitsky orig. Lazar Markovich Lisitskii, (born Nov. 10, 1890, Pochinok, near Smolensk, Russia—died Dec. 30, 1941, Moscow), Russian painter, typographer, and designer. As a teacher at Marc Chagall’s revolutionary art school in Vitebsk, he met Kazimir Malevich, whose influence is seen in a series of abstract paintings that were Lissitzky’s major contribution to Constructivism. In 1922, after the Soviet government turned against modern art, he went to Germany. There Theo van Doesburg and László Moholy-Nagy transmitted his ideas to the West through their teaching at the Bauhaus. In 1925 he returned to Russia and devoted himself to devising new techniques of printing, photomontage, and architecture.
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