22.11.1890-30.12.1941

Lazar Markovich Lisitsky, widely known as El Lisitsky, was born on November 22, 1890 in the village of Pochinok, Smolensk province. The artist successfully graduated from the Higher Polytechnic School in Germany, having received the diploma of an engineer-architect, traveled a lot around Europe, however, the First World War that had begun caused Lisitsky to hurry back to his homeland.

Working as an assistant in the architectural bureau, Lisitsky begins to paint and illustrate. Working in the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, he makes out the works of Jewish authors. In the same year 1916 Lisitsky joins the ethnographic expedition, which studies the monuments of Jewish antiquity in Belorussian Dnieper and Lithuania. Following the results of this expedition, he publishes a theoretical work on the Jewish decorative arts “Memories of the Mogilev Synagogue.”

At the invitation of M.Z. Chagall in 1919, Lisitsky moved to Vitebsk. At this time the artist is fond of non-objective creativity, teaches at the National Art School. It was at this time that Lisitsky received the pseudonym “El Lisitsky”. The artist makes out the city on holidays, participates in the preparation of the celebrations of the Committee to Combat Unemployment. He continues to work on the design of books and posters.

In 1921-1925 he lived in Germany and Switzerland; joined the Dutch group “Style”. Since the late 1920s El Lisitsky lives in Moscow, creates campaign posters, designs furniture, takes a great interest in photography and photomontage. In 1930-1932, according to the project of El Lisitsky, the printing house of the magazine Ogonyok was built.

The painter died of tuberculosis on December 30, 1941 in Moscow, was buried in the Don Cemetery.