- A new title in the superb Design series
'Exquisite ... Design is a treat' - Sunday Telegraph
El (Eleazar) Lissitzky (1890-1941) was a vital force in the revolutionary period in Russia. Having first trained in engineering and architecture and later becoming a painter and illustrator, his creative activity ranged across disciplines. This he called 'the interchange station between painting and architecture', and it made him enormously influential - as a painter, graphic designer, teacher, propagandist, exhibition designer, and also as an architectural theorist. Lissitzky had studied in Germany before the Russian Revolution, and after it he became a vital link between Soviet culture and Western art groups, travelling officially to present Soviet art in the West, but at the same time contacting many leading figures in Western art, including the De Stilj group in Holland, Dadaists in Switzerland and Germany, and artists and designers at the Bauhaus, as well as architects with international aims.
He was a tireless creative force, and a determined traveller who brought many collaborative projects to a fruitful conclusion that involved connections across the political East-West division of Europe. Yet this determined and dynamic man suffered grievously from tuberculosis. From the sanatorium he still sent witty letters and drawings to his wife Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers in Russia. In his last year he turned his abilities to designing Soviet trade fairs and, briefly, to propagandist war posters.
The Design series is the winner of the Brand/Series Identity Category at the British Book Design and Production Awards 2009, judges said: "A series of books about design, they had to be good and these are. The branding is consistent, there is a good use of typography and the covers are superb."
Also avaliable:
Claud Lovat Fraser ISBN: 9781851496631 GPO ISBN: 9781851495962 Peter Blake ISBN: 9781851496181 FHK Henrion ISBN: 9781851496327 David Gentleman ISBN: 9781851495955 David Mellor ISBN: 9781851496037 E.McKnight Kauffer ISBN: 9781851495207 Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious ISBN: 9781851495009 Festival of Britain 1951 ISBN: 9781851495337 Harold Curwen & Oliver Simon: Curwen Press ISBN: 9781851495719 Jan Le Witt and George Him ISBN: 9781851495665 Paul Nash and John Nash ISBN: 9781851495191 Rodchenko ISBN: 9781851495917 Abram Games ISBN: 9781851496778
John Milner is Visiting Professor at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Tutor, painter, writer, and exhibition organiser, John Milner specialises in nineteenth and twentieth century art in France and in Russia. He has lectured at the National Gallery, Tate, and Royal Academy of Arts in London, at the Henry Moore Institute, and at many other universities and museums.
