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.