Lissitzky

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Russian avant-garde painter, graphic designer and architect known for Suprematist-influenced posters and book designs
2. A early twentieth-century Soviet artist who pioneered photomontage and constructivist typography in propaganda and books
3. Surname of a Russian modernist creator associated with the Proun series and the Constructivist movement in the 1920s

Etymology: El Lissitzky was the name adopted by Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890-1941), a Russian-Jewish artist, architect and designer born near Smolensk. The name "Lissitzky" is a surname, so the word here is a proper noun naming a person rather than a common word with a lineage of its own. Lissitzky was a central figure of the Russian avant-garde, and he is credited with coining the term "Proun" for his abstract works, a word formed from the Russian "pro" (for) and "unovis" (an artists' school), which he meant as a bridge between painting and architecture. Lissitzky's influence reached well beyond Russia. He worked with Kazimir Malevich and the Suprematist movement, designed the Proun Room exhibited in Berlin in 1923, and produced the influential children's book "About Two Squares" (1922), in which abstract geometric shapes tell a story. His typographic and exhibition designs helped shape European modernism, and the adjective "Lissitzky-like" is sometimes used by designers to describe bold, geometric layouts with diagonal compositions.