El Lissitzky and Russian Constructivism

Beginning in Russia in 1919, Constructivism is something that encompassed both art and architecture.  With a heavy focus on geometric shapes and a very specific colour scheme, constructivism paved the way for other similar movements such as Bauhaus. Similarly to De Stijl, Russian Constructivism was very focused on ‘minimal’ aesthetics through the use of geometric shapes and simplistic colours, namely red, white and black. In the design context, propaganda was a common theme that appeared in many Russian constructivist works.  El Lissitzky’s work was one of these examples as his work often attempted to put forward an agenda to its viewers.

Russian born artist and designer El Lizzitzky was quite the prominent figure in the Russian Constructivist scene.  His work being highly abstracted in nature managed to convey very political themes.  In this piece here called ‘Beat the Whites with the red wedge’ we can see how Lizzitzky has managed to apply constructivist concepts to his work.  The big red triangle in this piece is the first thing that catches the viewer’s eye. The triangle is representing the Bolchiveks penetrating the White movement during the civil war. Lizzitzky has managed to capture these complex political issues using purely geometric shapes and has done so in a way that the general public of the time had no problem understanding. This ease of understanding is something that is very important to any piece that is intended to be used as a form of propaganda as a clear message will garner more support for your agenda.  From a more technical standpoint, this work and many others under the constructivist banner have a very similar aesthetic to De Stijl which was covered just previously. Both deal with highly abstracted forms which are essentially geometric shapes in a block colour. The difference between the two styles arrives in a more conceptual form. Constructivism was all about the symbolism attributed to these shapes while De Stijl was all about achieving clarity through abstraction.

When looking to contemporary world of design and looking for constructivist influences, I found this interesting piece right here. This piece is obviously either done in parody or in tribute to El Lissitzyk’s  ‘Red Wedge’ propaganda poster that we just discussed above.  With this poster we can see that the designer has taken the fundamental elements from El Lissitzky’s  work and manipulated it to suit his own fantasy agenda instead, fantasy referring to the ‘Star Wars’ film series.

As a personal observation, I find that Russian Constructivism is a bit more interesting than De Stijl due to the symbolic nature of the work. The abstracted aesthetic is something that has intrigued me before but only when there was some thought behind it to make it more interesting and constructivism seems to attempt to do that by trying to convey these complex political messages through the use of basic shapes.

References:

·         Designhistory-designhistory.com-2014 [http://www.designishistory.com/1920/el-lissitzky/][Last accessed on 23/01/2015]

·         Arthistoryarchive-arthistoryarchive.com [http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/constructivism/][Last accessed on 23/01/2015