?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 45,000 - $ 55,000
EL LISSITZKY (1890-1941) USSR RUSSISSCHE AUSSTELLUNG. 1929. 49x35 inches. Gebr. Fretz, Zurich. Condition A-: creases in image. Framed. El Lissitsky was a living bridge between cultures, artists and movements. Born In Russia (Lazar Mordukhovich Lisitskii), by the 1920s he had moved to Germany and was constantly traveling back and forth between Moscow and Berlin, and visiting every major European city. He was a tireless ambassador of the avant-garde. A founding father of Constructivism and Suprematism and a pioneer and theoretician of new typography, photo and photomontage, he was one of the leading forces that changed not only graphic design, but book, architecture and exhibition design as well. Between 1929 and 1931 he worked on a number of major exhibitions promoting Russia, including Pressa in Cologne in 1928, Dresden's Hygiene Ausstellung in 1930 and the Leipzig Trade Fair that same year. For each of these pavilions he built modernistic structures and designed huge photomontages, but he was never asked to design the posters to advertise these events. The Russian exhibition in the Kunstgeweibe Museum in Zurich, however, was an exception, and this gave El Lissitsky the opportunity to create an image that remains one of the best examples of photomontage. At first glance the viewer sees a gigantic bicephalous representation of a boy and girl staring out into a promising future above an example of Soviet architecture. Upon closer inspection it is apparent that, unsettlingly although perhaps ingeniously symbolic, the two youths share a common eye; a striking image that has become an icon. Practically impossible to find, this poster was reprinted in 1981 by the Zurich Museum and today even that reproduction is hard to come by. Lissitsky, no. 157, Ades, p. 49, Berman pl. 57, Modern Poster 149, Word & Image p.73.
