Engel, J(oel). “Freilekhs Dance” [sheet music]

(LISSITZKY, ELIEZER)

Society of Jewish Music

Moscow

1919

ONE OF ONLY 500 COPIES. Cover designed by LISSITZKY

An example of Lissitzky’s engagement in 1916-19 in Jewish culture and folk art. Lissitzky was engaged by the Society of Jewish Music to provide the uniform design for the covers of sheet- music by Joel Engel and Alexandr Krein. In contrast to his illustrations of children’s books from this period, the cover design for the Society of Jewish Music is symetrical and static. The main attention is drawn to the two crowing cocks and the strangely dressed men at the top who lift up their heads and blow their rams-horns in the manner of triumphant Assyrian warriors. Ruth Apter-Gabriel suggests that Lissitzky’s stylistic reserve; “stems [either] from demands made by the commissioning society on our artist, or from the fact that Lissitzky is addressing the adult Jewish public.” See R. Apter-Gabriel, “El Lissitzky’s Jewish Works”, in Israel Museum Catalogue, Tradition and Revolution, p.109; also, cf. no. 82. A Summary Catalogue of Typographical Work by El Lissitzky in Harvard University Art Museums and Busch-Reisinger Museum Lissitzky Exhibition Catalogue (1987) no. 1919/10