Preodolenie Iskusstva [“The Congest of Art”-article]. In “Ringen” Almanac. Issue No. 10. Text in Yiddish

LISSITZKY, ELIEZER

I. Hendlera

Warsaw

1922

FIRST APPEARANCE OF LISSITZKY’S TEXT. Lithograph frontispiece by V. Brauner. Numerous illustrations within journal. ONE OF 1000 NUMBERED COPIES

cf. Busch-Reisinger Museum Catalogue, El Lissitzky (1987), 1921/6 and see: pp. 59-61

Text of the lecture presented by Lissitzky (in October 1921 at INKHUK): “To all those who wish to respond to the new art, we say that it is not enough to stare at it with one’s eyes - one’s whole head must be turned in a different direction..... What kind of world-view, of world-conception found its expression in Suprematism? The bearer of colorful whirlwinds, the artist, the painter cleared out of his winged path all the bases of things on which he had previously hung his colors. He gave color independence, he made the painting objectless. He went out to purely create... The Suprematist colored masses swim like planets in white cosmic space. But thereby it raised the illusoriness of the painting to the maximum. It established in the place of beauty a different measure- ecomony.”