10 quotes
We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age.
El Lissitzky, El Lissitzky : Life, Letters, Texts (1967)
The purpose of architecture is to transmute the emptiness into space, that is into something which our minds can grasp as an organized unity.
El Lissitzky, El Lissitzky : Life, Letters, Texts (1967)
Proun is the the Step-over from the art of painting to Architecture [original text in German:] (Umsteige-station von Malerei nach Architectur).
Let us summarize these three points more concisely
Rußland: Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion (1929)
PROUN alters the conventional forms of the arts and leaves behind the image of the petty individualist, who locked himself in his office and hid seated before a drawing easel, starting one picture and finishing another.
Theses on the 'PROUN': from painting to architecture (1920)
Then I can see that I'm with you [in Dresden] at the end of April - beginning of May. Then I'll also paint with you the few works which are desired of me, if you'll help me - because I have already forgotten how to paint.
New space neither needs nor demands pictures - it is not a picture transposed on a surface. This explains the painters' hostility towards us [a. o.: Malevich ]: we are destroying the wall as the resting place for their pictures.
At present [1941], not taking my serious illness into account, I still hope to make something for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution. - El Lissitzky, June 1941, Moscow Notes.
Autobiography of the artist (1941)
..into this chaos [after the Bolshevik' revolution] came suprematism extolling the square [referring to the Squares of Malevich] as the very source of all creative expression, and then came communism and extolled work as the true source of man's heartbeat.
At the time when I was working on the exhibitions I was also very active as a book artist and in photo montage (for I could carry out those assignments when my sickness obliged me remain lying down).
Autobiography of the artist (1941)