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Lazar Markovich Lissitzky is widely known as a Russian avant-garde artist who made significant contributions to abstract art the 1920s. Until now his experiments with photography, photomontage, and graphic and exhibition designs in the 1920s and throughout the 1930s have not been documented and thoroughly analyzed. This book explores both the political and aesthetic aspects of Lissitzky's late multimedia work from his designs for the Abstract cabinet to his death in 1941. The author and the two contributors give special attention to Lissitzky's intense collaboration first with German and then with Soviet photographers, designers, and filmmakers, and they discuss how his various personal friendships and acquaintances influenced the directions he took in photography and design. The book presents photographic works by Lissitzky's and these other artists as well as some of Lissitzky's early non-objective art that foreshadows his experiments in figurative art. It also includes Lissitzky's correspondence with his Western colleagues and his wife Sophie Kueppers.

"EL LISSITZKY, BEYOND THE ABSTRACT CABINET: PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN, COLLABORATION is among the more meticulously crafted publications on photography to have appeared in the last dozen years. The plates reproduce the tactile quality of the artist's work whether as thumbnail images accompanying the text or as catalog entries. Particularly noteworthy are the intense reds of the lithographic publications such as USSR in Construction and the soft shadings of the gelatin silver prints. The book is a scholarly focus on EL Lissitzky that contributes to our understanding of the collaborative process of his work and the effects of this polemical figure on other practitioners. Much of its value comes from surrounding the text with extensive work from El Lissitzky's portfolio, unpublished archival materials, and photographs created by the artist's comrades. Like the exhibition, the catalog encourages readers to see with their own eyes and reflect on El Lissitzky's concept of modern composition and production techniques."

G. S. Taylor, Boston Book Review, April 2000

"Tupitsyn's book is far more than the catalogue of an exhibition, though it does include a brief exhibition listing. It is a new view of the later work of Lissitzky."

John Milner, Times Literary Supplement, 03/16/2001

El Lissitzky: Beyond the Abstract Cabinet Photography, Design, Collaboration: Search Results