El Lissitzky (Lazar Markovich Lissitzky)
Russian, 1890-1941
About Two Squares: A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions
INV-1991
El Lissitzky (Lazar Markovich Lissitzky)
Russian, 1890-19411922
About Two Squares: A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions
El Lissitzky (Lazar Markovich Lissitzky) Russian, 1890-1941 →avant-gardebookpaper
Date
1922
Medium
Book with letterpress and offset lithography, in black and red, on cream wove paper, stapled along spine
Dimensions
21.7 × 26.8 × 0.5 cm (8 9/16 × 10 9/16 × 1/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
The Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund
About Two Squares is a children’s book about a black square and a red square that fly to earth from afar. For Lissitzky they symbolized the superiority of the new Soviet order (the red square) over the old (the black square). The artist’s abstract style was profoundly influenced by Kazimir Malevich's Suprematism, but after 1921 he aligned himself with Russian Constructivist principles and sought to move Suprematism’s abstract language into the service of the new social and political order.
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