El Lissitzky (1880 - 1941) is unquestionably one of Russian Modernism's most well known artists. The subject of numerous monographs and exhibitions, his mature abstract paintings, drawings, photographs, and graphic work can be found in abundance in Western and Eastern public collections. In his early career, however, his work was more or less exclusively devoted to Jewish subjects, reflecting his religious education and family's heritage. While a handful of these works are well known and widely published, this fascinating book, El Lissitzky's Jewish Period by Alexander Kantsedikas, one of the world's leading scholars on the artist, is the first endeavor to look at this phase of his work. Amounting to a veritable catalogue raisonné of 500 plus works, the author has resurrected some of the more obscure but no less fascinating works by Lissitzky in Hebrew and Yiddish. Lavishly illustrated in color and black and white, the book tracks his evolution from an Expressionist style to one that is increasingly more abstract and non-objective. It also includes rare photographic material of the artist's family, as well as little-known correspondence from his father and his relationship with his fist wife, who has heretofore been entirely obscured in the artist's biography.
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