El Lissitzky Quotes & Sayings

The sun as the expression of old world energy is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who by virtue of his technological superiority creates his own energy source. — El Lissitzky

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. — El Lissitzky

Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness ... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography. — El Lissitzky

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

Let us summarize these three points more concisely:

(a) The rejection of art as a mere emotional, individualistic, and romantic affair.
(b) "Objective" work, undertaken with the silent hope that the end product will nevertheless eventually be regarded as a work of art.
(c) Consciously goal-directed work in architecture, which will have a concise artistic effect on the basis of well-preparated objective-scientific criteria.

Such an architecture will actively raise the general standard of living. This represents the dialectic of our development process, which purports to arrive at the affirmative by negation - a process similar to melting down old iron and forging it into new steel. — El Lissitzky

Typographical design should perform optically what the speaker creates through voice and gesture of his thoughts. — El Lissitzky

The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the infinity of the book, must be transcended. — El Lissitzky

The room is there for the human being - not the human being for the room. — El Lissitzky

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