Exhibited:

Bellinzona, Switzerland, Museo Villa de Cedri, Looking for Lissitzky, September 20, 2025 - January 25, 2026, no. 65.

Literature:

Carole Haensler, Lissitzky and Switzerland: Museo Villa dei Cedri, Bellinzona, Zurich : Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, 2026, p. 77, no. 65 (illustrated).

Lot Note:

Conceived by El Lissitzky in 1919, Proun, an abbreviation of Project for the Affirmation of the New, became one of the defining experiments of the Russian avant-garde. Blurring the boundaries between painting, architecture, and design, the series explored how abstract forms could occupy and transform space, establishing a new visual language that would inform Lissitzky’s work across multiple disciplines.

Developed in dialogue with Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism, Proun moved beyond the autonomous geometric forms of the earlier movement toward a more dynamic conception of pictorial space.

In the present work, rectangles, discs, and jutting axes appear to advance, recede, intersect and rotate, creating an impression of movement and structural tension within the two-dimensional surface. Rather than depicting a recognizable subject, Lissitzky here constructs an imagined environment in which balance, orientation, and spatial relationships remain in constant flux. Color serves not merely as a decorative element but as an essential means of distinguishing planes and articulating their relationships, allowing the composition to suggest three-dimensional construction without abandoning the flat surface of the work.

Through its restrained palette of blue, white, and gray the works lends a sense of depth and shifting perspective, while its square format reinforces the impression of a self-contained yet potentially expansive spatial system.

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