El Lissitzky's Proun Room

In 1923, El Lissitzky's 'Proun Room', is a chamber articulated with Proun motifs in two and three dimensions, abstract but possibly symbolical; the original was made for a major exhibition in Berlin, a reconstruction is in the Stedelijk-Van-Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven (Netherlands).

(Proun Room by El Lissitzky)

Trained as an engineer and architect, Lissitzky was one of the first modern artists to experiment with the viewer as an integral part of a work of art. For the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1923 Lissitzky translated his geometric Proun compositions into a room-size environment. He intended the wall-size abstractions to engulf visitors and allow them to feel as if they were floating in space. 

“The image is not a painting, but a structure around which we must circle, looking at it from all sides, peering down from above, investigating from below.”

He was also an inventive exhibition designer who placed frames at irregular heights or kitty-corner on the wall, turned works upside down, and shunned traditional backdrops. Contemporary exhibitions of Lissitzky’s work rarely consult his ideas on exhibition design. Hideyo Okamura’s design for WCMA attempts to redress this lapse through an installation that captures the spirit of Lissitzky’s writings and teachings on exhibition design.

El Lissitzky - Proun Room


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