"complete text of Lissitzky's essay, 1920: 'Suprematism in World Reconstruction', 1920 - from a typescript in the Lissitzky Archives"

“For us Suprematism did not signify the recognition of an absolute form which was part of an already completed universal system, on the contrary; here stood revealed for the first time in all its purity the clear sign and plan for a definite new world never before experienced - a world which issues forth from our inner being and which is only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the square of suprematism became a beacon.”

“New space neither needs nor demands pictures - it is not a picture transposed on a surface. This explains the painters' hostility towards us : we are destroying the wall as the resting place for their pictures.”

“At present , not taking my serious illness into account, I still hope to make something for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution. - El Lissitzky, June 1941, Moscow Notes.”

“It has become obvious to the new architect that by virtue of his work he is taking an active part in the building of a new world. For us the work of an artist has no value 'as such'; it does not represent an end in itself; it has no intrinsic beauty. The value of a work of art is determined by its relationship to the community.. .The artist, or the creative worker, invents nothing; there is no such thing as divine inspiration. Thus we understand by the term 'reconstruction' the conquest of the unresolved, of the 'mysterious,' and the chaotic. In our architecture, as in our entire life, we are striving to create a social order, i.e., to raise the instinctive to a conscious level.”

“The short step then required to complete the stride consists in recognition of the fact that a contre-relief is an architectonic structure, but the slightest deviation from the plumb-line of economy leads into a blind alley. The same fate must also overtake the architecture of cubist contre-relief.. .By taking these elements FROM THEM for itself it wants to become equally entitled to take its place alongside them as a new creation. The reference is to the narrow technical discoveries for example the submarine, the aeroplane, the motors and dynamos of every kind of motive power in each part of a battle-ship. Contre-relief is instinctively aware of their legitimate origin their economy of form and their realism of treatment.”

“The path of the PROUN does not lie within the narrowly limited, fragmented, and isolated scientific disciplines — the builder consolidates them all together in his own experimental investigation. The path of the PROUN is not the incoherent approach of separate scientific disciplines, theories, and systems, but is rather the straightforward path of learned influence over reality.”