Elefandl ["The Elephant's Child"], by Rudyard Kipling. Illustrations by "Kraft" [El Lissitzky]. Berlin: Schweln, 1922. Yiddish.
Yiddish translation of the famous children's story "The Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling (1856-1936), from the collection entitled "Just So Stories." Illustrations by the Russian-Jewish avant-garde artist El Lissitzky (under the pen name "Kraft).
14, [2] pp., 28 cm. Good condition. Stains. Minor creases. Minor tears to edges of leaves, restored. Spine restored. Edges of cover slightly trimmed.

El (Eliezer Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky (1890-1941), a Jewish-Russian artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect, a prominent and important member of Russian avant-garde.
Lissitzky, an architect by training, contributed much, together with his teacher and friend Kazimir Malevich, to the conceptualization and development of the Supremacist movement – the abstract art focused on geometric forms. He also designed numerous books and journals, exhibitions, and propaganda posters for the communist regime in Russia and influenced the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements in Europe. In his early days, Lissitzky showed much interest in Jewish culture and many of his works integrated Jewish motifs (during the years 1915-1916, he took part in the ethnographic expedition headed by Shlomo An-ski to the Pale of Settlement). Wanting to promote Jewish culture in Russia after the revolution, he became engaged in designing and illustrating Yiddish children's books, creating several children's books which are considered pioneering masterpieces due to their graphics and typography. However, several years later, he abandoned the Jewish motifs in favor of developing a more abstract and universal artistic language.
In 1921, Lissitzky moved to Germany, where he served as the Russian cultural ambassador, engaged in forming connections between Russian and German artists and continued to design books and journals. Lissitzky, who perceived books as immortal artifacts, "monuments of the future" by his definition, used the medium as a tool for spreading the messages of avant-garde and his artistic perception, as indicated by the variety of books in whose design, production or illustration he took part – from children's books and poetry books and to catalogs, guidebooks and academic publications.
Lissitzky died in Moscow at the age of 51. In his final years, his artistic work was dedicated mainly to soviet propaganda; yet it seems that the same worldview accompanied his works throughout his life – the belief in goal-oriented creation (Zielbewußte Schaffen, the German term he coined) and the power of art to influence and bring about change.