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Description: Proun 14 with Truncated Four-sided Pyramid
inscribed in cyrillic Proun with truncated 4-sided pyramid (lower centre) and further inscribed No 14 (upper left)
pencil, gouache and watercolour on paper
24.7 x 23 cm. (9 3/4 x 9 in.) (sheet)
Executed in 1919

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Exhibited: Thessaloniki, State Museum of Contemporary Art, The Costakis Collection, Construction, Tatlin and After, December 2001, no. 41, illustrated in colour in the catalogue, p. 342.

As a colleague of Malevich at the Vitebsk Practical Art Institute, El Lissitzky experimented with the geometric possibilitites of Suprematism. He became more interested in utilitarian design and concentrated his creative energies in that direction. Feeling that traditional media had become redundant Lissitzky set up a graphic workshop at the Popular School and created his first Proun in 1919.

Lissitzky described his work on the Prouns (projekty utverzhdniya novogo, projects for the Affirmation of the New) in the following statement: "The painter's canvas was too limited for me. The connoisseur's range of colour harmonies was too restricted; and I created the Proun as the interchange station between painting and architecture. I have treated canvas and wooden board as a building site, which placed the fewest restrictions on my constructional ideas. I have used black and white (with flashes of red) as material substance and subject matter. In this manner it is possible to create reality which is clear to all" (quoted in Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky, London, 1980, p. 329).

A variant of the present work, No. 13, is at the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and is described in the Centenary exhibition catalogue, L.E.Lissitzky, 1890-1941, produced by the Tretyakov Gallery and the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, 1990 (illustrated in the catalogue p. 58, no. 109 and described on p. 119.).