Proun: "the station where one changes from painting to architecture."

Neuer (New Man). 1923. El Lissitzky.

Russian Suprematism and its offshoots, Proun in this case, continue to fascinate me.

From the MoMA website: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=88312 

At the behest of Marc Chagall, Lissitzky accepted the directorship of the graphic workshop at the Vitebsk Art Institute in 1919. Following Kazimir Malevich's arrival at the school, Lissitzky became greatly influenced by Suprematism and began to work in an abstract style. He invented imagery known as Proun (Project for the Affirmation of the New), which consisted of images of floating architectonic structures that occupied an imagined three-dimensional space through which one might move above, below, and through. The Proun style can be seen in New Man, the name of a character in the groundbreaking 1913 Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun. After seeing a 1920 production staged in Vitebsk, Lissitzky adapted the opera for a cast of mechanical puppets. His designs incorporate the geometry and limited color palette of Suprematism and the multidimensionality of the Proun images.