El Lissitzky

Apparently this is from a stretch in the mid-1920s when Lissitzky put the geometric shapes aside for a while and started cutting up photographs instead, trying to get a still picture to hold something moving. People point to this kind of layering as an early step toward the collage-heavy propaganda photography that came out of the Soviet Union not long after.

He called this series 'Proun' — supposedly short for a phrase meaning something like 'project for affirming the new.' From what I've read it was his attempt at a kind of painting that wasn't quite painting or architecture, more a rough sketch for spaces that didn't exist yet.

This was a cover for Wendingen, a Dutch design magazine that apparently invited a rotating cast of outside artists to design an issue. The sideways lettering was part of a bigger push at the time to make the printed type itself look modern, instead of just decorating around it.