Sophie (born Schneider) Küppers-Lissitzky (also Lissitzky-Küppers) was born in northern Germany to a wealthy family—her father was a doctor of infectious diseases. She studied art history and met her first husband Paul Küppers who would become the first director of the “Kärstnergesellschaft” a society dedicated to modern art. Through Küppers she traveled and met avant-garde artists such as Kurt Schwitters. She had two sons Kurt and Hans by Küppers who died of the Spanish Flu in 1922. In 1925 she met El Lissitzky, and the two were married in 1927. She followed him to Moscow, having seen how fascist Germany was developing. The two had a son Jen in 1930. In many of Lissitzky’s later works she is listed as a co-creator. She would work with Lissitzky in Russia on his publishing projects, writing, curating and gathering materials. In a letter to Jan Tschichold El Lissitzky writes:


…I don’t want to take upon myself a book about photography and typo-photography in the USSR; that is something my wife can do much better and more calmly for this series, and I ask that you or Roh (art historian Franz Roh) come to an understanding with her directly. … (excerpt from a letter in El Lissitzky: Beyond the Abstract Cabinet by Margarita Tupitsyn. P. 203)


After El Lissitzky’s death in 1941, in 1944 Küppers-Lissitzky was banned until 1956 as a foreign enemy and sent to Novosibirsk where she would remain for the rest of her life.