The study is devoted to the artistic and critical activity of the Russian avant-garde master I. Puni within the framework of his Berlin period (1920–1923). The material for the analysis was the book «Modern Painting», written by I. Puni, which summarized not only the original texts of Puni’s public lectures, but also his reflection on the critical reaction that was provoked by them. Based on the structural-semiotic analysis, the author found that parallels could be drawn between Puni’s speeches (public lectures, responses to criticism) and his artistic works in the context of time and place (the first post-revolutionary wave of emigration from Russia 1918–1922). During his years of emigration, Puni was among those who formed views on the art of his time. During this period, the critic went from understanding the mechanistic techniques of the composition of Russian non-objective art to the importance of the intuitive principle as the basis of creativity and spectator work in the perception of a work of art, semantically filled and ambiguously readable. On the pages of the book, the artist joins the discussion with E. Lisitsky, V. Tatlin, the largest European artists, justifying his view on the pressure points of modern art.