GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK
June 1938
Dr. E. Hölscher [Editor]
Dr. E. Hölscher (Editor): GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK. Berlin: Gebrauchsgraphik, Volume 15, Number 6, June 1938. Original edition. German text with parallel English translations. Slim quarto. Side stitched perfect bound letterpress wrappers. 68 [xxx] pp. Illustrated articles and period advertisements. Multiple paper stocks and printing methods throughout. Cover design by Bottcher. Spine heel roughened, but a nearly fine copy.
This issue of Gebrauchsgraphik is noteworthy for its feature article on Herbert Bayer's Advertising work during his Berlin years for the Dorland Agency. This feature is 15 pages with 28 images in color and black and white, and features 6 full-page, full-color plates. The article somehow fails to mention that Bayer was frantically wrapping up his affairs in Berlin and trying to get out of Germany at the time. By the time this issue hit the newstands in June of 1938, Bayer has successfully emigrated to the United States. A very important document in the history of Bauhaus graphic Design and a premium Bayer item.
9.25 x 12.25 vintage magazine with 68 pages of editorial content and around 20 pages of advertising trade ads. Editorial Contents represent the best of European Art Deco Commercial and Advertising Art, Posters, Photography and Packaging circa 1937. The advertising shows the strong Bauhaus influences of Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Bayer, as well as echoes of El Lissitzky, Piet Zwart and Jan Tschichold's neue typografie.
The highlights of this issue are the knockout feature on Herbert Bayer, as well as Champagne posters and Posters for Accident prevention, with many obscure polish examples. My highest recommendation.
Of all the artists to pass through the Bauhaus, none lived the Bauhaus ideal of total integration of the arts into life like Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985). He was a graphic designer, typographer, photographer, painter, environmental designer, sculptor and exhibition designer. He entered the Bauhaus in 1921 and was greatly influenced by Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky. He left in 1923, but returned in 1925 to become a master in the school. During his tenure as a Bauhaus master he produced many designs that became standards of a Bauhaus "style." Bayer was instrumental in moving the Bauhaus to purely sans serif usage in all its work. In 1928 he left the Bauhaus to work in Berlin. He primarily worked as a designer and art director for the Dorland Agency, an international firm. During his years at Dorland a Bayer style was established. Bayer emigrated to the United States in 1938 and set up practice in New York. His US design included work for NW Ayers, consultant art director for J. Walter Thompson and design work for GE. From 1946 on he worked exclusively for Container Corporation of America (CCA) and the Atlantic Richfield Corporation. In 1946 he moved to Aspen to become design consultant to CCA. In 1956 he became chairman of the department of design, a position he held until 1965. He was awarded the AIGA medal in 1970. Bayer's late work included work for ARCO and many personal projects including several environmental designs.
“Doctor H.K. Frenzel (1882 – 1937) began publishing Gebrauchsgraphik: International Advertising Art, in 1924. Frenzel wrote "The works reproduced by me in Gebrauchsgraphik are entirely in accordance with the idea I have adopted as the policy of my periodical. I wish to circumscribe a circle covering what can be regarded as good present-day graphic art. If I were to take to publishing only what satisfies me completely I should have to adopt a certain policy, and the periodical would no longer reflect the present state of graphic art.”
“Dr. Frenzel was not pleased with the Nazification (Gleichschaltung ) of his magazine, which had never taken an overt political stand. In 1937 Frenzel died of a "bug" he caught while in Italy. Although he had recovered, seemingly it was more virulent than the doctors had thought-or so the story goes. Nonetheless, rumors quickly surfaced that he took his own life.
“A memorial article in the November 1937 issue by E. Hölscher begins, "Our late friend H.K. Frenzel would certainly not have wished that an attempt should be made in the following lines devoted to his memory to give renewed expression to the profound and general dismay caused by his unexpected decease. He himself was much too optimistic and interested in the present to indulge willingly in melancholy thoughts for any length of time, and even beyond the circle of his more intimate friends the grief and sympathy even among those who had only met him once were so really heartfelt and genuine that they require no further confirmation as evidence of general respect which he enjoyed."
“And yet, his admirers were moved to celebrate how the magazine-his creation-"on which he worked with absolute devotion until the lasts days of his life, has been subjected to certain changes in the course of fourteen years." Meaning over the last four the Nazi dictates against modern and culturally un-German content was verbotten.
“True to his word, Frenzel published many approaches from all over the world. The common denominator was quality. Whether modern or classical, comic or serious, experimental or traditional, he maintained a level that set the standard. With the Nazis in power, his circle had been excruciatingly tightened, his standard had dropped, his life was not worth living.” — Steven Heller
Gebrauchsgraphik was the leading voice of the Avant-Garde influence on the European Commercial Art and Advertising industries before World War II. In the thirties, all roads led through Berlin, and Gebrauchsgraphik spotlighted all of the aesthetic trends fermenting in Europe -- Art Deco and Surrealism from Paris, Constructivism from Moscow, Futurist Fascism from Rome, De Stijl and Dutch typography from Amsterdam, and of course the spreading influence of the Dessau Bauhaus. A journal that was truly international in scope , all articles and cutlines are presented in both German and English.
The thirties were the Golden Age for European Poster Art and Gebrauchsgraphik was in the perfect place to showcase all the latest and greatest trends and rising artists for the rest of the world. Gebrauchsgraphik was an incredibly influential journal and agenda setter, most notably to a young man in Brooklyn named Paul Rand. According to his biographical notes, Rand's exposure to Gebrauchsgraphik in the early thirties created his desire to become a Commercial Artist. The rest is history.
Gebrauchsgraphik utilized the latest printing and press technologies and often included custom colors, bound-in samples and advertising fold-outs, foil stamps, die-cuts and other special finishing effects.