PRINTING ART QUARTERLY
Volume 67, Number 2, 1937
László Moholy-Nagy et al.
László Moholy-Nagy et al.: PRINTING ART QUARTERLY [AND THE 1937 EXHIBITION OF DESIGN IN PRINTING]. Chicago: Dartnell, 1937 [Volume 67, Number 2]. First edition. Small folio. Decorated glazed paper covered boards. Orange plastic coil-binding. 154 pp. Illustrated articles and trade advertisements. Elaborate design on a variety of paper stocks and printing methods. The laminated card boards are lightly rubbed. Original coil-binding clean and unbroken. A nearly fine copy of this easily-abused title.
10 x 13.25 hardcover book with 154 pages printed on a variety of paper stocks. A stellar production that shows the publishing power of Chicago in the mid-thirties. Hundreds of examples of Chicago graphic design and photography from 1936, collected here for the first time.
Includes a bound-in copy of the twelve page catalog for The New Bauhaus [American School of Design] designed by László Moholy-Nagy—the first piece of marketing material for the short-lived iteration of the New Bauhaus. In addition there is an original one-page tribute to Moholy-Nagy and his arrival in Chicago by William Kittredge, and an illustrated reprint of the 1936 Moholy-Nagy essay A New Instrument Of Vision. A very important set of historical documents dealing with the arrival of the Bauhaus ideology in Chicago. The New Bauhaus in Chicago operated for less than one year between 1937 and 1938, and this Printing Art Quarterly represents some of the only New Bauhaus material published during that period.
A New Instrument Of Vision by László Moholy-Nagy. This three-page article includes four images by Moholy-Nagy. Reprint of a piece originally published in TELEHOR [The International Review New Vision / Mezinárodni casopis pro visuální kulturu / Internationale Zeitschrift für visuelle Kultur / Revue internationale pour la culture visuelle]. Brno, Czechoslovakia: Frantisek Kalivoda, 1936.]
Moholy-Nagy And The New Bauhaus by William A. Kittredge. An appreciation of L. Moholy-Nagy and his work by the director of typography and design of R. R. Donnelley and Sons Company. This original one-page article includes two black and white images by Moholy-Nagy.
The New Bauhaus [American School of Design] Bound in original example of the initial twelve page catalog of the New Bauhaus, opened in Chicago by the Association of Arts and Industries, and printed by the craftsmen at the Dartnell Press. The catalog features thick matte wrappers, with full-page typofoto compositions and typographic design by Moholy-Nagy. Features sections on Educational Program, Examination, The Faculty, Information, and Calendar. The original marginal colophon has been revised to show the printing technical specifications: cover printed on Dill & Collins Printflex; text pages printed on Black and White.
What The Society Of Typographic Arts Has Meant To Design by Russell T. Sanford. The editor of the STA Bulletin reviews the accomplishments of the Society, with comments on its 11th Annual Exhibition of Design in Printing.
The 11th Annual Exhibition Of Design In Printing: 116 specimens, selected from the best work submitted by leading Chicago designers, illustrators, typographers and printing crafstmen. Since its inception in Chicago in 1927, the Society of Typographic Arts has been a vital participant in the Chicago design community, sponsoring seminars and conferences, and developing publications, including Trademarks USA (1964), Fifty Years of Graphic Design in Chicago (1977), Hermann Zapf and His Design Philosophy (1987), and ZYX: 26 Poetic Portraits (1989). For a brief time in the late 1980s, STA became the American Center for Design. In 1990, the STA reorganized with a renewed commitment to design in Chicago. Today, it serves as the driving force in Chicago design, presenting a diverse schedule of programming, sponsoring several design organizations and events, and hosting the Chicago Design Archive, a collection of significant work from the city.
Index Of The Exhibition
Autumn Designs For House Organs, Covers, Calendars, Blotters: The third in a series of seasonal design suggestions, created by the art director of The Printing Art Quarterly to meet a variety of uses.
Cartoons Ought to be Funny by Allan R. Barkley. Eight page illustrated essay.
Bridge Brochures includes a gorgeous full-page gravure plate of the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge under construction in 1934.
The Girl with the Corrugated Face by E. Kenneth Hunt.
The Spelling Bugaboo by Eugene Whitmore.
Photography Section includes Photography in Advertising Design by Willard Grayson Smyth
The large format of the PRINTING ART QUARTERLY page spreads made ideal canvases for presenting avant-garde design and typographic ideas. These layouts were more progressive and displayed the European avant-garde influence in American graphic design more aggresively than other contemporary American trade publications.
Designers, manufacturers, and artists whose works are shown and/or discussed include : Willard Grayson Smythe, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, William Welsh, Lucien Lelong, John H. Willmarth, William A. Kittredge, John Averill, Raymond F. Daboll, Edwin Snyder, Torkel Korling, David O. Green, Joseph Carter, Douglas Rader, Philip G. Reed, Joseph Low, Rudolph Ruzicka, Taylor Poore, Oswald Cooper, Gustav Rehberger, Valentino Sarra, Anne Edwards, E. Willis Jones, Frank Riley, M. Martin Johnson, Robert W. Wasgbish, Calvin Merrick, Earl Uhl, Norman Anderson, Douglas McMurtrie, Bert Kempshall, Bert Ray, W. Rodney Chirpe, Ernest Spuehler, Park Phipps, Albert Schlag, James Wagner, Alfred Sterges, Edgar Miller, J. Laviolette, Carl Jacoby, Egbert Jacobson, H. J. Higdon, Elmer Jacobs, Dale Nichols, Norman Christiansen, Betty L. Stoddard, William Savin, Walter Howe, Bud Hemmick, Weimer Pursell, Otis Shepard, Dorothy Shepard, Rockwell Kent, Paul Hesse, Russell Flint, Manz Corporation, Grant Wood and many others.
In 1937 former Bauhaus Master László Moholy-Nagy accepted the invitation of a group of Midwest business leaders to set up an Industrial Design school in Chicago. The New Bauhaus opened in the Fall of 1937 financed by the Association of Arts and Industries as a recreation of the Bauhaus curriculum with its workshops and holistic vision in the United States.
Moholy-Nagy drew on several émigrés affiliated with the former Bauhaus to fill the ranks of the faculty, including György Kepes and Marli Ehrman. The school struggled with financial issues and insufficient enrollment and survived only with the aid from grants of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations as well as from donations from numerous Chicago businesses. The New Bauhaus was renamed the Institute of Design in 1944 and the school finally merged with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1949.
In Chicago Moholy aimed at liberating the creative potential of his students through disciplined experimentation with materials, techniques, and forms. The focus on natural and human sciences was increased, and photography grew to play a more prominent role at the school in Chicago than it had done in Germany. Training in mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in Germany. Emerging from the basic course, various workshops were installed, such as "light, photography, film, publicity", "textile, weaving, fashion", "wood, metal, plastics", "color, painting, decorating" and "architecture". The most important achievement at the Chicago Bauhaus was probably in photography, under the guidance of teachers such as György Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegel or Harry Callahan.
Moholy-Nagy served as Director of the New Bauhaus in its various permutations until his death in 1946.
László Moholy-Nagy [Hungarian, 1895-1946] was born in Bacsbarsod, Hungary. Injured during World War I, he turned to painting and made contact with the Budapest avant-garde in 1918. In 1922, Maholy-Nagy participated in the International Dada-Constructivist Congress in Weimar and began experiments in photography with his wife Lucia. Appointed master at the Bauhaus in 1923, he made his first film, Berliner Stilleden, in 1926. Although always a painter and designer, Moholy-Nagy became a key figure in photography in Germany in the 1920's. In 1928 Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus and traveled to Amsterdam and London. His teachings and publications of photographic experimentations were crucial to the international development of the New Vision. In 1937 he was invited to found the New Bauhaus in Chicago by the Association of Arts and Industries. Moholy-Nagy served as teacher and director there from 1937 until his death in 1946.