NEJMENŠÍ DŮM
[The Minimum Flat]
Oldřich Starý and Ladislav Sutnar [Editors]
Oldřich Starý and Ladislav Sutnar [Editors]: nejmenší dům [The Minimum Flat]. Prague: Svaz československého díla, 1931. First edition. Text in Czech. A4. Letterpressed thick wrappers. Green endpapers [front only]. 40 pp. Eighteen single-family residences profiled in halftone and line rendering. Designed by Ladislav Sutnar. London Czech Republic Legation inkstamp to title page. Small inked catalog number to title page and front wrapper and remnants of catalog sticker to spine heel. Uncoated wrappers soiled and edgeworn. Textblock well thumbed. A good example of this rare Czech Functionalist title.
210 x 297 mm softcover book with 40 pages presenting the eighteen best projects from a 1929 competition for design of a minimum terrace or detached family house held jointly by the Czechoslovak Arts and Crafts Association and the National Education Ministry.
“Functional advertising design,” Herbert Bayer wrote, “should be based primarily on the laws of psychology and physiology.” Ladislav Sutnar’s dynamic jacket design expresses Bayer’s Functionalism: the center red square tips off the title, joined to a geometric spiderweb alluding to the modern city’s complexity and anony-mity. With--in the web are montaged photographs of couples, a bicyclist, and the solitary and somewhat ominous figures at the lower right. The whole composition, apparently restful, remains an alarming evocation of the idea of minimum habitation for the working citizens of a mass society.
“During the period between the two World Wars, the Czechoslovak Republic was an important and prolific center for avant-garde book design. Signed, limited editions showcased experimental design techniques, high-quality materials, and specially commissioned graphics. Book design for the general public, although mass-produced and much more affordable, was similarly innovative and attentive to questions of design.
“Avant-garde Czech book design sprang from the Devetsil Artistic Union, a highly influential group of avant-garde poets, writers, artists, and designers active from 1920 to 1931. ReD [1927-31], the most important of Devetsil 's journals, published work by leading names in the fields of writing, art, and architecture, among them poetry by Mallarmé and Apollinaire; prose by James Joyce; reproductions of art by Arp, Chagall, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Mondrian and El Lissitzky; and articles on the architecture of Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Czech designers were also in direct contact with a range of artistic activity in Europe, especially France and Russia, and collaborated on projects with several important journals, including Merz, the publication of German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters. The Devetsil group encompassed, if at times uncomfortably, Czech artists working in two major styles, Poetism and Constructivism. Czech avant-garde book design separates broadly into four major movements: Poetism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and Socialist Realism. Each approach developed and utilized its own unique philosophy and aesthetic vocabulary.
“During the earlier years of the Devetsil group, Poetism dominated the discourse of the Czech avant-garde. Poetism stressed the personal vision of the individual artist, reveled in the imagination, and encouraged self-expression. Like Artificialism, essentially a later form of Poetism which explored the beauty of new technologies, Poetism was a uniquely Czech innovation. Artist Karel Teige and poet Vítezslav Nezval introduced Poetism in 1923; artists Jindrich Štyrsky and Toyen (Marie Cermínová) pioneered Artificialism between 1926 and 1931. Poetism lent itself to expression through poetry, drama, and painting, and these were the main areas in which the style was used. Karel Teige (typographer) and Jindrich Štyrsky (photographer) designed Vítezslav Nezval's Pantomimi.Verše 1922-1924 [1924], which beautifully illustrates the approach of Poetism. The arrangement of the photographs echoes the content of the poems, functioning as visual verse. Often, letterforms express the mood or form of a poem. The visual design of the book is as much an artistic expression as the poetry itself.
“In direct contrast to Poetism, Constructivism stressed objectivity and machine production. Optimistic and sometimes even utopian, Constructivist design celebrated technology, progress, and the future. Bauhaus and de Stijl influences can be seen in Czech Constructivist book design, which was particularly dominant in the mid- to late 1920s. Photography, typography, and theater sets provided rich areas of activity for Constructivist designers, and architecture was also an important source of inspiration. Ladislav Sutnar's design for a 1932 translation of George Bernard Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion [1932] utilizes many devices characteristic of Constructivism: photomontage; functional, sanserif typography; a strong grid structure with diagonal orientation; and the presence of a circle, an important iconic element for many Constructivist designers and a characteristic of all book designs for Devetsil by Odeon Press, their publisher from 1925.“ [Smithsonian Libraries]
Ladislav Sutnar (1897 – 1976) arrived in the United States on April 14th, 1939 as the exhibition designer in charge of the Czechoslovakian pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. Sutnar was the Director of the State School of Graphic Arts in Prague and enjoyed a reputation as one of the leading Czech proponents of Functionalist graphic and industrial design.<p>
Unfortunately for Sutnar’s American assignment, Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist the previous month. Germany invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, and divided the country into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the puppet Slovak State. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the outbreak of World War II stranded Sutnar in New York City where he remained and worked for the rest of his life.
By 1939 many former Bauhaus faculty members—Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Joseph Albers, and others—had won teaching positions at various American Universities. These educators were instrumental in bringing European modernism to American architecture and design. America offered the Europeans not only a safe haven, but also great opportunities to make their modernist visions reality. The dynamically developing US building industry and the open mass-production market permitted the exiled Avant-Garde to continue pursuing their ideas in a democratically minded society.
It was in this exile community that Paul Rand introduced Sutnar to Knud Lönberg-Holm, the director of Information Research for Sweet’s Catalog Service, the mediator for trade, construction and hardware catalogs that were collected in huge binders and distributed to businesses and architects throughout the United States.
In 1941 Lönberg-Holm appointed Sutnar as chief designer of the Information Research Division. Together the two men used modern functional principles to solve the contemporary problem of information organization and —most importantly—retrieval. During the next 20 years at Sweet’s Sutnar and Lönberg-Holm defined and pioneered the field now called information design.