MONDRIAAN, DE STIJL EN DE NIEUWE TYPOGRAFIE
Kees Broos, Wim Crouwel [Designer
Kees Broos, Wim Crouwel [Designer]: MONDRIAAN, DE STIJL EN DE NIEUWE TYPOGRAFIE. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij De Buitenkant, Museum van het Boek, 1994. First edition [limited to 1,000 copies]. Text in Dutch. Octavo. Paper covered boards. Black endpapers. 138 pp. 20 color plates. 87 black and white illustrations. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Book design by Wim Crouwel. A fine copy.
6.75 x 9.75 hard cover book with 138 pages and 20 full-color illustrations and 87 black-and-white illustrations. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name: Museum van het Boek te Den Haag, Amsterdam [Nov 12, 1994 – Jan 15 1995].
- Inleiding
- 1916–1920 / Mondriaan, Van Doesburg, De Stijl
- 1920 / De Stijl in nieuwe vormgeving
- 1921–1922 / Van Doesburg in Weimar
- 1923 / Merz en andere kleine tijdschriften
- 1923 / Moholy-Nagy en Tschichold
- 1925 / Die scheuche en ’elemntare typographie’
- 1925–1930 / De Bauhausbücher
- 1926–30 / Experimenten
- 1928 / Tschichold: Die neue Typogaphie
- 1927–1929 / Moholy en de Internationale Review i 10
- 1928–1933 / De ‘ring neue werbegestalter’ en a biz z
- 1930–1933 / Mondriaan, concrete kunst en typografie
- 1930 / Een Nederlands manifest
- 1933–1938 / Tschichold: Typografische vormgeving
- Na 1945 / Nieuwe vrijheid en wetmatigheid
- Noten
- Bibliografie
Covers the years 1916 – 1945 and includes designers and artists Piet Zwart, Vilmos Huszár, Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, El Lissitzky, Lajos Kassák, Peter Röhl, Egon Engelien, Kurt Schwitters, Karel Teige, H. N. Werkman, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Pietro Saga, Jan Tschichold, Josef Albers, Cesar Domela, Walter Dexel, Paul Schuitema, Max Burchartz, Egon Juda, Heinz and BodoRasch, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Paul Renner, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart
The Circle of New Advertising Designers (ring neue werbegestalter) was a group who coalesced after the first statements on the new typography by Tschchold and Moholy-Nagy, and their purpose was the promotion of a common vision of the avant-garde. Ring neue werbegestalter intentionally echoed the name of The Ring, a group of Berlin-based architects which had been formed a few years earlier.
The idea came from Kurt Schwitters and was trumpeted in a 1928 issue of Das Kunstblatt: " A group of nine artists active as advertising designers has formed under the presidency of Kurt Schwitters. Baumeister, Burchatz, Dexel, Domela, Michel, Schwitters,Trump, Tschichold and Vordemberge-Gildewart belong to the association."
Before forming The Ring, Schwitters had broadened his approach to visual art to include graphic design, even going through the avant-garde right of passage of designing a sans-serif typeface.
The affiliation of The Ring appears to have been somewhat loose, its activities consisting primarily of exhibitions, either promoting the group on its own or contributing to larger events, such as the Werkbund's Film und Foto in 1929.
In Heinz and Bodo Rausch's Gefesselter Blick (1930), The Ring's point of view was defined by Paul Shuitema , acknowledging that modern design involved the separation of hand and machine which previous generations had so strongly fought against: "the designer is not a draughtsman, but rather an organizer of optical and technical factors. His work should not be limited to making notes, placing in groups and organizing things technically."
Jan Tschichold’s principal claim for the new typography is that it is characteristic of the modern age. Writing at a time when many new mass produced products appeared on the market, his intention was to bring typography into line with these other manifestations of industrial culture. Similar to the Russian Constructivists, Tschichold lauds the engineer whose work is marked by “economy, precision,“ and the “use of pure constructional forms that correspond to the functions of the object.”
Tschichold strongly believed in the Zeitgeist argument that each age creates its own uniquely appropriate forms. That belief allowed him to formulate a set of principles for his time and reject all prior work, regardless of its quality. One of the characteristics of the modern age for Tschichold was speed. he felt that printing must facilitate a quicker and more efficient mode of reading. Whereas the aim of the older typography was beauty, clarity was the purpose of the New Typography.