STRUCTURE: ANNUAL ON THE NEW ART
Volume 1, 1958
Joost Baljeu, Eli Bornstein [Editor], Wim Crouwel [Designer]
Joost Baljeu, Eli Bornstein [Editor], Wim Crouwel [Designer]: STRUCTURE: ANNUAL ON THE NEW ART. Saskatoon, Canada: University of Saskatchewan, Volume 1, 1958. Original edition. Slim quarto. Photo illustrated wrappers. 56 [ii] pp. Essays illustrated with 33 black and white images. Multiple paper stocks and period correct cover design and layout by Wim Crouwel GKf. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Wrappers lightly worn, but a very good or better copy.
7.125 x 9.5-inch perfect bound journal with 58 pages and 33 black and white images. “Although they continued to build upon the design principles of De Stijl, the Bauhaus, and pre-war constructivist tendencies, the debate which they carried on within the pages was not a dogmatic repetition of what their predecessors had written. They threw in their lot with those elements in society that were striving for innovation, and tried to give the geometric form language a new significance by basing their theoretical case on contemporary scientific notions. One of the few art historians who early on assessed these developments at their true worth was the Englishman Stephen Ban. In 1974 he accorded the journal a prominent place within the canon of modern art by including articles from 'Structure' in 'The Tradition of Constructivism" alongside publications by such influential pioneers as Gabo, Pevsner, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Theo van Doesburg . . . .”— Jonneke Jobse, The Journal Structure (1958-1964): An Artist's Debate, 010 Publishers, 2005
Contents:
- Introduction
- Art and Science as Creation by Charles Biederman
- Music in Progress by Karlheinz Stockhausen
- The Camera Art of Leonard Freed by Joost Baljeu
- Transition Toward the New Art by Eli Bornstein
- Architecture and Art by Joost Baljeu
Includes work by Theo van Doesburg and Cor van Esteren, V. Rewell, Leonard Freed, Gerrit Rietveld, Charles Biederman, Eli Bornstein, Piet Mondriaan, Joost Baljeu, Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Gorin, Carel N. Visser, and Jackson Pollock.
Joost Baljeu (The Netherlands, 1925 –1991) was a Dutch painter, sculptor and writer known for his large outdoor painted steel structures. During World War II Baljeu began painting in an expressionist, realistic and semi-abstract idiom that eventually evolved into constructivism. He made his first reliefs in 1954-55. From 1957 to 1972 he was a professor at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.
In 1958 – 1959 Baljeu was a guest lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada where he met the Canadian artist Eli Bornstein who had began to make three-dimensional "structurist" reliefs during a sabbatical in Italy and the Netherlands in 1957. In 1958 Joost Baljeu published and edited "Structure" with Eli Bornstein. He used the magazine to situate his ideas in relation to other contemporary movements and artists' cooperatives and to secure a foothold for himself in the international art world.
In 1962 the Sikkens Prize was awarded to a party of five: visual artists Jean Gorin, Charles Biederman and Joost Baljeu, architect Dick van Woerkom and the journal Structure (1958-1964), founded by Baljeu. They received the prize for the revival of constructivism and the presentation of universal laws in the line of De Stijl with the aim of achieving the complete renovation of our social environment, from the home to the city.
Willem Hendrik "Wim" Crouwel [The Netherlands, 1928 – 2019] was a celebrated twentieth century Dutch Graphic Designer and Typographer responsible for multiple iconic typefaces such as New Alphabet and Gridnik as well as his multidisciplinary work for Total Design.
Crouwel traveled extensively in Switzerland during the 1950s where he observed the emergence of the functional International Style. He returned to the Netherlands determined to alter the fundamental landscape of Dutch design. Crouwel was appointed the first general secretary of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations in 1963.
The same year Crouwel along with graphic designer Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer, Paul and Dick Schwarz, co-founded Total Design—the Netherlands’ first multidisciplinary design studio. The firm empowered Crouwel and his colleagues to influence the national and cultural identity of the Netherlands through their work. To that end Crouwel designed a wide variety of material, from postage stamps for the Dutch Post Office to an extensive body of work for the Stedelijk Museum.
“Wim Crouwel is one of the notable Dutch graphic designers of his generation. In his leading role in the firm of Total Design (hereafter ‘TD’), from its foundation in 1963 through to the 1980s, Crouwel worked at the heart of Dutch design in the years when this phenomenon began to crystallize and to gain international recognition. If one applies the test of design for the national airline, it may be some measure of Dutch cultural reticence that around the time of the sharp upswing in the post-1945 prosperity – from 1958 – the new identity for KLM (‘Royal Dutch Airlines’) was designed at F.H.K. Henrion’s studio in London; but soon such jobs would go to TD. For example, from the mid-1960s this young firm was at work on the signing for Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (designed by a group under the direction of partner Benno Wissing), and thus TD’s lowercase-only sanserif typography contributed to the first impressions of the country for anyone flying in. (The calm interiors at Schiphol – still surviving, although the signs are now being replaced – were designed by Kho Lang Ie, with whom Crouwel had worked in partnership in the 1950s.) And from 1963, after the retirement of Willem Sandberg and the accession of Edy de Wilde, Crouwel and TD became designers to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum: both a local municipal institution and by then an important component of the international art scene . . . .
“By the 1970s, TD seemed to be acting out all the meanings of its title, not just the ‘cross-disciplinary’ implication. From early on in his career, as part of his own ‘total’ approach to his profession, Wim Crouwel has sat on committees and juries, delivered addresses and lectures, written articles, and held academic positions (notably at the Technische Hogeschool Delft). This tireless public work reached its apex in 1985 when he took up the directorship of the the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.
“In 1993, aged 65, Wim Crouwel retired from his position at the Boymans Museum. In advance of this, early in 1990, Frederike Huygen, then curator of design in that museum, began to make plans to write and produce a book about Crouwel. It would mark his retirement, not with a simple celebration, but rather with a sophisticated and critical discussion. It is remarkable that Wim Crouwel should have put himself and his archive – then acquired by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam – at the disposal of the researchers, with no strings attached, no attempt by him to interfere or control: this unusual willingness to become the subject of a critical experiment helps to explain the nature of the book that was finally made. —Robin Kinross