AIRWAYS TO PEACE
An Exhibition of Geography for the Future
The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art
Volume 11, Number 1, August 1943
Herbert Bayer, Wendell L. Wilkie [commentary]
[Herbert Bayer] Wendell L. Wilkie [commentary]: AIRWAYS TO PEACE [The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art]. New York: Museum of Modern Art, Volume 11, Number 1, August 1943. First edition. Stapled printed self-wrappers. 24 pp. Wrappers lightly worn and textblock thumbed. Interior unmarked and clean. Out-of-print. A very good copy of a scarce document.
7.5 x 9.25 24-page stapled bulletin illustrated with 50 black and white photographs. Issued to accompany the Airways to Peace exhibition of 1943 - a sequel to the Road to Victory exhibition from 1942. The exhibition was designed by Herbert Bayer and close inspection of the material reveals the seeds of the World Geographic Atlas produced by the Container Corporation of America in 1953.
Bayer's fascination with the shape of the earth resulted in an extensive use of pictorial and diagrammatic representations of the atmosphere and its changing conditions. These visual ideas would reach their apothesis ten years later with the publication of the World Geographic Atlas.
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.