ADVANCE GUARD OF ADVERTISING ARTISTS
György Kepes and the A-D Gallery
György Kepes: ADVANCE GUARD OF ADVERTISING ARTISTS. New York: The A-D Gallery, 1942. Original edition. Single-fold exhibition announcement with shortened and deckled fore edge. Parallel center fold [as issued for mailing]. Variant design by György Kepes from his original catalog design for the Katherine Kuh Gallery in Chicago. An exceptionally rare and significant title. A fine fresh example.
6.85 x 7.5 single-fold exhibition announcement for the exhibition that marked the first signs of the assimilation of the European Avant-Garde into mainstream American Advertising. For the first time Bauhaus refugees Bayer and Moholy-Nagy as well as Kepes and Sutnar were placed on the same level as the homegrown heroes Beall, Rand, Kauffer and Barr.
A review of the Katherine Kuh Gallery show from A-D Volume 8, Number 1: October-November 1941: "An exhibition of the work of "The Advance Guard of Advertising Artists" at the Katherine Kuh Gallery, 540 N. Michigan Avenue, during October was one of the most successful ever held at that Gallery, according to Miss Kuh. Business men jammed the space, especially during lunch hour."
Frank Barr (1906 – 1955) was born in Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was active in Chicago's Society of Typographic Arts, with published work dating back to the mid-thirties. Barr was one of nine artists represented in the legendary Advance Guard Of Advertising Artists Exhibition held at the Katharine Kuh Gallery in October, 1941. Barr shared the exhibition with Herbert Bayer, Lester Beall, György Kepes, E. McKnight Kauffer, Herbert Matter, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Rand and Ladislav Sutnar. That's a pretty big deal.
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.
Educated at Lane Technical School and the University of Chicago, Lester Beall (1903 -1969) was a designer ahead of his time. Primarily self-taught in graphic design, he exemplified a great knowledge and understanding of the European avant-garde. His early work shows the influence of constructivist and Bauhaus energy mixed with his personal sense of control. Beall exhibited a great talent for communicating ideas and elevating the taste and expectations of the corporate client. In 1937, Beall became the first American designer to have a one man show at the Museum of Modern Art, featuring his posters for the Rural Electrification Administration. These posters, his art direction of Scope the house magazine for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals Co., International Paper Co. and Connecticut Life Insurance helped to change the way industry viewed design. In 1992, he received the AIGA medal. His work was a model of the idea that good design could be effective communication and good business.
Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890 - 1954) studied in evening classes at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco and spent six months at the Chicago Institute of Art. He was first exposed to modern European Art at the Armory Show (1913) in Chicago. It was after this show that he was sponsored by Professor McKnight of the University of Utah to study painting in Paris. Kauffer took McKnightÕs name out of gratitude. In 1914, he went to England and remained there until 1940. While in England he made his name as a poster artist. His first commissions were for the London Underground. The publicity manager, Frank Pick was instrumental in distributing the creative and artistic designs by Kauffer. Inspired by the artistic movements of the day, Futurism, Cubism, Art Deco and Surrealism, Kauffer created hundreds of posters for the London Underground, Shell, British Petroleum and Eastman and Sons. He also designed several book jackets and illustrations for the Nonesuch Press and Faber and Guyer. In 1930, he became Art Director of the publishing house Lund & Humphries. In 1937, the Museum of Modern Art held a one man show of his work. He returned to the United States in 1940 and did work for Greek War Relief, the US Treasury, American Airlines, the NY Subway, Alfred A. Knopf, the Container Corporation of America and the New York Times. He received the AIGA medal in 1991.
György Kepes (1906-2002) was a friend and collaborator of Moholy-Nagy. Also of Hungarian descent, Kepes worked with Moholy first in Berlin and then in London before emigrating to the US in 1937. He was educated at the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In his early career he gave up painting for filmmaking. This he felt was a better medium for artistically expressing his social beliefs. From 1930 to 1937 he worked off and on with Moholy-Nagy and through him, first in Berlin and then in London, met Walter Gropius and the science writer J. J. Crowther. In 1937, he was invited by Moholy to run the Color and Light Department at the New Bauhaus and later at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He taught there until 1943. In 1944 he wrote his landmark book Language of Vision. This text was influential in articulating the Bauhaus principles as well as the Gestalt theories. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1946 to 1974 and in 1967 he established the Center for Advanced Studies. During his career he also designed for the Container Corporation of America and Fortune magazine as well as Atlantic Monthly and Little, Brown.
Herbert Matter (1907 - 1984) studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva and at the Academie Moderne in Paris with Fernand Leger and Ozenfant. He worked with A. M. Cassandre, Le Corbusier and Deberney & Peignot. He returned to Zurich in 1932 and designed posters for the Swiss National Tourist Office and Swiss resorts. He came to the US in 1936 and freelanced with Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and other magazines. From 1946 to 1966 he was design consultant with Knoll Associates. From 1952 to 1976 he was professor of photography at Yale University and from 1958 to 1968 he served as design consultant to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. He was elected to the New York Art Director's Club Hall of Fame in 1977, received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in photography in 1980 and the AIGA medal in 1983.
Paul Rand (1914-1996) studied at Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design and the Art Student's League with George Grosz. From 1935 to 1941 he was art director of Esquire and Apparel Arts. He was designer of many covers of Direction magazine from 1938 to 1945, designer of two covers and features in PM/AD magazine as well as on the staff of Weintraub Advertising Agency from 1941 to 1954. In 1939 he was an instructor at the New York Laboratory School and over the course of his career was an instructor at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute. In 1966, he was awarded the AIGA Gold Medal. In 1955 he began freelancing and acted as design consultant for several major corporations including IBM, Cummins Engine Company, Westinghouse Electric Company and NeXT. His logos for IBM, Westinghouse, United Parcel Service and ABC television are examples of truly successful corporate/designer partnership. He authored Thoughts on Design, Paul Rand: A Designer's Art, Design Form and Chaos, The Trademarks of Paul Rand and From Lascaux to Brooklyn. He was a professor at Yale University from 1956 until 1993 and a professor at the Yale summer design program in Brissago, Switzerland from 1977 until 1996.
Ladislav Sutnar (1897 – 1976) was one of the most ardent advocates of pure visual education in his designs and writings. Sutnar left Czechoslovakia after the Nazi occupation to design the Czechoslovak Pavilion in the World's Fair in New York in 1939 . He never returned to his homeland. After one desperate year of looking for a job in New York,in 1941 Ladislav Sutnar met Knud Lönberg-Holm,the Danish-born architect who was director of Research at Sweet's Catalog Service. Holm hired Sutnar as art director. Sweet's Catalog Service was the producer of trade, construction,and hardware catalogs that were distributed to businesses and architects throughout the United States. Sutnar and Holm radically transformed the organization and presentation of technical and commercial information. Sutnar said "If a graphic design is to elicit greater intensity of perception and comprehension of contents,the designer should be aware of the following principles: 1) optical interest,which arouses attention and forces the eye to action; 2) visual simplicity of image and structure allowing quick reading and comprehension of the contents; and 3) visual continuity, which allows the clear understanding of the sequence of elements."
Erin Malone writes: In 1936, Dr. Robert Leslie, assisted by Hortense Mendel, began showing the work of emigre and young artists in an empty room in The Composing Room offices. Called the A-D Gallery, it was the first place in New York City dedicated to exhibiting the graphic and typographic arts.
The first exhibit as described by Percy Seitlin: "A young man by the name of Herbert Matter had just arrived in this country from Switzerland with a bagful of ski posters and photgraphs of snow covered mountains. Also came camera portraits and various specimens of his typographic work. We decided to let him hang some of his things on the walls and gave him a party... the result was a crowd of almost bargain-basement dimensions, and thirsty too. Everyone was excited by the audacity and skill of Matter's work."
The A-D gallery was one of the only places in New York city for young artists to come into contact with the work of european emigres and soon became a social meeting place for designers to meet each other, as well as prospective clients and employers. Dr. Leslie knew many people in New York and went out of his way to introduce people to each other. The gallery and the magazine became mirrors of each other. Often a feature in the magazine would become a show and vice-versa.