RING "NEUE WERBEGESTALTER"
AMSTERDAMER AUSSTELLUNG VON 1931
[Typographie Kann Unter Umstanden Kunst Sein]
Circle of New Advertising Designers
Amsterdam Exhibition 1931
[Typography Can Sometimes Also Be Art]
Kees Broos [essay]
Kees Broos [essay]: RING "NEUE WERBEGESTALTER" AMSTERDAMER AUSSTELLUNG VON 1931. [TYPOGRAPHIE KANN UNTER UMSTANDEN KUNST SEIN]. Wiesbaden: Landesmuseum Wiesbaden, 1990. First edition. Text in German. Slim quarto. Thick French folded wrappers. 144 pp. 99 color plates. Cover image by Piet Zwart. Wrappers lightly worn, but a nearly fine copy.
9.5 x 11.5 softcover catalogue with 144 pages and 99 full-page color plates of avant-garde typographic design and advertising work. This is a recreation of the 1931 Amsterdam exhibition by Kurt Schwitter's Circle of New Advertising Designers (ring neue werbegestalter) and includes many examples of avant-garde advertising from the late 1920s and early 1930s. I am a huge fan of this work, and there are many examples presented herein that I have never seen before. Enough said.
Includes work by Max Bill, Max Burchatz, Cesar Domela, Dick Elffers, John Heartfield, Lajos Kassak, Frantjsek Kalivoda, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Shuitema, Kurt Schwitters, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Tiege, Jan Tschichold, Piet Zwart, and several uncredited designers whose names have been lost.
The above designers are represented with biographies, as are Willi Baumeister, Walter Dexel, Hans Leistikow, Robert Michel, George Trump, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart.
This exhibition originated at the Landesmuseum Wiesbaden from May 6 to July 8 1990, then traveled to the Sprengel Museum Hannover, from November 1990 to February 1991, then to the Museum Fur Gestaltung Zurich, April-June 1991. The catalogue includes essays by Kees Broos and Konrad Matschke.
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 andVordemberge-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 manily 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."
Tschichold was more succinct: " I attempt to reach the maximum of purpose in my publicity works and to connect the single constructive elements harmoniously -- to design."