RETROSPEKTIVE FOTOGRAFIE: PIET ZWART
Kees Broos
Kees Broos: RETROSPEKTIVE FOTOGRAFIE: PIET ZWART. Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1981. First edition. Text in German and English. Quarto. Thick paper wrappers with attached dust jacket [as issued]. Tipped on photo to jacket front panel. [xxviii] 67 pp. 67 full page black and white photo reproductions. Wrappers lightly worn, but a very good to nearly fine copy. Uncommon.
8.375 x 10.5 softcover book with 96 pages and 67 full page black and white photos of photography and camera experiments by Piet Zwart. As photographic printing technology advanced in the 1920s photography became an active component of Zwart’s design ‘phototypography’ vocabulary. Zwart first used photographs in the 1928 – 29 NKF catalog for presenting close-up cross-sections of electric cables presented in a previously unknown dynamic fashion. Zwart achieved a dynamic balance between text, photograph, and white space on the page. Double-page spreads work as single compositions, and the catalog is distinguished by dramatic contrasts, asymmetry, and spaciousness.
In the early 1920s Zwart was forced to use the work of commercial photographers, but he quickly became dissatisfied with the then-popular soft-focus approach, which attempted to imitate painting. In 1928 he bought his own camera and very quickly learned the necessary photographic techniques. Within a year he was able to visualize and photograph all of his own images. Zwart's photography was characterized by sharp, fine-grained, close-up images and the use of angles and textures. He was also secretary of the Dutch contingent to FIFO, the 199 international photography exhibition in Stuttgart where Zwart, Schuitema, and Kiljan were among the Dutch participants. After being exposed to the advanced work of photographers such as the American Edward Weston and the Russian Alexander Rodchenko, he lamented the rudimentary state of contemporary photography in the Netherlands.
This out-of-print Marzona edition is the only monograph devoted to Zwart’s photography work, thus earning our absolutely highest recommendation.
Piet Zwart (The Netherlands, 1885 – 1972) produced notable work in a wide variety of media: graphic design, architecture, architectural criticism, furniture design, industrial design, painting, writing, photography, and design education. His association with the advanced design movements in other parts of Europe and his acquaintance with artists such as Schwitters, Berlage, Schuitema, Van Doesburg, Huszar, Rietveld, Wils, Kiljan, and Lissitsky all helped to crystallize his own convictions and aesthetic visions.
At the age of 36 Zwart did his first typographic work for the Dutch importer Vickers House. Zwart's 1923 Vickers House Metamorphic advertisement for "zagen, boren en vijle" (saws, drills and files) clearly has its roots in El Lissitsky suprematisch worden van twee kwadraten in 6 konstrukties Published by Van Doesburg in 1922. Like Lissitsky, Zwart made use of the visual pun, and a single N serves as the final letter of the first three words, Zagen, boeren en vijlen. Then the design is shifted so that another N becomes the first letter of the word Nu. Finally, the N is transformed into an H, becoming the first letter of the words Het and Haag. The center diagonal stroke of the H is separated from the two verticals, and comes to a horizontal rest in the last stage. This design already shows hints of Zwart's phenomenal N.K.F advertisements, which began in 1923. The viewer is guided through the labyrinthine composition, an early example of Zwart's intent to include the time factor and structure information in a design.
In 1923 Berlage introduced Zwart to his son-in-law, who was on the board of directors for the Nederlandsche Kabel Fabrick (Dutch Cable Factory). This began an extraordinary client-designer relationship that would continue until 1933. During these ten years, he produced no less than 275 advertisements for the Tijdschrift voor Electrotechniek (Magazine for Electro-technology) and the publication Sterkstroom (Strong Current). Essentially typographic, these advertisements constitute Zwart's major contribution to Dutch typography and form. Together with Werkman's The Next Call and Schuitema's work for the Berkel Scale and Meat-Packing Companies, it is the most original, venturesome, and provocative work by the avant garde in The Netherlands during this period. It is the genesis of what would eventually change the face of Dutch graphic design.
Like most others during this period, Zwart was self-taught in typography, and although he had been designing printed pieces since the end of 1921, acquiring the Nederlandsche Kable Fabriek as his main client made him realize just how little he actually knew about printing technology:
"The first design that I made for the NKF was hand drawn. I was still not finished with it when the publication had already come out. At that time I realized that this was not a very good way to work and then plunged headfirst into typography. The nice thing about all of this was that I actually learned about it from an assistant in the small printing company where the monthly magazine in electro-technology was being produced.
"... After going through the bitter experience of that piece being too late, I made more sketches and then played typographic games with the assistant in the afternoon hours, how we could make this and that....
"Actually, that's how I came to understand the typographic profession, I didn't know the terms, I didn't know the methods, I didn't even know the difference between capitals and lower case letters."
By 1924 the influence of Lissitsky on Zwart was evident, and some of the telephone cable advertisements of that year were again very close to pages from El Lissitsky suprematisch worden van twee kwadraten in 6 Konstrukties. The NKF assignment can be divided into four segments: the magazine advertisements (1923-1933); Het Normalieenboekje (Normalization Booklet) (1924-25); the 64-page catalog published in Dutch and english (1928-29); and the information booklet Delft Kabels (1933). Het Normalieenbockje, one of Zwart's least known works, represents a turning point in his typography. One major difference is the use of an additional contrast, color, which was absent in th advertisements. However, color was included not as a decorative element, but more as a graphic cue.
Zwart referred to himself as typotekt, a combination of the words typographer and architect. To a large extent this term did indeed express Zwart's conception of his profession-the architect building with stone, wood, and metal; the graphic designer building with typographic material and other visual elements; As the architect finds the right place for the windows, doors, and other parts of the building, the typographer assigns the positions of letters, words, lines and images. For Zwart, typography was also a question of ideology, and he wanted to free the reader from what he considered to be the monotonous typography of the past. Reading would now be a process that directly involved the reader. He felt that it would be possible through the new typography actually to change the way people read. Le Corbusier defined a house as a machine a habiter, and in the same sense Zwart's typography could be called a "machine for reading."
In 1923, when Zwart became acquainted with Schwitters and Lissitsky, the latter showed him the "photogram" process and his constructivist interpretation of Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "For Reading Out Loud." In the photogram technique elements are placed on of above light-sensitive paper, which is then exposed to an enlarger light. Zwart produced photograms as early as 1924, but for the next several years the were used sparingly, for Zwart felt the their value in functional typography was limited.
Later in 1938 Zwart referred to his work as "functional" typography. Its purpose was "to establish the typographic look of our time, free, in so far as it is possible, from tradition; to activate typographic forms; to define the shape of new typographic problems, methods, techniques and discard the guild mentality." Functional and constructive typography were basically one and the same. It was called functional because it discarded aesthetic norms and was based on purely utilitarian objectives; constructive because it had a rational structure and renounced subjectivity and relied on modern technology.
Egidio Marzona has assembled the world's foremost collection of works on paper documenting the revolutionary efforts of the Bauhaus. Marzona is also a well-known publisher of books on Russian Constructivism, Futurism, De Stijl, Dadaism, and a host of other movements and figures of the 20th-century avant-garde.