Koloman Moser
Posted on 07/06/11.
Koloman Moser (1868-1918) was an Austrian artist who exerted considerable influence on twentieth-century graphic art and one of the foremost artists of the Vienna Secession movement and a co-founder of Wiener Werkstätte. Beyond his graphic work for books, postage stamps and magazines, his designs in architecture, furniture, jewelry, and textiles helped characterize the work of this era. Moser drew upon the clean lines and repetitive motifs of classical Greek and Roman art and architecture in reaction to the Baroque decadence of his turn-of-the-century Viennese surroundings. In 1901/02, he published a portfolio of elegant graphic designs for tapestries, fabrics, and wallpaper entitled Die Quelle (“The Source”). Along with Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann, Koloman was one of the designers for Austria’s leading art journal Ver Sacrum.
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Julius Klinger
Posted on 07/06/11.
Julius Klinger (1876-1942) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, illustrator, commercial graphic artist, typographer and writer. In 1895, he found his first employment with the Vienna fashion magazine Wiener Mode. Here he became acquainted with Koloman Moser, who would later be his teacher. In 1897 he relocated to Berlin, where he worked extensively as a commercial graphic artist until 1915. Together with the printing house Hollerbaum und Schmidt, he developed a new style of functional poster design that soon gained him international reputation. Beginning in 1918, Klinger designed a comprehensive and noted campaign promoting the “Tabu” company’s cigarette rolling paper, that was advertised all over Vienna in 1918/19. Klinger devised a promotional strategy, spanning from small newspaper ads to huge billboards.
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Tom Eckersley
Posted on 15/04/11.
Tom Eckersley (1914-97) was an English artist and one of the foremost poster designers and graphic communicators of the twentieth century. In addition to poster making and book illustration he also produced magazine covers and logos. His designs often employed an abstract like quality and collage to convey their message, marring simple text and imagery to relay complex messages in a direct way. There is one of Eckersley’s Transport for London posters in the Wolfsonian, Miami Beach, at the moment. The use of bold colours and simplified form ties in with other posters on show, but the use of Helvetica rather than Johnston Sans gives a more neutral European look to the work.
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René Gruau
Posted on 06/04/11.
Renowned illustrator René Gruau (1909-2004), created some of the most iconic fashion images of the 20th century and influenced the graphic style of a whole generation of fashion illustrators. Gruau’s illustrations for his friend and long-time patron Christian Dior chart one of the most successful creative relationships of 20th century fashion. His bold lines and fluid style were perfectly in tune with the spirit of Dior, capturing the energy, elegance and audacity of the brand. Of his continuing dedication to silhouette and outline Gruau said that ‘with a single line we can express grandeur, nobility, sensuality, the line synthesises sensations and concentrates knowledge.’
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Xavier Antin
Posted on 17/03/11.
London based Frenchman Xavier Antin’s Just in Time, or a Short History of Production is an installation that was used to produce a book with a print chain made of four desktop printers from different eras. Each of the four printers is set to print one of the four process colours, bringing small and large scale production together. The stencil duplicator from 1880 prints Magenta, the spirit duplicator from 1923 prints Cyan, the laser printer from 1969 prints Key, and the inkjet from 1976 prints Yellow. The images in the resulting book are stunning.
Link: http://www.xavierantin.fr/
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Duane Michals
Posted on 24/01/11.
American photographer Duane Michals actually intended to become a graphic designer and in 1956 he went on to study design at Parsons, but didn’t complete his studies. He discovered his passion for photography while on a trip to Russia and is largely self-taught. He worked as a commercial photographer for the likes of Esquire magazine, and was hired by Mexico to document the Olympic games in 1968. He is best known however for his personal work which emphasises the imagination, the unseen, and the make-believe. He blurs the boundaries between photography and philosophy dealing with issues such as desire, time, youth and death.
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Mitch Epstein
Posted on 30/11/10.
American photographer Mitchell “Mitch” Epstein was born in 1952 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In the early 1970s he studied at the Cooper Union, where he was a student of black-and-white photographer Garry Winogrand. After Winogrand brought photographer William Eggleston to his class, Epstein was inspired to produce colour photographs which at the time were considered a tool of advertising. Epstein later helped pioneer the redefinition of colour photography as an art form. By the mid-1970s, Epstein had abandoned his academic studies and begun to travel, embarking on a photographic exploration of the United States.
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