Tom Purvis
Posted on 01/04/11.
Tom Purvis (1888-1959) was a British painter and commercial poster artist. He studied at Camberwell School of Art and worked for six years at the advertising firm of Mather and Crowther before becoming a freelance designer. Purvis is best known for his bold, graphic, two-dimensional style. He used large blocks of vivid flat colour and eliminated detail. From 1923 to 1945 Purvis worked for the LNER under the direction of Advertising Manager William Teasdale and then his successor Charles Dandridge, who both allowed him considerable freedom in his designs. During his time at the LNER Purvis produced over 100 posters which avoided depictions of the trains themselves, instead portraying the resorts that were the holiday destinations of travellers and the leisure pursuits that could be enjoyed there. As well as his work for the LNER, Purvis also designed posters for the Gentlemans’ outfitters Austin Reed and for the 1932 British Industries Fair. We look forward to the Wolfsonian’s new exhibition Art for All: British Posters for Transport which will explore the evolution of transport posters in twentieth-century Britain, showcasing some of the world’s most recognizable images produced by the London Underground and the British Railways. On view through April 14 to August 14, 2011.
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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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Richter Scale poster
Posted on 01/12/10.
We recently finished this poster for the new exhibition Richter Scale at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. A folded mailer edition included press release written by Pulitzer Prize winning Art Critic for the New York Times Holland Cotter on the reverse. A second run was printed one side on heavy stock. The show runs until December 30.
Link: http://bernicesteinbaumgallery.com/current.html
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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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Ludwig Hohlwein
Posted on 01/11/10.
Ludwig Hohlwein (1874 -1949) was a poster artist, graphic designer, architect and painter. He is counted alongside Lucian Bernhard, Ernst German-Dryden, Hans Rudi Erdt and Julius Klinger as one of the most prominent, and an influential representatives of the art of advertising. After studying in Munich and Dresden, and study tours to London and Paris he settled down in Munich as an architect. From 1904 Hohlwein regularly presented prints, watercolors and tempera paintings in the Munich Glass Palace. His signature style is easily recognisable and it varied little over his 40 year career. The drawing was perfect, his figures full of touches of color and a play of light and shade that brings them out of their background and gives them substance. He is said to have been inspired by the work of the British duo the Beggarstaffs who virtually created the modern poster, with clear outlines and large areas of flat colour.
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Max Huber
Posted on 22/10/10.
Max Huber (1919–92) was an influential Swiss graphic designer with close links to a circle of brilliant artists, designers and intellectuals such as Josef Muller-Brockmann, Achille Castiglioni, Werner Bischof, Albe Steiner, and Carlo Vivarelli. At the end of WWII he moved to Milan where he produced some of his most iconic and influential designs. Huber’s work was consistently innovative, and by combining painting and photography with other graphic media, he remained avant-garde throughout his career, bringing the utopian vision of the modern masters to bear on corporate typography and identity design.
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Karl Gerstner
Posted on 20/10/10.
Karl Gerstner, born Basel 1930, has devoted himself, for 50 years, to the study of colour. At 22 he became a freelance designer and 7 years later founded his own advertising studio GGK. In 1986 he published his book, The Forms of Colour, where examined the complex interaction between colour and form and developed his own system: ‘The Colour Form Model.’ The manipulation of colour’s tonal and chromatic scales have dominated his work in two and three dimensions. The compositions are vibrant, geometric and perfectly executed.
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