Neue Grafik from Switzerland to the world
The history of the magazine Neue Grafik, which appeared between 1958 and 1965 in 16 individual issues and one double issue, has yet to be written. It is true that reference works and individual publications on graphic design in the twentieth century tend always to reproduce the cover of the magazine and that connections have been drawn between Neue Grafik and Gute Form.1 However, the origin, the context, and the impact of this Swiss magazine of twentieth-century graphic design still remain uninvestigated, even though it was one of the most internationally influential publications in this field.
The categorisation of Neue Grafik under rubrics such as International Typographic Style’ or Objective-Functional Typography’ absolves authors and editors of the need to analyse a magazine that was far from being merely a vehicle for Swiss graphic design in the 1960s.2 Not only the contents of Neue Grafik were new, but also the historical situation and the group profile of the editors: neither the magazine's sales nor the provision of information was secured behind the scenes by a school, the coming together of like-minded individuals or a professional association based on shared interests.3 For the first time, the editors of a magazine of design were not principally architects or artists. The content and the design of the magazine was decided collectively by Richard Paul Lohse, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Hans Neuburg and Carlo L. Vivarelli. There was no hierarchical relation and no chief editor,4 and the work was carried out for a publishing house that was also innovative in other domains in which it took a stance on contemporary issues.5
On the 15th of February 1956, the future editors met in the Seilbahn restaurant in Zurich in order to discuss the founding of Neue Grafik.6 Two more years were to elapse, however, before the magazine's forthcoming publication was announced.7 This decision was prompted by the appointment of Josef Müller-Brockmann to succeed Ernst Keller as the head of the graphic design department of the Kunstgewerbeschule [School of Applied Art] in Zurich. Müller-Brockmann used the occasion to hold his own special form of inaugural lecture: instead of giving a talk, he arranged for the graphics section of the school to organise an exhibition entitled Constructive Graphic Design’, in which works by Richard Paul Lohse, Hans Neuburg and Carlo L. Vivarelli were presented to the public. Hans Neuburg designed the catalogue and the poster, and also wrote the introduction to the catalogue. Illustrations for the catalogue were taken from plates that were intended for the first issue of Neue Grafik.
The Editors
'Let us expand the triangle of exhibitors—Lohse, Neuburg, Vivarelli—to a rectangle, or, more precisely, to a square: the fourth corner is Müller-Brockmann’. These words were written In the Preface to the catalogue by Hans Fischli, who had studied architecture at the Bauhaus and was the director of the Kunstgewerbe School and Museum in Zurich. As leader of both the museum and the school, Fischli helped to establish modern design in Zurich. Eleven years earlier he had already brought together the four future editors of Neue Grafik in an ambitious project: the ‘Zuka’, Zurcher Kantonale Gewerbeund Landwirtschaftsausstellung [Trade and Agriculture Exhibition of the Canton of Zurich].8 Together with Edgar Woog,9 a councillor in the Zurich building department, he succeeded in providing the 'Züka' with light and modern buildings and in ensuring that its artistic and graphic design provided an alternative to the so-called 'Landi-Stil'.10
In an article for the Werkbund journal, Das Werk, Hans Neuburg identified the stylistic innovations of 'Züka graphic design'. He already employed the term 'Constructive' konstruktiv. which was to become of such central significance in years to come: As far as he [Hans Fischli] was able, he gave work to graphic designers who did not think and work decoratively, but constructively; moreover, he sought to organise the architectural, artistic and graphic design of the exhibition on the basis of geometric improvisations. […] This innovative and courageous approach, which also involved certain risks, led to the development of a sort of 'Züka style' that manifested itself both architecturally and graphically in element-based compositions made up of squares, circles, triangles and other geometric forms.'11
Hans Neuburg designed the Building Trade and Building Features section, whilst Josef Müller-Brockmann was responsible for the visual design of the Forestry section. Finally, Carlo L. Vivarelli, together with Robert S. Gessner, was responsible for the graphic design of the Arts and Crafts and Free Trades section. In contrast to the 'Landi, Constructive - Concrete art was thereby for the first time integrated into an exhibition in Switzerland that was directed at a wider public. The first version of Max Bill's sculpture, Kontinuität [Continuity], was exhibited on the shore of the lake of Zurich. Carlo L. Vivarelli designed a free rhythmic wall-sculpture for the external wall of the exhibition cinema. And Richard Paul Lose designed one of his few three-dimensional works. He adapted the principle that Hans Fischli had developed for the 'Züka' buildings, which involved re-usable wooden elements for the display halls, by making a construction of white wooden elements organised in a grid against a black square. It was located at the entrance of the lake-side restaurant.12 In retrospect, this encounter allows us to see that although the four future editors of Neue Grafik were bound together by a systematic approach to problems of design and by certain biographical experiences, they also gave different emphasis to their work as designers.
Neue Grafik / New Graphic Design / Graphisme actuel No. 2, July 1959 Neue Grafik / New Graphic Design / Graphisme actuel No. 3, October 1959
Richard Paul Lose, painter and graphic designer, was a co-founder of the Allianz-Vereiniqung Moderner Schweizer Künstler [Alliance-Association of Modern Swiss Artists.13 Through work on the design of Bauen+Wohnen, he had considerable experience in the complex task of organising a magazine. He saw his role in the editorial team, at least partially, as forging a connection between free artistic work and graphic design.14
Hans Neuburg,15 who was born in 1904, knew Lohse from their period working together in Max Dalang's advertising agency in Zurich. Neuburg was employed by Dalang as a copy-writer. From the beginning of the 1930s he worked principally as a designer and consultant for industrial firms. Among his clients were Sulzer, Feller and Philips. He designed the public face of numerous Swiss firms, developing concise trade marks and complex corporate designs. His exhibition reviews were important in raising awareness of modern art in Switzerland, yet he also produced sports reports. In 1952, he edited and designed the catalogue of the 'World Exhibition of Photograph' in Lucerne, where Lohse put together the sections on 'Architecture and Photography'.
Lohse and Neuburg lived through the First World War and the political changes of 1918/19, as well as the rapid transformation of artist 'isms' around 1920. Both received country-wide recognition for their graphic design in the 1930s and 1940s. By contrast, Josef Müller-Brockmann16 and Carlo L. Vivarelli belong to a generation that finds attention and success with a broader public for their graphic works only after the Second World War.
Thus, for example, in the monograph on his work published in 1994, Josef Müller-Brockmann provided only one example of work that he had produced as a graphic designer prior to 1945, even though he was born in 1914. Müller-Brockmann joined the Verband Schweizerischer Graphiker [VSG] [Association of Swiss Graphic Designers] in 1937, where he met Lohse and Neuburg. However, he was held back from further professional success by being called into active duty in the Swiss army for the duration of the war From 1945 onwards his graphic design was mainly illustrative, but in his posters he employed a relatively modern use of lettering. In 1951, he turned to geometric compositions and shortly thereafter to Constructive graphic design. Posters for musical events and the Swiss Automobile Club in 1953 mark the beginning of Müller-Brockmann's strictly systematic designs.
Carlo L. Vivarelli,17 who was born in Zurich in 1919, completed his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. In 1939, he sat in on lectures by the Art Deco graphic designer Paul Colin in Paris. At the beginning of the Second World War, he was required to carry out civic service in Switzerland. During the war he received Swiss citizenship. In 1946, he was appointed artistic director of the Studio Boggeri in Milan,18 for whom Max Huber and Xanti [Alexander] Schawinsky, the functionalist photographers and typographers, had worked. In 1947. Vivarelli returned to Zurich. In 1949, he used a photograph by Werner Bischof to design his most famous photographic poster, 'Für das Alter' [For the Elderly]. In 1950, parallel to his work as a qraphic designer–and subsequent to the wall relief that he had produced for the 'Züka' in 1947–he also started to work as a painter. In 1960, he began to explore sculpture as a further form of artistic expression.
The Editorial Programme
In the introduction to the first issue of Neue Grafik, dated September 1958, but distributed in mid-November, the editors of the magazine and the director of Otto Walter Publishers, Josef Rast, stated the magazine's programme: They do not prize modernity for its own sake or applaud boldness and originality at all costs, but they value the attempt at a solution by Constructive methods...' The editors of Neue Grafik not only wish to exhibit certain aspects of design, they wish to stimulate discussion, to offer explanations, to give instruction and example. […] Contrary to that of existing publications, the attitude of New Graphic Design is characterised by exclusiveness, consistency and lack of compromise.’19
The editors set out to distinguish the magazine from other contemporary journals of graphic design.20 LMNV, as they collectively signed themselves, did not want to produce a local Swiss publication on graphic design that was in keeping with the times. The abbreviation of their names was itself part of a programmatic contribution to modernity in which individual expression was to be concealed by a determined collective position. The team responsible for Neue Grafik saw graphic design as part of a more comprehensive form of activity in industrial society: they were concerned with visual communication rather than advertising, with the historical conditions of modernity rather than the endless changes of fashion, and with complex systems made up of variable components rather than individual artistic inspiration.
Anthony Froshaug, ulm 1, October 1958 Philip Steadman, Form 9, April 1969
This approach presupposed care, reflection and awareness, both on the part of the editors of the magazine and on the part of its readers. Neue Grafik was intended to be read, not just to be looked at. The reader was not enticed by a picture on the cover. And the long columns of text on the opening pages showed that the magazine was intended to inform rather than to illustrate. The use of the same grid for both the cover and the inside pages prevented individual themes—or authors—from being given special prominence: there was to be no first amongst equals. As in the journal, ulm, which was founded at the same time, and the British, Form, the content of the magazine was revealed in its external appearance.21
Both the editors and the publisher knew the value of a large format use of colour, as is demonstrated in the first issue by the high quality reproduction of colour photographs by René Groebli.22 However, the use of colour in Neue Grafik was never simply colourful. This can be seen in Groebli’s virtual monochromes and in the series of posters that Lohse produced in 1958 for the June Festival in Zurich, which were based on a photograph by Groebli.
The moment was favourable for Neue Grafik’s programme, which concerned both content and design, to reach an international public. At the Expo ‘58 in Brussels, pavilions from both the East and the West sustained a peaceful co-existence. Global industrial production and the use of new cybernetic techniques for the co-ordination and exchange of the results of scientific research made it appear as if the living conditions of the world's population could be lifted above the bare minimum necessary for survival. And from August 1953, at the Hochschule für Gestaltung [School of Design], the HfG, in Ulm, not far from Zurich, individuals from a variety of different countries had come together to establish a school of design that achieved world-wide recognition.23 Before the experiment was broken off in 1968, the four editors of Neue Grafik supported it as visiting professors, lecturers and examiners.
Neue Grafik made a fundamental break with the continuity of tradition. Rather than symmetrical type areas based on the golden section, the ‘beautiful book’, and the variegated Typografie der Mitte,24 it employed a modular grid system; rather than calligraphic ornamentation and charming illustrations, it showed photography in graphic design and the functional fonts, Univers,25 Neue Haas Grotesk [renamed Helvetica in 1960] and Folio, all sans-serifs, whose employment in grid-based systems made functional Swiss graphics in the 1960s influential throughout the world.
However, the comprehensive coverage of contemporary graphic design—accompanied by ‘often highly topical illustrations26 which frequently came from the editors themselves—did not merely serve to increase understanding and awareness of the new international style of typography that was developed in Switzerland. As well as providing information about the procedures and media used in contemporary graphic design, the articles also communicated ideas about contemporary ways of designing the lived environment: houses were fully electrified, apartments were equipped with functional furniture from the Zurich firm, Wohnbedarf; new pharmaceuticals and medical techniques could help to combat illness; a comfortable journey was assured by trains and aeroplanes, and by new road constructions using the latest machines to overcome geological hazards. The pulse of life in this technological civilisation, which extended beyond linguistic and regional boundaries, was no longer set by the metronome or Swiss precision watch, but by the sound of modern jazz recordings; modern office equipment alleviated the pressures of work; leisure time was filled not with amusement or shopping, but with self-cultivation through visiting exhibitions or concerts.27
‘Up-to-date’ did not mean without precedent. This can be seen in the title, Neue Grafik which combined the word new’ with the conjunction of art and technology associated above all with the Constructivism of the 1920s. With the title Neue Grafik, the editorial team in Zurich drew a connection to titles and ideas such as Neue typographie, Neues Bauen and Neues Wohnen.28 This relation to earlier originators of the new’ was not merely claimed but continually demonstrated: Neue Grafik provided modern graphic design with the first forum for writing its own history. In this, it still remains exemplary to this day.
The Editorial Programme-the Contribution of Richard Paul Lohse: the present out of the past
At the beginning stands Richard Paul Lohse’s programmatic article, The Influence of Modern Art on Contemporary Graphic Design’ in Neue Grafik, No. 1. Starting with Cubism, Lohse explained the interconnection of word, image and structure in Dadaism and Futurism, Surrealism and Neue Sachlichkeit, De Stijl and Russian Constructivism. In order to present functional Swiss graphic design from the end of the 1920s, he drew on the employment of artistic discoveries in posters, leaflets, brochures and advertisements from the Dessau Bauhaus to the Swiss journal, ABC. In this context, he emphasised the significance of his teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, Ernst Keller,29 whom he describes as the founder of a vigorously expressive two-dimensional style in Switzerland’. As further examples of the Contemporary Design’—a phrase that Lohse uses as subheading—he reproduced works by Anton Stankowski [from 1930], Max Bill [from 1931], Max Huber [from 1945], Karl Gerstner [1956] and Mary Vieira [1957], as well as examples of graphic design by his three co-editors produced between 1946 and 1955.
Two things are noticeable about this list. On the one hand, by pointing out the numerous interconnections and relations of reciprocal influence between art and informative design, Lohse was able to identify graphic design as an integral component of modern culture and form. Herein lies the enormous significance of the article both for graphic design’s subsequent development in the direction of visual communication30 and for later discussions of High & Low’31 in art and popular culture. On the other hand, by focusing on the graphic design of his colleagues in Zurich, Lohse succeeded not only in emphasising the influence of Switzerland on contemporary international graphic design, but also in identifying Swiss graphic design as primarily the product of the pioneers working in Zurich. Lohse and Neuburg had been eye witnesses of Dadaism in Zurich, and they also lived through and helped to shape the spread of Constructivism. The two younger editors, Josef Müller-Brockmann and Carlo L. Vivarelli, were familiar with the numerous artistic currents of the 1930s, from geometric-Constructive tendencies through to Surrealism. The adoption of elements of Constructivism into typography in particular, stimulated in Zurich around 1930 by the work of Anton Stankowski, had a formative influence on the graphic design work of LMNV, as well as on other artists and designers resident in Zurich. Here, too, we must add the influence of Bauhaus teaching and the work of Herbert Bayer on graphic designers such as Max Bill and Herbert Matter.32 By contrast, the teaching at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule [School of Applied Art] in Basle was based less on artistic experimentation than on a detailed knowledge of the rules of type-setting, canonised proportions and familiarity with the techniques and materials of graphic design. The programme was also influenced by Jan Tschichold, who once again drew on classical typography.33
It is significant for Lohse’s article, and for his approach to his subject, that, in contrast to the article by Hans Neuburg, The best recently designed Swiss Posters 1931–1957, which appeared in the same issue of Neue Grafik,34 there are no examples of work by Emil Ruder35 or Armin Hofmann,36 who taught at the Gewerbeschule in Basle, even though both entered into discussion to become editorial members of Neue Grafik.37 Instead, Lohse reproduced works by Mary Vieira38 and Karl Gerstner,39 representatives of a generation whose training as artists and graphic designers took place in the post-war years and who recognised as a model the works of the generation of pioneers in Zurich.
When Lohse emphasised the influence of modern art on contemporary graphic design, he was not concerned with describing and illustrating a definitive historical fact, but with revealing the seminal role and the significance of large-scale forms for contemporary graphic design. As elements of graphic design that arose from Constructive-Concrete discoveries in post-Cubist art, he identifies: calculated grid-based organisation of surfaces, economy of means, rhythmic organisation of surface forms and techniques to accentuate colours.
Lohse’s programmatic overview served to introduce a series of articles on historical subjects in Neue Grafik. Guest authors subsequently published comprehensive accounts of the typography of Futurism, De Stijl and the Bauhaus. Hans Neuburg discussed Anton Stankowski’s achievements in Zurich, thereby establishing for the first time the significance of the Max Dalang agency in an international context.40 Neue Grafik, No. 9 [March, 1961] provided the opportunity to discover the typographic structures of the Polish avant-garde between 1920 and 1930. This discussion of works that had previously been known in Western Europe only to specialists also contributed to a cultural exchange between East and West.41
Article titled ‘Graphic Designers Of The New Generation’ by Gérard Ifert. Neue Grafik / New Graphic Design / Graphisme actuel, No. 2, July 1959
Neue Grafik also overcame political borders. In his article, A Pioneer in the Art of Photomontage, John Heartfield’ [No. 8, 1960], Richard Paul Lohse reproduced works that Heartfield had made for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung and for the two publishers Malik and Neuer Deutscher Verlag in the 1920s and 1930s. Anticipating the criticism that would meet the publication of these montages, which had been created as works of socialist agitation, Lohse observed that'... in drawing attention to his work we [the editors of Neue Grafik] are not concerned with its political content, but with the artist’s intensive, burning preoccupation with the problems of design'. This statement, which was carefully placed at the end of the first section of the article, served to calm those who held a non-political conception of design. Later on in the article, however, in the penultimate sentence, Lohse revealed that he was convinced by the rightness of Heartfield’s image and text montages: ‘In these works, purpose and ideology are carried by a photographic and pictorial idea and the insistence on realism is thoroughly convincing because of the truth, assurance, precision and pertinence of the visual concept'.42
In Neue Grafik, No. 14 [December, 1962], Lohse presented the journal of the Amsterdam group of architects, De 8 en opbouw, who had argued for a socially responsible and non-elitist Constructive architecture in the 1930s. For a magazine, not exclusively concerned with graphic design—a fact that a number of reviewers of Neue Grafik misunderstood—the text offered something unusual: But everyone concerned with launching and running of such publications was dominated by the unshakeable conviction that they stood for a new form of design in art and architecture. The basis of their whole activity was, in other words, the firm belief that the views they held corresponded to a social need and that it was their duty to foster awareness of a clear system of design.43 Lohse also observed that there was no editor in chief of De 8 en opbouw, a practice that was upheld at Neue Grafik throughout its period of publication.
In his article 'Book Jackets of the Thirties for the Gutenberg Book League of Zurich', in issue No. 16 [July 1963], the penultimate edition of Neue Grafik, Lohse, at the age of sixty, sought to identify the place of his own work in the history of modern graphic design. Unlike his articles on historical subjects, he restricted himself to a few, large format reproductions. As the final example of his wide-ranging work for the co-operatively organised and socially engaged Book Guild, he selected a variation in colour of the book jacket for Kautschuk [Rubber] [1947]. The blue bars of the design could be fitted into the upper part of the magazine's grid without any demarcation. By using the free space to the right, Lohse achieved a light, almost floating impression of image and text surfaces. Moreover, there was a tangible and historical relation between Lohse's horizontal series of rows in the design from 1947 and the dotted structures used in the posters of Almir Mavignier from 1961 and 1962 that were reproduced alongside it.44 The sequence of illustrations subtly points towards the international extension and development of Constructive-Concrete art, to which Lohse had made a major contribution with his modular and serial orders since the 1940s. The double-page spreads in particular reveal the extent to which LMNV did not see the past as historically finished but, rather, sought to combine history with the present day, both through the content of Neue Grafik and through its graphic organisation.
This approach also inspired the editors and designers of other journals. For the English magazine, Typographica, Herbert Spencer followed Neue Grafik in recognising that the foundations of modernity should also be presented in the domain of graphic design. The articles in Typographica on figures such as John Heartfield, Alexander Rodchenko, Diter Rot [Dieter Roth], Kurt Schwitters and Piet Zwart45 were generously illustrated and designed in a poster-like fashion, but they did not always match the density of information provided by similar articles in Neue Grafik. As contemporaries of the heroic avant-garde46 both Lohse and Neuburg could provide an authentic account of its history. However, their work for Neue Grafik was not restricted to recording what they had witnessed. Hans Neuburg, for example, in whose studio the editorial meetings of Neue Grafik took place, wrote extensive articles on the work of his editorial colleagues.47 However, he also covered a wide range of other subjects, ranging from Graphic Design on the Railway to From Beer Mat to Façade.48
Lohse's Position
Whilst Lohse, too, addressed contemporary themes as a way of presenting exemplary achievements in design, he held the raising of fundamental questions to be of equal importance. In Neue Grafik, No. 2 [July, 1959], in a continuation of his book Neue Ausstellungsgestaltung/New Design in Exhibitions, he reported on the Expo 58 in Brussels. He limited the selection of pictures to functional modular-constructed buildings from certain countries and he paid particular attention to the use of colour and text in organising the exhibition. In the written part of the article that followed the illustrations, he contrasted this use of graphic means of conveying information with the representational and thus uneconomical and disproportional symbolism of exhibition design: In accordance with a fundamental tendency towards allegory that is to be found in every World Exhibition, the exhibition site was littered with towers, masts, spirals and free-standing sculptures—the exquisite fruits of modernism, classified as "Constructivism" and "Expressionism".49
This critique, which can be related, for example, to the large sculptural forms employed by Le Corbusier for the Philips Pavilion, is bound up with Lohse’s ideas for an exhibition entitled ‘modern-modernistic’50 which was planned for the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Zurich, but never actually took place. Lohse’s reflections on the economics and the design of exhibitions led him to propose a permanent international exhibition that could allow a continually up-dated comparison of global culture, rather than a series of nationally organised world exhibitions held by different countries in turn. This proposal, which takes into account the ongoing development of technology and design, was informed by Lohse’s philosophical and political beliefs, and by his demand for an international community of free and equal individuals.
In Issue 3 [October, 1959], Lohse published his observations ‘On the Sociological Position of the Graphic Designer’, that is to say, on a profession in which he himself had trained and which he continued to practice for many years after his international recognition as a painter. He begins by describing the historical situation that gave rise to the profession of the graphic designer. He argues that advertising design is inextricably bound up with the conditions of free competitive trade and that the graphic designer is working ... with torn convictions to fasten his own artistic aims upon an alien product.’ His claim that graphic design can learn from Constructive-Concrete art, but that, in contrast to Constructive or new graphic design, Constructive-Concrete art has gained insufficient recognition, can be seen as a description of his own experiences.51
Lohse also sees it as tragic that graphic design, which conforms to ever shorter product cycles, must constantly be changed and that graphic designs and their authors are quickly forgotten—a process that Neue Grafik sought to resist through its articles on historical topics. Lohse saw the profession of the graphic designer exposed to specific hazards. On the one hand, the graphic designer should not merely produce fashionable and clever designs. On the other hand, although the public scarcely recognises the individual achievement that this work involves, the skills the designer has acquired should not encourage him to abandon this activity and to start producing putatively individualistic art. Like architects and product designers, the graphic designer has a special responsibility to avoid both these temptations.
Lohse's article stands in a tradition of reflection on design that reaches back to the positions of William Morris and Adolf Loos on enduring ‘good form’, form without ornament, and craftsmanship. In comparison with the endlessly reformulated postulates of the Werkbund52—for design that is orderly, decent and appropriate—Lohse’s article presents a new awareness of the difficulties involved in sustaining one’s own ideas whilst working under economic pressure.
For this reason, Lohse demanded that those who were responsible for society as a whole should not merely create a free space in consumer society in which ‘the sponsoring of art by the business world [...] has a calming effect on the social situation.53 Rather they should fulfil the demand for responsible art in society itself. The editors of Neue Grafik demonstrated what the responsible work of the graphic designer could look like—not only by using clear forms and strong contrasts of black against pure white, but also through their choice of themes. Josef Müller-Brockmann, for example, produced a list of products and ideas, for which | would not work. These included tobacco products, alcoholic drinks, war toys, military institutions, speculation on land and property and political parties.54
In Issue 11 [December, 1961] of Neue Grafik,55 Hans Neuburg described the way in which Constructive graphic design was able to visualise the morality of objects’. He did so through a discussion of Richard Paul Lohse’s advertisements for the firm Wohnbedarf: ‘The designer has not only made the most of the functional shapes of the chairs but has spaced the design very effectively by making the essential detail as large as possible, showing the chair both in profile and from the front and arranging photographs and text to suggest the appearance of the chair when in use.56 With these advertisements57 for Wohnbedarf Lohse succeeded in creating graphic designs that exactly fitted the product. The reproduction chosen for the advertisement for the free-swinging tubular steel chair designed by Marcel Breuer serves to articulate its linear character, whilst the detail of the back rest of the chair designed by Saarinen serves to emphasise the sculptural quality gained from the surface.58 An intelligent and non-schematic use of the grid provides the basis for that equilibrium of freedom and order, which Lohse saw as an analogue for the human community.
The double issue of Neue Grafik, No 17/18 [February, 1965], was the last of the series. Published more than a year after the preceding issue, No. 16 [July, 1963], this final volume can be seen as drawing up a balance sheet after seven years of publishing on graphic design in Zurich. Objective and documentary photography were held up alongside the Bauhaus as equally important influences on design in the twentieth century; there were illustrations of posters from previous years—including Lohse’s poster for the exhibition ‘Musikinstrumente’ [Musical Instruments] in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Zurich in 1962—and examples of teaching and design from Zurich to Tokyo. Another article was dedicated to Lohse's work for the Zurich firm, Wohnbedarf—this time, Lohse himself discussed his advertisements, folders, leaflets and catalogue pages.59
However, something new was added to the balance that was not concerned with the individual authorship of works of graphic design. With Lohse’s article, Flags of the Nations’,60 Neue Grafik addressed anonymous design and made its readership aware of the use throughout the world of a clear language of form and colour—a tradition of simplicity that until then had remained largely in the dark. The article provided comprehensive and systematic coverage of a subject that had scarcely been touched upon in the history of graphic design61 It gave equal weight to issues of historical understanding and political expression alongside a formal analysis of the proportions and contrasts of flags: The simplification, the designing of the surface by means of equal vertical divisions was the expression of a democratic purpose. Proof of this statement is afforded by the intentionally equal value of the proportions, the equal distribution of colour. [...] The equal value of all the colours, the equal proportions were an unmistakable sign of the political aims of the democratic revolutions of the 18 and 19th centuries. In this sense the invention of the tricolour represents a political fact of the first importance, especially because in its original form it forewent all emblematic or illustrative adjuncts.62
A small book may have prompted Lohse to write the article on flags,63 and he may also have had recourse to something that preceded his own practice as a graphic designer.
At the same time as he carried out his analysis of 'Flags of the Nations’, Lohse transformsed the Zurich coat of arms into an artistic trade mark for his poster, 'Zürcher Künstler im Helmhaus' in 1964. He observed that the poster presented an attempt to transform the actual heraldic form of the Zurich flag into surface elements that could be effective on a poster and to create horizontal and diagonal movement by sliding one against the other. The result combines what is given through tradition with an active principle66
In a number of respects, this poster and the article ‘Flags of the Nations’ mark the end of Lohse’s activity as a graphic designer. It is true that he continued to work for a number of previous clients, but he ceased to enter into any new contracts and increasingly restricted his graphic design to his own typography. The article, ‘Flags of the Nations, is also the last of Lohse’s articles on questions of graphic design. Alongside his artistic activity, which now took up most of his time, he wrote texts on political, art-historical and theoretical subjects, and above all, texts on his own work.
The Influence of Neue Grafik
As the editors had hoped from the beginning, by the time its last issue was published Neue Grafik had become genuinely international, not only in its choice of subject-matter but also in its influence. The farewell notice attached to issue 17/18 spoke merely of a break in publication and of the intention to continue publishing Neue Grafik, ‘perhaps with a similar appearance, but in the form of a comprehensive annual volume with more consistently and more exactly chosen contents’. This announcement was never fulfilled. And yet the magazine's work continued even without the production of the yearly volumes by LMNV: in places such as Zurich, Ulm, Basle and London, the existing issues of Neue Grafik were carefully studied, the illustrations analysed and the interpretations absorbed and considered. Rational construction in design and systematic forms of thinking led to the complex development of corporate design in the 1960s and 1970s. It also led to the raising of socially critical questions such as who actually benefits from design and how reason can be used in a responsible way in lieu of instrumentalising creativity. This process is still underway. However, nothing detracts from the fact that, beginning in 1958 at the latest, it began to spread its influence in the field of graphic design from Zurich throughout the world—last but not least through Lohse’s exemplary work.
Michael Lenz
Notes
1 ‘Gute Form’ was an initiative of the Swiss Werkbund between 1952 and 1968; its goal was to foster the production of ‘well-designed’ consumer goods. Cf., Die Gute Form, Baden 1983 and ‘La forma delLutile. Il disegno razionale svizzero’, in Rassegna No. 2, Volume 17 [62], Bologna, 1995 [published in German as Wege zur Guten Form’, Basle, Berlin, Boston, 1995].
2 Cf., for example, Richard Hollis, Graphic Design. A Concise History, London 1994 which contains a useful overview of Swiss graphic design in the post-war years. Judith M. Grieshaber and Manfred Kréplien reproduce the cover of Neue Grafik, No. 1 [September, 1958] in large format in their Vom Bauhaus ins Land der Riesenwaschkraft: Nachdenken über Graphikdesign, Stuttgart 1992 however, in the text they do not mention the names of the editors or their work. More recently, in Typography, an encyclopedic survey of type design and techniques throughout history, New York, 1998, Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott and Bernard Stein mistakenly attribute the design of the cover of Neue Grafik to Richard Paul Lohse. In Spirale - Eine Kunstlerzeitschrift 1953-1960, Baden, 1990, Annemarie Bucher observes the connection with ‘gute Form’; she also dedicates a separate section to Neue Grafik. On the relation of the magazine to other currents of graphic design in the twentieth century, see the comprehensive appendix Major Resources, in Rob Carter, American Typography Today, New York, 1993.
3 This distinguishes Neue Grafik from De Stijl or bauhaus, and more clearly from magazines such as Die Form, Werk, and Gebrauchsgraphik or journals produced by associations such as Typographische Monatsblätter and Typographische Mitteilungen.
4 In Neue Grafik, No. 1., Carlo Vivarelli is mentioned as responsible for the design, all subsequent editions mention Hans Neuburg. From issue 8 [December, 1960] onwards Neuburg is mentioned as also being responsible for the editorial work. But documents in the Richard Paul Lohse Archive confirm that Lohse was responsible for part of the design of his own articles; we assume that this was also the case with the other editors. The records reveal his involvement in procuring images and editing foreign articles as well as his contributions to articles signed LMNV [Lohse/Müller-Brockmann/Neuburg/Vivarelli]. Also in the Richard Paul Lohse Archive there are minutes of editorial meetings held between 10/10/1961 and 20/8/1962, which were concerned with work from issue 12 [March, 1962] onwards.
5 Otto Walter Publishers was originally Catholic and conservative in orientation. From 1951, it published social-critical photojournalism in the magazine, Die Woche. including, amongst others, the work of the Magnum photographer Werner Bischof. After Otto F. Walter joined them, they began publishing numerous works by the international visual and literary avant-garde. During the period in which Neue Grafik was published these included: works of social journalism by Danilo Dolci, Umfrage in Palermo [1959] and Banditen in Partinico [1962], Helmut Heissen-bittel’s Textbucher 1-5 [1960-1965], which were important for the development of Concrete poetry, Totale Fotografie by Karl Pawek, editor of the journal Magnum [1960; reviewed by Richard Paul Lohse in Neue Grafik, No. 11 [December 1961]] and the complete works of Alfred Döblin (from 1960).
6 Another account is given in: Josef Müller-Brockmann, Mein Leben: Spielerischer Ernst und ernsthaftes Spiel, Baden 1994, p. 51. Hans Neuburg also recalled Josef Müller-Brockmann's initiative in 50 anni di grafica costruttiva, Milan 1982, p. 12/13. Cf., here, a letter from Richard Paul Lohse to the publishers Arthur Niggli and Willi Verkauf on 23/2/1956: '[...] A group of progressive graphic designers in Switzerland have developed an idea for a project that may be of interest to your publishing house, and | would be grateful if you would contact me next time you visit Zurich. [...]’ Lohse wrote this letter during the period in which his work as an editor and designer for Bauen+Wohnen had come to an end.
The founding in 1950 of Niggli Publishers [at first, Niggli und Verkauf] provided Constructive graphic design with a committed publishing house in the mid-1950s that gave its support not only to architectural publications but also to Constructive and systematic art. In 1957, Niggli published Karl Gerstner’s analytic introduction to Constructive painting, Kalte Kunst? and Markus Kutter’s experimental prose work, Schiff nach Europa. Karl Gerstner developed an experimental typography that was ideally suited to the text, using a grid that was frequently reproduced. Niggli published numerous monographs, including a collection in honour of Richard Paul Lohse'’s birthday [1962], and collections in honour of the birthdays of Max Bill [1958] and Hans Neuburg [1964]. Josef Müller-Brockmann published books with Niggli such as Gestaltungsprobleme des Grafikers [1961] and Rastersysteme für die visuelle Gestaltung/Grid systems in graphic design [1981]. For its part, the progressive engagement of Niggli Publishers was restricted to the putatively formal aspects of modern art: it rejected the political consequences of certain modern conceptions of the world. Thus, for example, despite the determined resistance of Hannes Meyer's heirs and the editor, Claude Schnaidt, Arthur Niggli insisted on publishing a defamatory letter by Walter Gropius about Meyer, together with an afterword by the publishers, in the book, Hannes Meyer - Bauten, Projekte und Schriften.
7 Imprint of the catalogue Konstruktive Grafik. information brochure 221, Kunstgewerbemuseum Zürich, Zurich (March) 1958, not paginated.
8 Hans Fischli [1909-1989] defended a non-dogmatic, formal-Constructive, but not formal-abstract, conception of modernity. This brought him into conflict with Sigfried Giedion, for example. Fischli designed factories, offices and private accomodation for Adolf Feller AG in Horgen, for whom Neuburg, Lohse and Vivarelli were responsible for many years for the graphic design. The artistic design of the buildings incorporated sculptures by Fischli. For detailed information on Fischli, see Hans Fischli, Rapport, Zurich 1978 and Karl Jost, Hans Fischli – Architekt, Maler, Bildhauer, Zurich 1992.
9 Lohse had political connections with Edgar Woog through, for example, the Switzerland-Soviet Union Society. Lohse knew his wife, Lydia, since his time at the Zetthaus, and he designed stationery and signs for her shop.
10 The ‘Landi’—the Landesausstellung of 1939—was planned as a forum for displaying Swiss cultural and economic achievements. At the start of the Second World War, and during the actual period that the exhibition was held, its public image changed. It came to be seen as a symbol for the moral defence of a Switzerland that consisted of four linguistic regions. As a consequence, ‘Landi-Stil’ [Landi-style] meant an emphasis on craft-based, pre-industrial culture of the sort that was shown in the ‘Landi-Dérfli’ [Landi-village]. Nonetheless, the Landesausstellung of 1939 included modern and avant-garde elements. Robert Maillart, for example, erected a reinforced concrete thin-walled shell structure and Hans Coray designed his minimalised aluminium chair. The ‘Landi’ was important for Richard Paul Lohse’s graphic design. Having designed the sections ‘Water Power’ and ‘Electricity’, he designed at the end of the exhibition his first large format illustrated book, Elektrizitat/L Electricité [Electricity], [Zurich, 1940]. Lohse’s work for industrial firms, such as Escher Wyss, began at that time and continued for many years. The founding of the ‘Schweizerische Vereinigung für Landesplanung’ [Swiss Organisation for National Development] in 1943 goes back to the ‘Landi’. Lohse designed the first issue of the journal Plan, which was produced by architects, engineers, politicians and town planners as part of a governmental plan to fight unemployment.
11 Hans Neuburg, "Die Graphik an der Züka", in: Werk, No. 3 (1948), pp. 78f., here cited after: Karl Jost, Hans Fischli, op cit., p. 60.
12 On graphic design for exhibitions, cf., Richard Paul Lohse, Neue Ausstellungsgestaltung, Erlenbach, Zurich 1953; Karl Jost, Hans Fischli, ibid.; Lars Müller (ed.), Josef Müller-Brockmann – Ein Pionier der Schweizer Grafik, Baden 1994. The first version of Max Bill's Kontinuität, [Continuity], shown at the ‘Züka’ exhibition on the shore of the lake of Zurich, was destroyed in 1948.
13 Cf., John Matheson, allianz - Die Geschichte einer Bewegung, Zurich, 1983. From 1937, Lohse designed printed material for the Allianz, including the Almanach neuer Kunst in der Schweiz [Almanac of New Art in Switzerland] in 1940. For the poster of the last Allianz exhibition in 1954 he chose a black and white design for the text, which could also be read at night when brightly coloured posters appear grey.
14 Letter to Dr. Vodoz dated 9.3.1959, carbon copy in the Richard Paul Lohse Archive. During the publication period of Neue Grafik, Lohse had important solo exhibitions in Ulm, Amsterdam, and Zurich, and participated in the 8th Biennale in São Paulo in 1965, these presented him as an important exponent of Constructive art.
15 On Hans Neuburg (1904-1983), cf., too, the article by Christoph Bignens in this volume. Lit. including: Moderne Werbe- und Gebrauchsgrafik, Ravensburg 1960; Hans Neuburg, Teufen 1964, 50 anni di grafica costruttiva, Milan 1982.
16 Lit.: Lars Müller (ed.), Josef Müller-Brockmann, ibid. and Josef Müller-Brockmann, Mein Leben [...], ibid. With his book Gestaltungsprobleme des Grafikers (Teufen 1961), Müller-Brockmann published a systematic theory of graphic design. His development of complex grid-based typography is still to be found in the teaching programme of numerous universities worldwide.
17 Carlo L. Vivarelli (1919-1986), like Richard Paul Lohse, was a co-examiner for exams at the HfG Ulm. Lit.: Susanne Kappeler, Carlo Vivarelli – Plastik Malerei Grafik, Zurich 1988.
18 From 1934, the Studio Boggeri made an important contribution to the development of the early corporate identity of the firm Olivetti through the design of printed matter and products. The Milan agency began by employing artistic elements of Futurism for commercial graphic design However, with the contribution of Xanti [Alexander] Schawinsky until he emigrated to the USA in 1936 and the initial contribution of Max Huber for one and a half years from 1940, it underwent a decisive turn towards a form of functional graphic design that combined photography and typography cf., Bruno Monguzzi, lo Studio Boggeri 1933–1981, Milan 1981.
19 "Introduction," in: Neue Grafik, No. 1 (September 1958), p. 2.
20 Thus the reviewer of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung observed that: ‘The specialist magazine, Neue Grafik, published in three languages by the Otto Walter AG [Olten] only retains the ‘ph’ in the English and French titles New Graphic Design and Graphisme actuel.’ ‘nr’ in: Neue Zurcher Zeitung, evening edition of 16/12/1958.
21 This connection of inner and outer is one of the characteristic features of specialist magazines, which do not need a conspicuous title because they are paid for on subscription. Lohses grid based design of Bauen+Wohnen, particularly after issue 6 [1949], offers an exemplary model of an ambitiously designed magazine. At the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, the British typographer and exhibition designer, Anthony Froshaug (1920–1984) developed a grid for the journal ulm [first published in October 1958] that was similar to that used in Neue Grafik. Philip Steadman's design of the British Form (eds.: Philip Steadman, Mike Weaver, Stephen Bann), Cambridge 1966 to 1969, also connected the external appearance of the journal with its internal design. The significance of Form for English-speaking design enthusiasts lay in its programme—comparable to that pursued in Neue Grafik. Cf. Herbert Lindinger (ed.), Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm... – Die Moral der Gegenstände, Berlin 1987 and Robin Kinross (ed.), Anthony Froshaug – Typography & texts/Documents of a life, 2 volumes, London, 2000.
22 Neue Grafik, No. 1,5. 45–51; on René Groebli (born 1927): René Groebli, Visionen – Fotografien 1946–1991, Sulgen 1999.
23 On the HfG Ulm: Herbert Lindinger [Ed.], Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm..., op cit. In his radio broadcast, der rechte winkel von ulm 1959, Bernhard Riibenach described how unusual the international character of Ulm seemed at that time to outsiders: ‘they greeted one another, ciao, gruiezi, salu, hallo, they did not shake one another's hands, they never addressed each other by their surnames, they were all called: susanne, ilse, guy, morris, conny, deborah, dominique, cornelia, tomas. First published in printed form in: Bernhard Riibenach, der rechte winkel von ulm, Darmstadt, 1987, here, p. 32.
24 Cf. Georg Kurt Schauer, Typography of the Center, in: German Book Art 1890–1960, Hamburg 1963, pp. 241–245.
25 In: Neue Grafik, No. 2 July, 1959], Emil Ruder introduced for the first time the typeface Univers to a wider readership that was interested in questions of modern design and not only to those who were knowledgeable about typography.
26 Lars Müller [Ed.], Josef Müller-Brockmann, op. cit., p. 35. The unsigned text was written by the publisher and editor, Lars Muller.
27 Cf. the topics in Neue Grafik: Household–No. 1, 14, 15; Functional Furniture—No. 17/18; Pharmaceutical and medical technology—Nos., 1, 5, 10, 14; Trains—No. 10; Aeroplanes and Road Construction—No. 14; Internationality—No. 13; Modern Jazz—Nos. 5, 15; Office Equipment—No. 8; Exhibitions—Nos. 2, 16; Concerts—No. 4.
28 Cf. Jan Tschichold, The New Typography, Berlin, 1928. The series designed by El Lissitzky, Neues Bauen in der Welt, Vienna, 1930 [authors: El Lissitzky, Richard Neutra, Roger Ginsburger], the journals Das Neue Frankfurt, Frankfurt, 1926–1931, die neue stadt, Gross-Gerau, 1932–1934, and the exhibition, Neue Hauswirtschaft’, at the Kunstgewerbe-museum, Zurich in 1930. The programme and campaign of the Swiss Social Democratic Party ‘Neue Schweiz’ [New Switzerland] in 1943 testify to the unbroken attraction over decades of the ‘new’.
29 Cf. here W[illy] R[otzler], 'Ernst Keller' in Rotzler et al. Das Plakat in der Schweiz, Schaffhausen 1990, pp. 46–48.
30 On the history of this concept: a department of Visual Design was created at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1948; a department of ‘Visuelle Gestaltung’ [visual design] was named in the prospective teaching programme for the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, in 1950. When teaching began it was termed ‘Visuelle Kommunikation’ [visual communication]. The concept was created at that time to encompass complex questions as well as to distinguish its subject matter from training in craft-based skills such as calligraphy, hand-composition of text and fine art printmaking processes. After the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm closed in 1968, numerous colleges took over features of its educational approach, as well as the term visual communication’
31 Cf., here, the exhibition, catalogue, and essay collection on High & Low, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1990.
32 It is true that both Constructivism and Sachlichkeit, which alternated between Construction and Surrealism, began as art movements; however, as well as establishing new styles of art, Constructive and objective’ ways of pictorial composition also influenced new and Constructive graphic design in Zurich with far-reaching consequences. Designers did not deny the artistic origin of these ideas.
33 Jan Tschichold [1902–1974] is undoubtedly the most influential theorist of typography in the 20th century. In his two publications, elementare Typographie [1925] and Die Neue Typographie [1928], he summarised the principles of early Constructive design. In 1933, he and his wife were imprisoned by the National Socialists. After his release, he emigrated to Basle. There he produced designs for the publisher, Benno Schwabe, and taught intermittently at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule [School of Applied Art]. In 1940, he turned once again to the axial lay-out of texts. He became a citizen of Basle in 1942. Even after he turned away from the New Typography, he never denied its possiblities. However, he saw it as restricted to industrial and commercial design. Litera: Ginter Bose and Erich Brinkmann [eds.], Jan Tschichold - Schriften in 2 Banden, Berlin, 1992.
34 Hans Neuburg, ‘The best recently designed Swiss Posters, 1931–1957, in Neue Grafik, No. 1 [1958], pp. 52–63. This article employed plates that had been used earlier for the catalogue, Konstruktive Grafik.
35 Emil Ruder [1914–1970] studied under Alfred Willimann and Walter Käch in Zurich and later taught typography in Basle. In 1967, Niggli published the first edition of his design text-book, Typographie The only article by Emil Ruder to appear in Neue Grafik, No. 2 [July, 1959] presented the typeface, Univers, by Adrian Frutiger.
36 Armin Hofmann [born 1920] studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. Between 1946 and 1986 he taught at the Gewerbeschule in Basle. Litera: Hans Wichmann [ed.], Armin Hofmann - Werk Erkundung Lehre, Basle, Boston, Berlin, 1989.
37 ‘Originally, Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder were considered as editorial members, but to the strict editors in Zurich Hofmann’s graphic design seemed too artistic, and Ruder’s typography too schematic.’ Lars Miller [ed.], Josef Muller-Brockmann - Gestalter, op cit., p. 35.
38 Mary [Maria] Vieira [1927–2001] emigrated from Brazil to Europe and lived and worked in Basle. She participated in the final exhibition of the Allianz in 1954, had contacts with the ‘spirale’ group and published with the ‘spiralPress’ in Berne. Litera: Beat Wismer [ed.], Karo-Dame, Baden, 1995.
39 In 1962, together with Markus Kutter and Paul Gredinger, Karl Gerstner [born 1930] founded the agency GGK, which was influential on graphic design in Switzerland and West Germany. His publications include Kalte Kunst?, Teufen, 1957; Die Neue Grafik [together with Markus Kutter], Teufen, 1959; Programme entwerfen, Teufen, 1963, Kompendium für Alphabeten, Teufen, 1972. Litera: Karl Gerstner, Stuttgart, 1992.
40 Hans Neuburg, ‘30 Years of Constructive Graphic Design’, in Neue Grafik,, No. 3 [October 1959], pp. 27–35.
41 Henryk Berlewi's article, Functional Design of the Twenties in Poland, was published at Lohse’s prompting. It broke with the idea that Constructivism was above all connected with De Stijl, Russian revolutionary art and, later, the Bauhaus. For the first time, the international significance of artistic avant-gardes in other countries was presented in an exemplary way. 1962 saw the first overview of Russian and [later] Soviet Suprematism and Constructivism, work that was hitherto virtually unknown, in Camilla Gray's The Great Experiment. Russian Art, 1863-1922. Only a few journal articles referred to non-objective art in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland between 1918 and 1938.
42 Neue Grafik, No. 8 [December 1960], pp. 13–17.
43 Neue Grafik, No. 14 [December 1962], pp. 47–49.
44 In 1958, Lohse was co-examiner of the diploma work of Almir Mavignier [born 1925].
45 Cf., the anthology edited by Herbert Spencer, The Liberated Page, London, 1987, which contains facsimiles of articles that originally appeared in Typographica between 1960 and 1967.
46 On the concept 'heroic', cf. Smithson, Alison & Peter, The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture, Architectural Design, London, December 1965.
47 See, for example, Hans Neuburg’s discussion of Vivarelli's Ovomaltine advertisements, in Neue Grafik, No. 4 [December, 1959], Carlo L. Vivarelli’s discussion of the The Principles in the Design of Trade Marks with examples by Neuburg, Lohse and Vivarelli himself, in Neue Grafik, No. 5 [March, 1960]. In his articles, Josef Müller-Brockmann discussed questions of training and international development. Hans Neuburg’s article, ‘Space and Principles’, in Neue Grafik, No. 12 [March, 1962] was an expanded version of an article on Lohse that first appeared in Werk. It provided a fundamental overview of Lohse’s artistic activity prior to the first monograph, which was published on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.
48 Cf., the articles by Neuburg in Neue Grafik, No. 10 [June, 1961], pp. 20–42.
49 Neue Grafik, No. 2 [July 1959], p. 10ff.
50 Cf. Note 17 to the article, Modular Order – A Vision of the Industrialized Age by Béla Stetzer in this volume. Lohse's criticism of this use of the plastic art was not taken into account when Switzerland organised the Expo ‘64 in Lausanne with its Hof der Kunste [courtyard of art].
51 Constructive graphic design did not remain uncontroversial, however. For example, in a letter of the 19/3/1943, the secretary of the Swiss Werkbund, the architect Egidius Streiff, criticised Lohse's poster for the Werkbund exhibition, 'Unsere Wohnung': No matter what route I took through the city, this bright thing on the advertisement pillars attracted my attention through its colours and forms. The poster was conspicuous and someone like me, who is interested in posters had to be attracted by it.
However I must admit that I was shocked to discover that it was the poster for Unsere Wohnung. The exhibition is exclusively directed towards ordinary people. It offers instructions and new ideas to workers and the lower middle-strata of society. And yet these people are encouraged to attend the exhibition by being presented with an abstract play of forms–and by a text that can only be read from close up.
[...] I admit that it is a beautiful work in itself – but a work exclusively for intellectuals. For our purpose, however, we would have needed a completely different formal language." [Letter in the Richard Paul Lohse Archive]
In On the Sociological Position of the Grafic Designer’ Lohse discussed the contradiction involved in accepting Constructive graphic design but rejecting Constructive art in the context of the organisation and ideology of a market-economy based society. Elsewhere, he observed that this same contradiction was also to be found amongst those who held a socialist view of the world: ‘In Zurich, too, the hostility of the left against our art was aggravating. Strangely enough, they opposed the art while approving the posters that emerged from this art. [...] They liked their posters to be modern but ignored the source of the posters. That made me mad! One example is Konrad Farner whose achievements and effort for the workers’ movement I respect. A Marxist philosopher, he was against Constructive art. At a lecture at a cultural organisation [Kultur und Volk], attended almost entirely by workers, he spoke on Culture for the Workers [Kunst für die Arbeiter]. He showed a picture of a woman by the Swiss artist Hans Erni. At the top of the picture was the artificial artistic expression of hope, at the bottom, barbed wire. The woman is pregnant. As a contrast he showed a picture by Mondrian. Crossing his fingers in the form of prison bars he first said: “These artists wanted an order, but it can also be a prison order’. Then he pointed his crossed fingers towards me—I was sitting opposite. I lost my temper and said: “You are a vulgar demagogue!”’ Lohse in: Karl Jost und Peter Munger, Richard Paul Lohse - Konstruktiver Maler, geboren in Zurich 1902, video film, Zurich, 1985–1988.
52 Parallel to his work for Neue Grafik, Lohse held responsible positions in the Swiss Werkbund between 1953 and 1966 and designed numerous printed materials for this association, primarily for architects, designers, artists, and companies.
53 Quotation from Richard Paul Lohse, in: Anne-Marie Droeven, ‘Wie schon es ist, Mazen zu sein, in bilanz - SchweizerWirtschaftsRevue, Zurich, August, 1985, p. 64.
54 Josef Müller-Brockmann, Mein Leben[...], op. cit., p. 38.
55 Neue Grafik, No. 11 [December 1961], pp. 44–47.
56 Opcit., p. 44.
57 Cf., the reproductions on pp. 172/173 in the article, Modular Order—A Vision of the Industrialised Age, by Béla Stetzer in this volume.
58 Cf., the article by Christoph Bignens in this volume and the sequence of images reproduced there. It was above all in his graphic design for Escher Wyss that Lohse emphasised the sculptural character of industrial products. Many of these advertisements, leaflets and booklets use objective photographs, developed from the 1920s onwards and which, from an art-historical perspective, should be seen in the context of magic Realism and Neue Sachlichkeit. On the parallel between industrial and artistic form, cf., for example, the confrontation of a ship’s propeller with Max Bill's sculpture Kontinuitat [Continuity] in photographs by Hugo P. Herdeg, in: Stiftung für Photographie [ed.], Photographie in der Schweiz 1840 bis heute, Niederteufen, 1974, p. 138.
59 Neue Grafik, No. 17/18 (February 1965), pp. 100–111.
60 Neue Grafik, No. 17/18, op. cit., pp. 2–28.
61 In Eine Stunde Druckgestaltung, published in 1930, Jan Tschichold discussed flags in connection with typographic logos. He presented the Japanese imperial flag and the Swiss flag as elementary designs in the contrast of form and colour. Cf., Jan Tschichold, Eine Stunde Druckgestaltung, Stuttgart, 1930, p. 27.
62 Neue Grafik, No. 17/18, op. cit., pp. 2–3.
63 Under point 15, the minutes of the meeting of the editors of Neue Grafik on the 13/8/1962 record: ‘M[üller-Brockmann] received a small book from Japan on international flags and ship's signs. An independent article should be made from this.’ Minutes in the archive of the Richard Paul Lohse Foundation
64 In her biographical discussion on Lohse, ‘Ein Leben in modularer Ordnung’ [A Life in Modular Order], Ludmila Vachtova observes that: ‘Together with his comrades the young boy would set out from Lowenstrasse 66 on expeditions, for which he designed brightly coloured chequered battle flags. Mere chance or a presentiment? Half a century later, as editor and co-founder of the magazine, Neue Grafik, RPL published a well-researched article on the design, composition and visual function of flags.’ Ludmila Vachtova, ‘Ein Leben in modularer Ordnung’, in Richard Paul Lohse 1902–1988, Catalogue, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen am Rhein, op cit., 1992, pp. 74–84, here, p. 74. To Vachtova’s discussion of this childhood game we can add the observation that Ernst Keller, Lohse’s teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, frequently taught the division of simple surfaces through reference to examples from heraldry.
65 Cf., for example, Lohse’s text, Prinzip der Farbserie [Principle of Colour Series], where he observes that: ‘The equal quantity of colours represents a democratic principle, the equal value of each colour, the identity of quantity and quality’, in: Kunstmuseum Luzern [editorial responsibility, Martin Kunz], Fragen an Lohse, Lucerne, 1985, p. 54.
66 Richard Paul Lohse, ‘Dem Wunsch des Stadtprasidenten...’, in Zurcher Kunstler im Helmhaus und Stadthaus, Zurich, 1963, not paginated.
Published in Richard Paul Lohse Graphic Design 1928–1988, Hatje Cantz 2002