The Road to Swiss International Design The Road to Swiss International Design
Examples of Victorian Advertising The Road to Swiss International Design
Swiss International Style was in the “works” for a long time.
A variety of historic events factored into the development of this international style, they are:
Futurism,
De Stijl,
Constructivism,
The Bauhaus,
The School of Design Basel Futurism
In 1909, Italian writer, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded Futurism with the publication of his Manifesto of Futurism.
The Futurist Manifesto was read and debated all across Europe.
Futurism as a revolutionary movement in which all the arts were to text their ideas and forms against the new realities of scientific and indus- trial society.
The manifesto voiced enthusiasm for war, the machine age, speed, and modern life. Marinetti and his follows produced an explosive and emotionally charged poetry that defied correct syntax and grammar.
Right: Sound Poem by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti The Road to Swiss International Design
Suprematism
1915 The term implied the su- premacy of this new art in relation to the past. Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic and concerned only with form, free from any political or social meaning. He stressed the purity of shape, particularly of the square, and he regarded Suprematism as primar- ily an exploration of visual language comparable to contemporary developments in writing.
KazmirI Malevich The Road to Swiss International Design
Suprematist painting comprised abstract coloured shapes set against light grounds in order to convey feel- ings of ascending, floating, and falling, a visual vocabulary that was subsequently ap- plied to theatre settings and costumes, ceramics, street propaganda, and architecture. The graphic and exhibition designer El Lissitsky, explored crisp, sans serif typography and new modes of com- munication such as photomontage that epitomized the spirit of technological progressiveness in the contemporary world. Also demonstrating symbolic af- finities with modern production technol- ogies in the geometric vocabulary and abstracted forms used in their textile designs. Left: El Lissitsky The Road to Swiss International Design The Road to Swiss International Design
RIGHT: Poster for the Russian Exhibition in Zurich,1929, designed by El Lissitsky The Road to Swiss International Design The Road to Swiss International Design
De Stijl
De Stijl design was characterized by a vocabulary that reflected a harmonius bal- ance between verticals and horizontals, was elemental in its reliance on abstract forms and restricted palette of the primary colours of red, yellow, and blue, together with black and white, and was symbolically attuned to the methods of modern mass- Composition with Yellow, Blue, production technology. and Red, 1939–42, Piet Mondrian. Oil on canvas; 72.5 x 69 cm. Lon- don, Tate Gallery. Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white.
Theo van Doesburg ; 1922
Gerrit Rietveld The Road to Swiss International Design
The Bauhaus (1919-33) * German school of design * Most influential of the 20th century. * Leading figures of Modernism were closely identified with it, either as members of staff or students they are: Walter Gropius
Sandows No. 5 chair Herbert Bayer Designed by Renè Herbst, France, Marcel Breuer 1929, Chromium-plated tubular steel, elastic cord László Moholy-Nagy Wilhelm Wagenfeld Anni and Josef Albers Marianne Brandt Gunta Stölzl The commitment of the Bauhaus to notions of a socially * Many of its avant-garde ideas were democratic vision of a well-designed environment, the idea disseminated through the publication of an International Style, and its position to the left of the of fourteen Bauhausbücher (Bauhaus political spectrum proved problematic in the sensitive eco- Books) between 1925 and 1930. nomic climate of the 1920s and 1930s.
Marcel Breuer is credited with de- signing the first tubular steel chair in 1925, when he was a furniture master at the influential Bauhaus design school in Dessau, Germany. The Road to Swiss International Design
Herbert Bayer László Moholy-Nagy
Walter Gropius
Marcel Breuer The Road to Swiss International Design The Road to Swiss International Design
After the election of Hitler in Germany: * All designers had to register with the Ministry of Culture, and all teaching posts were threatened for anyone who was sympathetic to communism.
The Nazi Party and other fascist political groups had opposed the Bauhaus throughout the 1920s. They considered it a front for communists, especially because many Russian artists were involved with it.
Gropius was succeeded in turn by Hannes Meyer and then Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The School was moved several to other cities and was closed on the orders of the Nazi regime in 1933.