Notes and news

PAULSCHUITEMA t

With the death of Paul Schuitema (27 February i8g?-25 October 1973), one of the pioneers of the new functional typography of the twenties and thirties has passed away. Together with Piet Zwart, who taught in Rotterdam, and Gerrit Kiljan, who was his colleague at the academy in The Hague, Schuitema developed, both as a practising typographer and as a teacher, the specifically Dutch variety of that international style which was directly linked with the general concepts of design of Neue Sachlichkeit,functionalism, the Bauhaus and the De Stijl movement - neglecting, for present purposes, the differences between these various terms and movements. The exact sequence of events, influences and reactions leading up to the formation of this style has not yet been established. Fortunately, however, the last few years have given us numerous studies on individual artists or aspects of their work, making valuable contributions to our understanding of this period of intense and very intricately interconnected activities. If the reader will permit a rather dubious use of agricultural metaphor, we might say that Dada ploughed the soil in German typography, in which Lissitsky then sowed, as a representative of the Russian suprematist and constructivist movement. The resultant plants were tended by several artists both within the Bauhaus (Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer) and outside it (Tschi- chold, Moltzalm, Dexel, Burchartz, Vordemberge-Gildewart). Some of the first sprigs were then transplanted into Dutch soil, prepared by De Stijl, and were nursed especially by Zwart and Schuitema. Practically all these typographers took to photography or worked together with photographers and cineasts practising the new, unshrouded vision, like Renger-Patzsch or Joris Ivens, to name but two. When the first German typographers established contacts to form a circle of like-minded people they included their Dutch colleagues. Tschichold shows their work in his Die Neue Typographieof 1928, which became the creed and manual of the whole movement. Compared to the Germans, who sought order, precision, consistency and intelligibility with the most economic use of typographic means, the Dutch kept more expressionism, Dadaistic irrationalism and wit in their style, which is therefore more exuberant and entertaining, while providing a less solid basis for school training and daily practice. Apart from a number of book jackets, Schuitema's best and most typical work in those early years was done for a remarkable and little-known patron, P. van Berkel, a bacon exporter who also had a machine works, Van Berkels Patent, which produced slicing and weighing machines for butchers and grocers (at the end of World War I it even built aircraft!). Their printer was an ambitious young man from Rotterdam, C. Chevalier. Schuitema's freelance typographic activities came to a standstill fairly soon: in later years he occupied himself privately with experimental cinema. However, he had a strong formative influence on his many pupils. Intelligent, critical, capable and full of originality, he became, perhaps, too sceptical and disillusioned, and lacked the ambition to follow a career similar to that of his equally gifted brother E. B. W. Schuitema, a 'grand old man' in the Dutch advertising world, for many years manager of Philips's Dutch sales department and the man who put the Philips gramophone record company on its feet. The two brothers came of humble origins in a wretched and dismal hamlet called Ulsda, near the German border in the utmost northern corner of the province of Groningen, a place as unlikely to produce outstanding artists and entre- preneurs as may be imagined, and hence another challenge to the strict concept of historical materialism. The period of Schuitema's outward typographic activity being short, his output was much smaller than Piet Zwart's. But then, how many of the pioneers matched up to the promise 167 they seemed to hold during the twenties for the further development of their principles? It was their pupils who really adapted their ideas and turned them into an internationally standard style of design for the typography of display work and advertising. Piet Zwart did his last major typographic work in 1938. By that time, Tschichold had moved away from the principles he had popularized more than any other man, and had embarked upon a new trend of thought that was to make him a leader of traditionalism. There is no inherent weakness in the basic ideas themselves to be held accountable for this remarkable loss of heart in the pioneers. It must have been the rise of Nazism and Stalinism which dashed their hopes and ideals and therefore broke the energy of all who had carried through that glorious revolution in the twenties and who remained faithful to its tenets. These ideals were those of the radical left : the only ones that could then have inspired it, could bring it to fruition and sustain it. The post-war years did not bring back that climate of cheerful and enthusiastic iconoclasm, partly because the stuffiness or blatant decorativism which had provoked it was long gone. The fighters, such as Zwart and Schuitema, stood among the corpses of their enemy and saw his rearguard disappearing over the horizon. Going on from the point where they had been forced to leave their work would have meant sitting down for patient technical discussions with a new generation of art directors and printing and reproduction experts, without any battles and daredevil improvisations. This was their world no longer. They fell silent and were happy when younger men such as Herbert Spencer in England or the new Dutch designers' organization showed admiration for the work of their creative period. But that had become history.

MUSEUMENSCHEDE, HAARLEM

Messrs. D. J. and M. Enschede have announced the appointment, from I January 1974, of Miss A. J. Flipse as Curator of the 'Museum Enschede' foundation. This means that Mr. F. Mayer's temporary appointment following the death of Miss A. Hoeflake is terminated with effect from the same date. Miss Flipse, who read Dutch philology at the University of Amsterdam, was from 1966 until 1970 assistant lecturer at the Department of Dutch Studies at Bedford College, University of London, under Professor Weevers. During this time she conducted various programmes of research in English libraries and gained wide experience in the fields of bibliography, codicology and the history of printing. This research continued, both in British and European libraries, after her appointment in 1970 to a lectureship in Dutch Philology at the University of Amster- dam. Among other projects, Miss Flipse enlarged and revised the bibliography of Dutch sale catalogues at the Institute of Neophilology and Neo-Latin in Amsterdam. Friends of the Enschede Museum and of the much-lamented Netty Hoeflake will be much pleased to learn that the post of Curator has been entrusted to one who has for several years, moreover, been a member of the Printing Historical Society, London.

INCUNABULAAND MANUSCRIPTS AT THE CENTRAALMUSEUM, UTRECHT

Following the exhibition of incunabula and manuscripts in the Royal Library in Brussels, on the occasion of 'de vijfhonderdste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden' (the five hundredth anniversary of printing in the Low Countries), the same precious exhibits were displayed in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, from 23 November 1973 until 2 January 1974, the exhibition's title having meanwhile been changed to 'Anno veertienhonderd drie en zeventig: Het begin van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden' (Anno fourteen hundred and seventy- three : the beginning of printing in the Low Countries). The Museum's director, Miss Adeline M. Janssens, M.A., wanted above all to use the new exhibition to illustrate the social function