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THE SWISS POSTER: ART OF TEN MASTERS
Emily Lowe Gallery, February 5 to March 28, 2002
The Hofstra Museum is proud to present The Swiss Poster: Art of Ten Masters featuring 41 top posters by 10 internationally acclaimed Swiss graphic designers. The exhibition will take place in Hofstra’s Emily Lowe Gallery from February 5 to March 28, 2002.
The exhibition presents uniformly large works -- more than 4’ x 2 1/2’ in size -- that represent many of the most exciting examples of Swiss poster design over the last 45 years. These works, both individually and as a group, have a stunning visual impact. Among them are iconic examples of the Swiss International Style of the 1950s and 1960s, developed after World War II and adopted internationally as a universal language of visual communication, as well as more recent posters distinguished as innovative landmarks.
In some of The Swiss Poster’s earliest works, graphic designer Armin Hofmann pioneers the Basel school’s contribution to post-war Swiss graphic design, using stark black-and-white photography, typographic restraint and a master’s exceptional sensitivity to graphic space. Wolfgang Weingart’s candy-like colors, typographic experiments and layered weaving of word and image extend the boundaries of International School formalism. Post-Weingart designers such as Ralph Schraivogel and Jean Benoît Lévy play intuitively with a mix of photography and typography to produce expressive works densely charged with visual texture and opposing formal tensions. Some of the most recent posters on display include 30 Years, Melchior Imboden’s monumental typographic abstraction celebrating the 1997 anniversary of an annual art event and Cornel Windlin’s 1999 Swiss Highways, a surreal photographic expanse of road and sky punctuated with a violent typographic collision.
Other designers in the exhibition are Bruno Monguzzi, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Rosemarie Tissi and Niklaus Troxler. Their works present design approaches ranging from bold use of scale and space to the search for both universal and personal symbols, to finessed synthesis of type and image, as well as a myriad of other techniques reflecting transformations in culture and technology and above all, the keeness of artistic intelligence made visible through the mastery of craft. Many of the posters in the exhibition have won major Swiss and international competitions.
The works are drawn from the noted Swiss poster collection of designer Tom Strong. Professor Bez Ocko of Hofstra University’s Department of Fine Arts, Art History and Graduate Humanities is curator. Professor Ocko received her M.F.A. from Yale University where she studied with Armin Hofmann, a senior design master represented by several works in the show.
The Swiss Poster is the Hofstra Museum’s first graphic design exhibition in 35 years. The Hofstra Museum holds one of the largest art collections on Long Island and presents more than 12 diverse exhibitions each year. For more information on The Swiss Poster: Art of Ten Masters call the Hofstra Museum at (516) 463-5672 or (516) 463 7446 during non-office hours.
