Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Beginning around 1910, vanguard artists demanded that true art go beyond the intellectual and transform daily life. This volume highlights the work of six influential European artists who took this idea into the wider world, where it merged enthusiastically with demands in the industrial marketplace, the nascent mass media, and urban popular culture.

Featured are Piet Zwart, a Dutch designer who brought his minimalist aesthetic vision to ubiquitous items like biscuit boxes and postage stamps; Karel Teige, leader of the Czech avant-garde, who produced brilliant book and journal designs; his compatriot Ladislav Sutnar, who brought modernist "good design" to tableware, clothing, and children's toys; Gustav Klutsis, who pioneered using photomontage for political purposes; Lazar (El) Lissitzky, who produced some of the most exciting book, poster, and exhibition designs of the 1920s and '30s in Germany and Russia; and German artist John Heartfield, who worked exclusively in photomontage to design book covers, journals, and agitational posters for the Communist cause.

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition Schedule:

The Art Institute of Chicago
(06/11/11-09/18/11)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Purposeful jumbles of eye-popping graphics, zany color insertions, zipping diagonals, mixtures of typefaces, and disparities in scale are hallmarks of the early 20th-century European graphic and design avant-garde and are featured in this studious exhibition catalog. Witkovsky, chair of the Art Institute's department of photography, gathers essays on John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Teige, and Piet Zwart. The collection emphasizes the range of their designs (e.g., posters, drawings, photographs, illustrated magazines, book jackets, advertising, postage stamps, clothing, table settings) influenced by Dada, surrealism, and constructivism. Scarce and fragile materials-left-wing books and magazines such as Young Guard, AIZ, and The Red Banner-as well as politics, like the New Typography movement's utopian promise of uplifting mass commodity, are rigorously examined and documented. VERDICT Of tremendous appeal to design, art, and cultural historians for uncommon examples and treatment of lesser-known artists. As befitting the subject, the catalog is a visual delight.-Russell T. Clement, Northwestern Univ. Lib., Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

During the first decade of the last century, artists at the forefront of their media desired that art go beyond the museum and transform daily life--much as the English Arts and Crafts movement attempted to do during the late 19th century. While various books have been published on avant-garde art in recent years, this book stands out for its coverage of design in everyday life. Well researched and written by experts in the field, this volume's essays on six artists are accompanied by thorough footnotes. The scholarly apparatus includes an exhibition checklist and a selective bibliography with publications ranging from 1968 to 2011. Some 150 illustrations are in color; nearly 30 are in black and white. The book's excellent design by Margaret Bauer is an avant-garde printing object in and of itself. The scheme of the endpapers, fore-edges, title page, covers, and layout is rarely seen in current book publishing. A volume for all bibliophiles, this work is a necessary addition to academic libraries that support graduate students and faculty with collections on avant-garde art, the Bauhaus and Dada movements, modern design, and modernism in general. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. R. A. Lockard University of Pittsburgh