Aiga quickly
Aiga Rasch (born July 9, 1941 in Stuttgart , † December 24, 2009 in Kirchheim unter Teck ) was a German illustrator , graphic artist and painter .
Life
Aiga Rasch's father, Bodo Rasch, was an architect. The mother Lilo Rasch-Naegele was a fashion designer, illustrator and painter; she belonged to the circle around Willi Baumeister and was known throughout Europe. Her brother is the architect Mahmoud Bodo Rasch .
About her early turn to painting, it is said that because there were no toys after the end of the war, her mother gave her brushes and a palette as a child if the tube colors were too hard for her fine line. The parents had built a house on the edge of the Schönbuch Nature Park , where Aiga grew up close to nature and initially developed plans to become a writer. Shortly before graduating from high school, she took part in a novel competition organized by Kosmos Verlag (the novel she submitted contained self-drawn illustrations); this gave her the opportunity to introduce herself to the editing department with a portfolio. Since then she has been on friendly terms with this publisher, for which her mother already illustrated.
After graduating from high school, she studied German, philosophy and psychology in Tübingen with the aim of journalism so as not to compete with her mother as a graphic designer. The editor-in-chief of the Ilseder Hütte newspaper discovered her talent for drawing when she volunteered there during the semester break. In 1961 she married and dropped out of college. Rasch was married twice.
In 1962 she attended a preparatory course for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart , which she broke off. She was too influenced by her mother's style, said her professor and advised her to try it as a self-taught woman. To be the daughter of a famous painter was both a help and a burden to her at first. In 1963 she started working as a freelance graphic designer. Even though she easily passed the entrance exam for the Association of Visual Artists Württemberg in 1964, Aiga Rasch had, strictly speaking, no artistic training - art was a family tradition. Her grandfather was already a flower painter, and she had learned enough from her mother's professional experience to be able to start a career. So she became a member of the magazine DM and learned her craft from its chief layouter. From 1969 to 1980 she was a member of the Association of German Graphic Designers (BDG), of which the last four years were on the board. After a break, she became a member of the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart in 1982 and continued her work at the BDG from 1986, where she was elected first chairman of the Baden-Württemberg regional group in the same year. From 1988 to 1990 she was honorary Vice President of the BDG at the federal level.
During their break in 1980 she spent a year in Colorado , USA, and was taught by Gia-Fu Feng , the Zen Meditation, Tai Chi and a little Kung Fu , which greatly changed their lives and the way they work: You moved to the watercolor technique and only resumed her book graphic work to a limited extent. Since 1992 the computer has come to the fore as a work tool.
On July 9, 2015, Google honored the artist with a Google Doodle .
The three ???
Aiga Rasch is above all through the cover pictures of the youth book series Die drei ??? became popular. This series was originally translated from American English and achieved cult status in Germany, not least because of its cover pictures. Rasch's design is concise and unmistakable.
Rasch worked as a freelancer for Franckh-Kosmos- Verlag since 1962 and mostly illustrated books for children and young people. When she happened to see the first two volumes ( Die Drei ??? and das Gespensterschloss and ... and the Whispering Mummy ) from the Alfred Hitchcock series with the dust jackets by Jochen Bartsch when she submitted a draft to the editing department in 1969 , she asked about them Response that turned out to be not particularly high. She proposed her own draft, which, however, as a woman, was not believed to be true of the male subject. She agreed with the publisher that she would waive the fee if the design did not appeal. The publisher reacted with horror to the new black design. The artist thought this was an additional argument and was finally able to persuade him to try.
In 1970 the first cover picture ( … Curse of the Ruby ) came out as a collage in black, white and red. Then she switched to colored foils, and finally to the new felt-tip pens. The protagonists of the series do not appear on any of the cover pictures, which was intended as a device that allows the reader to develop his own ideas.
Aiga Rasch worked for Kosmos-Verlag until 1999 and designed the covers for a total of 89 episodes of the series Die Drei ??? , where she drew new covers for 16 episodes of the reprints. In 2006 the collaboration between Rasch, meanwhile retired, and her long-term client Kosmos-Verlag started again. Rasch created the design for the "Black Edition" slipcase , and she digitally reworked the book covers .
After 1979, her pictures were not only used on book covers, but also on the covers of the "???" radio plays by the Europa label . Including all first and subsequent editions, records with the "???" cover by Aiga Rasch have sold over 30 million copies in Germany alone, which makes them one of the most successful German illustrators. Her "???" cover motifs are also used in China, Greece and Poland. Even after her death in 2009, Aiga Rasch's black design is still used in all "???" books by Kosmos Verlag and all "???" radio plays by Europa.
characterization
The curator of the exhibition Wunderwelt - Illustrations in Children's Books , in which the early works of Aiga Rasch were exhibited, summed up as follows:
"Her early work is characterized by finely nuanced lines and a strong color palette in the subjects of fairy tales, whereby Aiga Rasch also works with the comedy in her portrayal of persons."
In a lexicon of children's and youth literature, their work was presented as follows until 1974:
"R. attaches particular importance to figure representations; landscape or architectural forms are receding, at best have a decorative character. As a rule, she does not work out the individual facial features of her characters, but rather emphasizes the type characteristics, e.g. B. in Asians the slit-eyed (Max Kruse: 'Die kleine Fang', 1966), negroes the bulging lips (Karen Olsen: 'From Njagwe becomes Peter', 1970), northerners the freckles (Viola Wahlstedt: 'Jonas on the flight through Lappland ', 1972) etc. In doing so, she follows a widespread stereotype. R. prefers black and white, is for strict color separation and uses different working methods, including the tearing technique (H. Grit Seuberlich: 'Balabin', 1968) or mixed forms (Dorothy Sterling: '... her dark skin', 1965 ). The movements of the people, the turns of the head, arms and legs appear partially schematic, but not organic or functional. R. has followed the basic design of the publishing houses for which she is illustrating (Franckh, Ensslin & Laiblin, Erika Klopp, Arena, O. Maier and others) in her style and not one with her childish, cheerful approach to topics and orientation to the style of fashion drawings very distinctive, but appealing handwriting found. "
The cover pictures for the series Die drei ??? are not yet taken into account in the aforementioned lexicon. The product manager from Europe commented on this in an obituary:
“I think we all realize what a significant part of the success of the series in Germany the wonderful illustrations by Aiga have played. I think there are few artists who have pursued their own style so consistently, who have such a high recognition value and whose pictures are so expressive at the same time and yet leave so much room for their own imagination. "
Looking back in 2006, Aiga Rasch said of himself:
"My ??? - pictures are striking, clear and simply designed. There is always a quick connection between the names of the books and the cover motifs. "
Works
The artistic estate includes at least 65 known works of art, most of which are privately owned in Germany. Her first painting The Cat Princess was created in 1958 at the age of 17 with the slight support of her mother Lilo Rasch-Naegele . In addition to several oil and watercolor paintings, Rasch specialized in tile paintings from 1979 onwards, which were to be among her most beautiful works. A technique that was frequently used from 1982 onwards was so-called pinnage . Aiga Rasch explained the compilation of her Pinnage works as:
“Dream worlds and projections painted in fragments, onto which I attach things that were once useful in an ironic, subtle and funny combination with needles and nails; in English to pin means pin or nail ; in German pin board , Low German to pin for attach . In contrast to the collage (French: coller means to stick ) I call this work pinnage , because I don't use glue, but needles, nails and screws to put the materials together "
Own picture books
- The battle for the molar . Paracelsus, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-7899-0070-2 .
- Pipapo in the error circus . Pestalozzi, Erlangen 1977.
- The black and white tiger and 13 other vertigo stories about wild animals . Aiga Rasch (texts, images, verses) / Werner J. Baur (texts). IWZ Verlag, Stuttgart.
Illustrations
Aiga Rasch has designed over 500 book covers for over 25 publishers and has drawn more than 5000 illustrations in over 150 books. The publishing houses Kosmos , Ensslin, Erika Klopp , Boje , Arena , Herold and Stocker were among their most frequent clients. Mostly they were children's and young people's books. In addition, she designed various posters, calendars, brochures, displays, signs and company papers.
Exhibitions
- 1969 Illustrator show at the youth book fair, Bologna
- 1977 Solo exhibition of book graphics. Stuttgart
- 1979 BDG exhibition pro libris '79 , Stuttgart
- 1981 First exhibition of her book graphics at the picture bank. Leinfelden-Echterdingen
- 1982 First exhibition of her free work at the picture bank. Leinfelden-Echterdingen
- 1990 exhibition fanny 50. about the artists of the Fanny-Leicht Gymnasium, Stuttgart
- 1999 traveling exhibition The three ??? and Aiga Rasch , Munich Frankfurt Berlin Hamburg Kassel Stuttgart
- 2002 Exhibition Word becomes image - image becomes word. Martin Schwarz's Kunstkammer in Bartenstein Castle
- 2013 WUNDERWELT exhibition - illustrations in children's books , Ludwigsburg
- 2014 Exhibition The Secret Pictures - Aiga Rasch and the three ??? , Bietigheim-Bissingen
- 2015 Exhibition Detectives, Agents & Spies , Speyer
- 2016 Exhibition The Colorful World of Aiga Rasch , Reutlingen
- 2016 Exhibition Aiga Rasch - The Three ??? and the enigmatic pictures , Koblenz
- 2018 Exhibition The Speaking Pictures - Aiga Rasch and the three ??? , Fulda
- 2020 Exhibition Secret in the Tower - Aiga Rasch and the three ??? , Constance
literature
- Klaus Doderer (ed.): Lexicon of children's and youth literature. Personal, country and material articles on the past and present of children's and youth literature. Volume 3: PZ. Weinheim / Basel 1979, ISBN 3-407-56520-8 .
- Aiga quickly. Portrait of a graphic artist. In: Bulletin Youth and Literature. 5, 1972, pp. 36-37.
- Björn Akstinat: The ABC of the three question marks . Humboldt Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89994-127-2 , pp. 11-16.
- Christian Bärman u. a .: 30 years of radio play cult . Falkemedia Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-9811171-8-9 .
- Daniel Storm: The Artists of the Three Investigators. In: Dan Zimmer (Ed.) Illustration Magazine. Volume 8 Issue 32, Winter 2010, pp. 107-108.
Web links
- Literature by and about Aiga Rasch in the catalog of the German National Library
- Abraxas , the astrosensory fate game Aiga Rasch as an online version
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Aiga Rasch. My CV. Autobiographical summaries. u. a. written for the Association of German Graphic Designers for the election of the Vice President, July 20, 1988.
- ↑ About the life and work of Aiga Rasch on the fansite
- ↑ a b c Who is Aiga Rasch? ( Memento of December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Start of career. Young graphics for young people . Deutscher Sparkassenverlag, Stuttgart 1977, p. 7.
- ↑ Google Doodle honors Aiga Rasch on her 74th birthday
- ↑ Cultic punctuation marks - the three ??? - graphic artist Aiga Rasch in the film house. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung. No. 138; June 19, 1999, p. 43.
- ↑ Andrea Wolter-Abele: Wonder World - Illustrations in children's books. Kunstverein Kreis Ludwigsburg, 2013.
- ^ Aiga Rasch in the Lexicon. There a detailed catalog raisonné of the illustrated books 1964–1974.
- ^ Obituary ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the Europa homepage (Product Manager of Europe ), 2009.
- ↑ Björn Askinat: The ABC of the three question marks. Humboldt Verlag, 2008, pp. 11–16.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hurry up, Aiga |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German illustrator, graphic artist and painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 9, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stuttgart |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 24, 2009 |
| Place of death | Kirchheim unter Teck |