Anton Stankowski

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Anton Stankowski, Paris, 1958

Anton Stankowski (born June 18, 1906 in Gelsenkirchen ; † December 11, 1998 in Esslingen am Neckar ) was a German graphic designer , photographer and painter .

Life

After an apprenticeship and apprenticeship as a decoration and church painter, Anton Stankowski studied from 1927 at the Folkwang School in Essen with Max Burchartz . In addition to graphics and typography , photography has already been taught here. With Burchartz and the Canis agency, he created the first visual appearances and early "functional graphics" during his student years.

In 1929 Stankowski moved to Zurich and worked there in Max Dalang's renowned advertising studio. With his new photographic and typographic concept, he developed “constructive graphics”. The Zurich friends Richard Paul Lohse , Heiri Steiner , Hans Neuburg as well as Hans Coray , Hans Fischli , Herbert Matter , Ernst A. Heiniger , Verena Loewensberg , Max Bill and others formed a cultural circle with intensive exchange. During these years Stankowski completed the famous “design theory”, in which he developed basic forms of expression.

Photography by Anton Stankowski at the Helmhaus Zurich “Rest + Movement”, time log with car

In 1934 Stankowski's residence permit was withdrawn, he had to leave Switzerland and moved to Lörrach. With the loss of the residence permit, there was also a ban on working in Switzerland. From Lörrach he still worked anonymously for Swiss clients until he moved to Stuttgart in 1938, where he started his own business as a graphic designer. In 1940 he became a soldier and was taken prisoner by the Soviets towards the end of the war, from which he returned in 1948. He then worked as an editor, graphic artist and photographer for the "Stuttgarter Illustrierte".

In 1951 Stankowski founded his own graphic studio on the Killesberg. With Willi Baumeister , Max Bense , Walter Cantz, Egon Eiermann , Mia Seeger and others, a new circle of artists and designers emerged in Stuttgart. Stankowski's work in graphic design for IBM , SEL etc., especially the "functional graphics", were exemplary. In the 1960s, the now legendary “Berlin layout”, the visual appearance of the city, and the Signal Iduna and Viessmann word brands were created .

In 1964, works by Stankowski were shown at the documenta III in Kassel in the graphics department . In 1964 he also taught as a guest lecturer at the Ulm School of Design. In the 1960s Stankowski was a member of the International Center for the Typographic Arts ( ICTA ) and from 1969 to 1972 chairman of the committee for visual design of the Olympic Games in Munich.

Deutsche Bank logo, designed by Stankowski in 1973, introduced in 1974

In the 1970s, such famous symbols as the one for Deutsche Bank ( Bild-Zeitung : “Painter earns 100,000 marks with five lines”), Munich Reinsurance Company , Rewe and the Baden-Baden Olympic Congress were created. In 1972, Karl Duschk joined the Stankowski und Partner graphic studio (from 1981 Stankowski + Duschk), which he ran from 1975 until his death in 2011 and which was closed in January 2012. A variety of other brands and visual appearances were developed there.

From the mid-1970s, Stankowski increasingly turned to painting. For him there was no separation between free and applied art throughout his life, the rule was: “It doesn't matter whether art or design. It just has to be good. ”Many of his photographic and painterly works were incorporated into his commercial graphic work.

Anton Stankowski, “Time. Past - Now - Future ”, 1980

In 1983 he was one of the co-founders of the artists' association Constructive Tendencies , where he played the role of Nestor. The pictorial work shows a continuity of constructive-concrete art from the late 1920s until his death. The exhibition activities from 1928 in the areas of graphics, painting and photography also follow the same path.

Gravestone at the Feuerbach cemetery, Stuttgart, design "Sie und Er" by Anton Stankowski

Anton Stankowski and his wife Else Stankowski (1908–1980) were buried in Stuttgart's Feuerbach cemetery.

Prizes and awards

In 1976 the state of Baden-Württemberg awarded him a professorship, and Anton Stankowski, who is considered a pioneer of graphic design, received countless prizes and honors, including the Hans Molfenter Prize of the City of Stuttgart in 1991 . In 1983 Anton Stankowski founded the non-profit Stankowski Foundation , which regularly honors people and institutions that bridge the separation between free and applied art and design, such as Stankowski himself. In December 1998 Anton Stankowski received the Harry Graf Kessler Prize, the honorary award of German Association of Artists , for his life's work. As a full member of the DKB, he took part in a total of seventeen major exhibitions between 1971 and 1993 and also designed several exhibition posters for them.

Solo exhibitions

  • The exhibition tour shown in Gelsenkirchen, Wiesbaden and Göppingen in 2010, “It doesn't matter whether art or design - it just has to be good” was dedicated to the circle around Stankowski and showed both “applied” design objects and “free work”. A total of 35 artists and designers were shown, all of whom were closely associated with Stankowski.
  • The exhibition “Anton Stankowski. Children's Games ” showed in the Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst-Haus Coburg-Delmenhorst 2011 a comparison of a group of 40 large-format black-and-white photographs with 33 original collages.
  • The exhibition, expanded by around 60 index cards from Stankowski's archive, was opened from June 22 to October 27, 2013 under the title “Stankowski Foundation. Photographs from the archive ”shown in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart .
  • From March 13th to August 16th, 2020, the exhibition “Brands: Signs” in the Berlin Art Library will show around 300 exhibits from the Stankowski +uchek graphic studio and from Stankowski's predecessor studios.

literature

  • with Eugen Gomringer : Look. A children's book. Leonberg 1980.
  • Anton Stankowski - Frei und Angewandt, Free and Applied: 1925–1995. Graphics, paintings, graphic design, design in architecture, photography, documentation. Berlin 1996.
  • Stankowski, Anton . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. Fourth volume (QU) , EA Seemann, Leipzig 1999 (study edition). ISBN 3-363-00730-2 , p. 342.
  • Stankowski Photos. Unknown pictures from the 30s. Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, ISBN 3-7757-1288-7 .
  • Exhibition catalog: Stankowski 06 - Aspects of the Complete Works. Ostfildern-Ruit 2006, ISBN 3-7757-1743-9 .
  • Exhibition catalog: It doesn't matter whether it is art or design - it just has to be good. The circle around Anton Stankowski. Ludwigsburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89986-134-1 .
  • Exhibition catalog: Ursula Zeller , Frank Thorsten Moll: Anton Stankowski: Photography. Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-88423-420-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Anton Stankowski. Data sheet from the German Digital Library (DDB).
  2. ↑ cf. Exhibitions. Deutscher Künstlerbund, accessed on November 2, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Stankowski, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic designer, photographer and painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1998
Place of death Esslingen am Neckar