Giovanni Mardersteig
Giovanni Mardersteig (born January 8, 1892 in Weimar as Hans Mardersteig , † December 27, 1977 in Verona ) was a German - Italian publisher , printer , typographer and book and font historian .
Life
Giovanni Mardersteig came from an artistic family. His paternal grandfather was an important painter in Goethe's Weimar environment ; his grandmother, a born Kehr, traced her origins back to the Johann Sebastian Bach family.
After early contact with art and literature ( Oskar Kokoschka , Rainer Maria Rilke ), he studied from 1910 to 1915 jurisprudence in Bonn , Kiel , Jena and Vienna ; later he also received his doctorate .
From 1919 to 1921 he edited the art magazine Genius ( Kurt Wolff Verlag , Munich) together with Carl Georg Heise and Kurt Pinthus (only in the first year ) as the successor to Pan , Insel and Hyperion . A lung disease that prevented military service in World War I forced Mardersteig to leave Munich in 1922. He moved to Montagnola in Ticino, which was also the residence of Hermann Hesse at the time, and founded a hand press there , the Officina Bodoni . He chose this name in admiration for the prints of the Parmesian master printer Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). The Italian government gave him permission to use 12 of the original patrizen sentences from his writings. The first book was Orphei tragedia by Angelo Poliziano in 1923 . A hand press designed by Gottfried Dingler was used to print on handmade paper specially made for the press.
From 1922 to 1927 the Officina stayed in Ticino; In 1926 Mardersteig won the tender for the complete edition of the Italian national poet Gabriele D'Annunzio and moved to Verona on the advice of his friend and print shop owner Arnoldo Mondadori . From 1927 to 1936, 49 volumes were produced in an edition of 209 copies on the hand press on imperial Japanese paper and 2501 copies on the machine presses of the Mondadori printing house. Nine more copies were made on parchment .
Mardersteig always combined research with his practical work in the press. In the rich libraries and archives of the northern Italian cities the significant change took place from the admiration of the classical language of Bodoni to the wealth of forms and expressiveness of the Italian Renaissance and its writing from Francesco Griffo to Felice Feliciano . Mardersteig was looking for the perfect script; Over time, the Griffo (1929–1939) - a Renaissance Antiqua that had the same origin as the Monotype Bembo (and was also used in combination with this in the press) -, the Zeno (1931–1937), a font reminiscent of a missal , the Pacioli (1954, only as a capitalized alphabet) and finally, 1946–1955, the Dante. All were made for the hand press; the Dante was later used for the typesetting by the Monotype Corp. expanded and had exceptional success. In addition, Mardersteig designed the Zarotto and Fontana (both monotypes) on commission. While all writings were based on historical roots, Dante was a completely new creation. It represented the end point not only in the font creation Marder sidewalk, but it is also high point and end point of a development, with William Morris had begun at the end of the 19th century and Press Printing and Book Arts movement on important pacemakers in the qualitative improvement of calligraphy and typography made .
While the fonts were also based on the ideas and drafts of Mardersteig, they only achieved their now known and valued form through the artistic implementation of the Parisian die cutter Charles Malin (1883–1954). Malin, who had worked for Deberny & Peignot for many years , got to know Mardersteig while working on the d'Annunzio edition. The letters made for the hand press were too susceptible to the machine edition, a number of letters had to be re-cut without changing the character of the overall picture. After Malin had succeeded in this task, Mardersteig entrusted him with the execution of all of his writings.
The work of Officina Bodoni occupies a special position within the hand presses of the last century in many respects: no one worked longer, no one could have enjoyed a comparable international reputation, no one managed to such an extent, beyond the purely artistic, such an effect within the graphic Business to develop.
Awards
Giovanni - he took this first name after he had obtained Italian citizenship in 1946 - Mardersteig has received many high honors. In 1965 he received the San Zeno Prize , in 1968 the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz from the international Gutenberg Society and in the same year the Bodoni Prize of the City of Parma. In 1972 he became an honorary member of the Accademica delle Lettre Venice (together with Ezra Pound), in 1975 the city of Verona awarded him the Cangrande Prize . He was a corresponding member of the Grolier Club .
Fonts
- Griffo
- Zeno
- Pacioli
- Dante
- Fontana
- Zarotto ("New Mardersteig")
Quote
“A book consists of five elements, that is, text, font, printing ink, paper and cover. Our wish is to create a unit out of these elements that is of course convincing, that does not serve a fashion trend, but strives for timeless value. Freed from chance and whim, insofar as human conditionality can do so, these works only know the goal of fitting themselves worthily into the high legacy that is given to us in hand and responsibility. "
literature
- Christian Scheffler: Mardersteig, Giovanni. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 142 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Hans Schmoller (Ed.): Giovanni Mardersteig: The Officina Bodoni. The work of a hand press 1923–1977 . Maximilian Society, Hamburg, 1979
- Gutenberg Society Mainz (ed.): Giovanni Mardersteig - typographer, publisher, humanist. Bibliographic and documentary catalog for the exhibition in the Gutenberg Museum Mainz. Edizioni Valdonega, Verona 1990
- Eva von Freeden, Jürgen Fischer (eds.): Giovanni and Martino Mardersteig. Book designer, typographer and printer in Verona. Catalog of the exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of the Stamperia Valdonega printing company in the Museum of Printing Art in Leipzig. Edizioni Valdonega, Verona 2008, ISBN 88-85033-52-0
- Neil Harris: MARDERSTEIG, Giovanni (Hans). In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 70: Marcora – Marsilio. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2007.
Web links
- Literature by and about Giovanni Mardersteig in the catalog of the German National Library
- Intervista a Martino Mardersteig
- Giovanni Mardersteig (Italian) on ti.ch
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mardersteig, Giovanni |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mardersteig, Hans (German name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Italian publisher, typographer, book and type historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 8, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Weimar |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 27, 1977 |
| Place of death | Verona |