Herbert Matter

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World War II poster by Herbert Matter

Herbert Matter (born April 25, 1907 in Engelberg , † May 8, 1984 in Southampton (New York) ) was a Swiss and American photographer and graphic designer . Through his innovative and experimental work, he made a contribution to the further development of graphic design .

Life

Matter spent his high school at the Engelberg convent school . He then studied painting from 1925 to 1927 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and from 1928 to 1929 at the Académie de l'Art Moderne in Paris with Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant . His willingness to experiment with a Rollei camera gradually replaced painting in favor of photography. In 1929 he began his career as a graphic designer at the Paris advertising studio Deberny & Peignot . Here he learned the subtleties of typography under Le Corbusier and AM Cassandre .

In 1932 he returned to Switzerland and designed, among other things, a series of advertising posters for the Swiss Tourist Office. The posters received a lot of international attention because of the use of photo montage and typography. After a tour of the USA , which he received in 1936 in lieu of payment for his work for a Swiss ballet company , he decided to stay in the United States. Through the mediation of a friend, he came into contact with Alexei Brodowitsch . Through this Matter got the order to take photos for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar . Further orders for Vogue , Arts & Architecture , Fortune Magazine and Town and Country followed. During the Second World War he worked as a design consultant for various companies.

In 1944 Herbert Matter was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art to make a film about his friend and neighbor, the sculptor Alexander Calder . Works by Calder was his first cinematic attempt and was a great success. John Cage composed the music for this film .

From 1952 to 1978 Herbert Matter taught as a professor of graphic design and photography at Yale University . From 1958 to 1969 he was a consultant at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston . In 1960 he began to photograph Alberto Giacometti's sculptures . This work lasted 25 years and resulted in an extensive book that was only published after his death.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Herbert Matter was an important exponent of the New York art scene. Jackson Pollock , Willem de Kooning , Franz Kline and Philip Guston were among his artist friends. The first retrospective of his work was an exhibition at Yale University in 1978 . In the same year the Kunsthaus Zürich honored the artist with an exhibition of his early work from 1930. Many honors and awards in Europe and America followed. Herbert Matter died at the age of 77 in Southampton, New York.

plant

Herbert Matter is considered to be the founder of modern photo posters in Switzerland. At the beginning of the 1930s, he convincingly integrated the medium of photography into advertising graphics, which until then had been purely graphic. Photomontage in connection with typography were his unmistakable stylistic devices with which he found a good balance between art and commerce. Another field of activity was the illustration of magazines and the design of front pages.

Herbert Matter documented the work of numerous artists as a photographer. The documentation of the work of Alberto Giacometti is outstanding. In a letter to Matter, Giacometti wrote: “... and I want to tell you how very happy this series of beautiful photos made me. [...] They are by far the most beautiful photographs that have ever been made of my work and they also radiate a reality of their own. [...] I can't tell you how enthusiastic I am about your work and how I should thank you, dear Matter, for everything you do ... " GIACOMETTI AN MATTER, MAY 19, 1961

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1943 Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
  • 1962 American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), New York
  • 1978 Swiss Foundation for Photography at the Kunsthaus Zurich
  • 2005 Beyeler Gallery, Basel

Literature (selection)

  • Poets Camera . Studio Publications, New York 1949
  • Photographs an Graphic Symbols . The American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York 1961
  • Alberto Giacometti . Benteli, Bern 1987
  • Hebert Matter photo graphic artist. Forms of vision of time. The work of the twenties and thirties . Lars Müller, Baden 1995.
  • Kurt Blum, Herbert Metter: Two Swiss Artists Encounter Mark Rothko . Galerie Beyeler, Basel 2005.
  • Alexander SC Rower (Ed.): Calder by Matter: Collector's Edition. Illustrated book with Herbert Matters recordings of works by Alexander Calder, Cahiers d'Art, Paris 2013.

Movies

  • 1949: Works of Calder
  • 1950–1955: The Spirit Moves and Dancing with Mura Dehn

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Most sources name the city of Southampton on the island of Long Islands in the US state of New York as the place of death. According to the information in the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland, however, the place of death is the Springs district in the city of East Hampton on the island of Long Islands
  2. ^ A b Herbert Matter, Alberto Giacometti , Benteli, Bern 1998.
  3. ↑ a b c Biography of Herbert Matter ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website herbertmatter.net @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.herbertmatter.net
personal data
SURNAME Matter, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-American photographer and graphic designer
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Engelberg
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1984
Place of death Southampton (New York)