Marcel Wyss (artist)

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Marcel Wyss (born February 21, 1930 in Bern ; † June 10, 2012 there ) was a Swiss graphic designer and artist of constructive-concrete art . Together with Dieter Roth and Eugen Gomringer , he published the artist magazine spirale from 1953 to 1964 .

life and work

Marcel Wyss trained as a graphic designer at the Grimm brothers in Bern from 1946 to 1950 . In addition, he attended graphics lessons with Eugen Jordi at the Bern Trade School . There he met Dieter Roth, with whom he became friends. After working in Robert Sessler's studio , he went freelance as a graphic designer and worked for the Swiss Werkbund - for which he designed the logo in 1962 - and for the GGK agency ( Gerstner , Gredinger and Kutter ) in Basel . Numerous logos for companies and institutions date from this period . He designed the book series Architekturen den Welt for the “Office du Livre” publishing house in Friborg .

In Neue Grafik , the international magazine for graphics and related fields, he was presented in the July 1959 issue as an exemplary modern “graphic artist of the new generation”. The issue showed, among other things, two New Year's sheets designed by him for the Swiss designer Teo Jakob .

Wyss was an artist and graphic designer, like Karl Gerstner - for whose agency GGK he worked -, Wolfgang Schmidt , Max Bill or Helmut Schmidt Rhen . From the mutual penetration of both areas, he developed artistic experiments, graphic constellations and progressions that were carried out in different media and genres. Wyss worked with nitro lacquer on wood, produced serigraphs , multiples , reliefs and kinetic works from acrylic glass . In his commercial graphic work, he designed rationally constructed text-image arrangements for which the Zurich concrete experts were the inspiration.

The artist magazine spirale , founded with the ambition to be a work of art - in order to be able to frame the pages with the original graphics, the magazine was not stapled - was his most important project and life's work. He remained closely connected to her from the first to the last issue and shaped the magazine most strongly with his graphic design and his selection of articles. Gomringer and Roth also assigned him the leading role within their editorial board. In a letter to Wyss Roth wrote: "... I'm sending you here ... do what you want with it".

literature

  • Lohse, Müller-Brockmann, Neuburg, Vivarelli (eds.): New graphics. New graphic design. Graphisme actuel. International magazine for graphics and related fields. Verlag Otto Walter, Olten 1958–1965.
  • Annemarie Bucher: spiral. An artist magazine 1953 - 1964. Lars Müller publishing house, Baden 1990, ISBN 3-906700-21-6 .
  • Jens Müller, Julius Wiedemann (ed.): Logo Modernism. Taschen, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-8365-4530-3 .
  • Jens Müller, Julius Wiedemann (Ed.): The History of Graphic Design (2 Vols.); Taschen, Cologne 2017/18, Volume 1, ISBN 978-3-8365-6307-9 ; Volume 2 ISBN 978-3-8365-7037-4 .

Web links

Commons : Marcel Wyss (artist)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annemarie Bucher: spiral. An artist magazine 1953-1964 . Lars Müller publishing house, Baden 1990, ISBN 3-906700-21-6 , p. 49 .
  2. ↑ Lohse, Müller-Brockmann, Neuburg, Vivarelli (ed.): New graphics. New graphic design. Graphisme actuel. Verlag Otto Walter AG, Olten / Switzerland 1959, p. 37 .
  3. ↑ Annemarie Bucher: spiral. An artist magazine 1953-1964 . Lars Müller publishing house, Baden 1990, ISBN 3-906700-21-6 , p. 63 .
personal data
SURNAME Wyss, Marcel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss graphic designer and artist of constructive-concrete art
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 2012
Place of death Bern