Max Hoff (Illustrator)

Max Hoff (also Max Hof , actually Maximilian JA Hofbauer ; * 1903 in Vienna , † 1985 ) was an Austrian illustrator . His most important works were advertising prints for the Simpsons of Piccadilly and the Astor cigarettes . His drawing style beautifully portrayed the fashion of the 1950s and 1960s in Western Europe and North America.

biography

The beginnings

Max Hoff studied portrait and landscape painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts , where he made a name for himself above all with his illustrations of stage sets and costumes. Some of his fashion accounts have been published in the European journal International Textiles under the alias Max Hof , where Alec Simpson - the Simpsons of Piccadilly partner - saw them for the first time.

Simpsons of Piccadilly

In 1936, Alec Simpson brought Max Hoff to London - at the age of 33 - and commissioned him to create illustrations of handsome, radiant, athletic men wearing Simpson clothing. Since then, Hoff's drawings have represented the Simpson style for a quarter of a century, later complemented by fashionable, elegant and charming ladies when Simpson added women's fashion to its range.

Initially used for direct mail, Hoff's illustrations became Simpson's trademark. Bill Crawford - the Simpsons advertising consultant - quickly recognized the expressiveness of the drawing style and, when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 , convinced Max Hoff to move to London. Hoff married Margarete Popper there in December of the same year and his two children were later born there, too.

Hoff's drawings of impeccably dressed and comfortable men, almost always smiling and relaxed, became the hallmark of advertising prints from Simpsons and DAKS men's fashion up to the early 1960s.

Hoff also worked as a book designer . His dust jacket of Tolstoy's Die Kreutzersonata and Die Kosaken from 1951 at Droemer's publishing bookshop shows a female figure who already has the typical shape (facial expression, hairstyle and folds) of his later works.

FeWa and Astor cigarettes

At the end of the 1950s Hoff began to work for the German advertising agency Hanns W. Brose GmbH and its charismatic namesake and owner Hanns Walter Brose in Frankfurt am Main . 1958, in a short advertising campaign of only eight ads - due to the limited budget of the client Böhme Fettchemie GmbH - his illustrations advertised FeWa FeinWaschmittel .

The cooperation with Brose worked very well, so that - when Simpson decided to renew its advertising campaign - Hoff signed exclusively for Hanns W. Brose GmbH from 1961.

Another reason for this was that Hanns W. Brose, who had signed the Astor cigarette brand from Reemtsma for years, wanted to conclude an additional advertising contract for Reemtsma's other cigarette brand Haus Neuerburg . Therefore, in 1956, he agreed with Philipp F. Reemtsma to relocate Astor's advertising to his branch in Hamburg , which was run by his son Heinz Martin Brose.

In 1961 Heinz Martin Brose decided to completely renew the advertising campaign for Astor cigarettes and hired Hoff for this. This is how Hoff's most famous advertising campaign, Rendezvous of Celebrities , began, which ran until 1967. The target group was initially the German and later the international fine society . Max Hoff made more than 200 drawings for this series, which ran in many countries and advertised Astor in at least six languages.

literature

• David Wainwright: The British Tradition. Simpson - a World of Style
• Paul Jobling: Man Appeal: Advertising, Modernism and Menswear
• Hanns W. Brose: The discovery of the consumer

Web links

• Reemtsma advertising material archive in the Museum of Labor in Hamburg

notes

1. ↑ The Museum der Arbeit Hamburg, Reemtsma-Firmenarchiv, names the years 1905-1994 differently