Varya Lavater

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Warja Lavater (born September 28, 1913 in Winterthur ; † May 3, 2007 in Zurich - after her marriage to Warja Honegger – Lavater ) was a Swiss graphic artist and illustrator . The artist is best known for her artist books and Leporellos , which retell classic fairy tales in an artistic sign language and pictograms .

life and work

Born in 1913 as the daughter of the writer Mary Lavater-Sloman and her husband, the engineer Emil Lavater, Varya spent the first nine years of her life with her parents in Moscow and Athens before the family settled in Winterthur in 1922. Warja was trained as a graphic designer at the Zurich School of Applied Arts and practiced this profession for many years , largely together with her future husband Gottfried Honegger .

Among other things, she created the logos for the Swiss Bank Corporation (three keys) and for the Swiss National Exhibition in 1939 . A two-year stay in New York from 1958 to 1960 brought decisive impulses for her later artistic activity. Advertising signs and signals in the streets of New York inspired them to use pictograms as visual language elements.

In 1962, at the instigation of its director Alfred Barr , the Museum of Modern Art published the Leporello Wilhelm Tell , in which Warja Lavater tells a story with symbols and abstract forms. The later works, which she calls Imageries , including many other Leporellos, were created in collaboration with the Parisian publisher Adrien Maeght and the Basel printer Rudolf Indlekofer .

From 1963 until their separation in 1972, the Honegger-Lavater couple lived alternately in winter in Paris and in summer near Zurich; Varya Lavater kept his second home in Paris into old age. She had two daughters, Bettina (* 1943) and Cornelia (* 1944). Warja Lavater died in 2007 and was buried in the Fluntern cemetery in Zurich .

In 2003, Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich honored the artist with an exhibition on her 90th birthday. Warja Lavater's artistic estate is in the graphics collection of the Zurich Central Library .

Prints, lithographs, leporellos

  • Wilhelm Tell Drawn by Warja Honegger-Lavater. Basilius-Presse, Basel / Stuttgart 1962. 9 × 12 cm. 22-part leporello. Folded Story 1.
  • The cricket and the ant. Fable by La Fontaine. Trans. V. NO Scarpi . Leporello folding lithograph. Basilius-Presse, Basel 1962. 12 × 6.5 cm. 22 p. Green orig. Cardboard tape. Folded Story 2. Printed as an original lithograph in the Emil Matthieu studio in Zurich.
  • Mud . Original lithograph by Warja Honneger-Lavater in leporello folding. Basilius-Presse, Basel 1962, 12 × 9 cm. 22 p. Cardboard tape w. red u. blue lid. Folded Story 3.- Printed as an orig. Lithograph in the Emil Matthieu studio in Zurich.
  • The party. The four temperaments: sanguine. Choleric. Phlegmatic. Melancholy or party at… Orig. Lithograph by Warja Honegger-Lavater in leporello folding. Basilius-Presse, Basel 1962. 12 × 9 cm. 22 p. Purple cardboard tape. Folded Story 4. - Printed as an original lithograph in the Emil Matthieu studio in Zurich.
  • La promenade en ville dessine sur pierre par Warja Honegger-Lavater . Basilius-Presse, Bale / Basel / Stuttgart 1962. 12.1 × 9.1 cm. 22 sheets Leporello orig. Lithograph in black, red a. Green. Folded Story 5.
  • The ugly young duckling - Le Vilain petit canard - The ugly duckling. Basilius-Presse, Basel 1965. Folded Story 15 - Printed as an original lithograph in the Emil Matthieu studio in Zurich. The Folded Stories are small works of art, they are designed in such a way that they can be used both as books and as wall decorations (blurb)
  • Warja Honegger-Lavater, Charles Baudelaire: Chacun sa chimere . (Everyone contributes to his delusion). D. Hürlimann 1953. 36: 27.3 cm. 2 leaves u. 5 original drypoint etchings combined with color lithograph. Black handmade paper cover with title print in white.
  • Hans im Glück told and drawn on stone by Warja Honegger-Lavater, printed as an original lithograph in the Emil Matthieu studio in Zurich, Basilius Presse Basel, 1967, 2nd edition. Folded Story 14

literature

  • Monika Plath, Karin Richter: The imagery of Warja Lavater “Snow White”. Models and materials for teaching literature (grades 1 to 5). Schneider Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2006, ISBN 3-89676-958-8 . In: EWR 6 (2007), No. 2
  • Carol Ribi, “Scope of the 'graphic': Varya Lavater's symbol notations and art books.” In: 100 Years of Swiss Graphics . Edited by Christian Brändle… [et al.], Zurich: Lars Müller Publisher, 2014, pp. 306–309.
  • Carol Ribi, “Modes of Perception: Exemplified in Warja Lavater's artist book Ergo” in: The Art of Reception . Edited by Marc Caduff… [et al.], Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2015, pp. 247–255.
  • Carol Ribi, “Varya Lavater's Folded Stories. Work genesis and aesthetic impact ”, in: The story (s) of folded books: Leporellos, Livre-Accordéon and Folded Panoramas in literature and visual arts . Edited by Christoph Benjamin Schulz. Hildesheim; Zurich; New York: Olms 2019, 347–372.

Web links

Commons : Warja Honegger-Lavater  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Image Signet three keys in the English language Wikipedia
  2. ↑ Image Signet for the Swiss National Exhibition 1939 in the English language Wikipedia
  3. ↑ Dagmar Sommerfeld: Review at Klinkhardt-Verlag, accessed on June 13, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Lavater, Varya
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Honegger-Lavater, Varya (after marriage in 1940)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss graphic designer
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 2007
Place of death Zurich