The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg presents Graphic Design in Art Nouveau. The Pictures Departure into the Everyday a new exhibition on view 20th May 2011 – 28th Aug. 2011.
The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg will show a selection of 180 works of the decades when picture production exploded – around 1900.
On the occasion of the reappraisal of one of the most comprehensive collections of commercial art in the world, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg will show a selection of 180 works of the decades when picture production exploded – around 1900. From the late 19th Century the MKG accumulated a unique collection comprising more than 15000 sheets, among them posters, book covers, calendars sheets, postcards and letterheads. Among the 200 designers from Europe and the US represented, are leading artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfred Mucha, Henry van de Velde, and Peter Behrens. The artists used print especially to deal with contemporary topics, like sports, fashion, politics, engineering and the everyday and laid the foundations for corporate design, graphic design and an aesthetics of advertising – all of which are commonplace today. The exhibition will present the results of a research project financed by die ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, highlighting the key-developments of Historicism, Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secession, Expressionism and Art Déco in Europe, as well as New Advertising in the USA. Over the course of three years more than 10000 graphic works, ca. 2000 posters, and examples of book illustrations from the collection “Commercial Art in Art Nouveau” have been compiled in an inventory. The opulent book accompanying the project and the exhibition embellished with numerous plates offers an overview over the international development, introductions to the most important aspects of commercial art, its styles as well as biographies of nearly 200 important graphic artists.
Image: Photo: Hans Christiansen (1866 – 1945), Title for the Magazine „Jugend“, No. 14, 1897, MKG Hamburg
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