Graphis 212 [antikvár]

A Retrospective Ein Rückblick Une rétrospective Armin Hojmann . Herbert Matter, ,,07 in Engelberg geboren, studierte Malerei in Genf, Paris und W Fernand Léger. Nachdem er eine berühmte Plakatsene fur d,e Schwerer,sehe Verkehrs^nfrale entworfen hatte, .og er ,„6 nach New York, wo er für führende Zeitschriften, Kn.U etc. tätig war. Er lehrte Photograph,e an der Yale-Un,vers,m (¦¦,li-i976) hatte grössere Einzelaustellungen in den USA und Europa, wurde ,977 ,n die Hall of Fame des Art Directors Club New York aufgenommen und erhielt ,980 ein Fellowship der Guggenheim-Stiftung für Photographie. Er lebt ,n New York. R,d. . Herbert Matter, né â Engelberg (Suisse) en ,907, étudia la peinture a Geneve et â Paris ainsi qu'avec Fernand Léger. Apres avoir réalisé une célebre serie d'affiches pour l'Office National Suisse du Tourisme, il se rendit â New York en 1956, y travailla pour divers grands magazines, ATW/, etc. Professeur de photographie a l'Université Yale de 19Î 2 a 1976, il a été exposé en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, a été admis au Hall of Fame de l'Art Directors Club newyorkais en 1977- En 1980, il a reçu une Fellowship en photographie de la Fondation Guggenheim. Il habite New York. La RidMton Herbert Matter The personality, work and career of Herbert Matter might well furnish stimuladon and encouragement for a younger generation that is beginning to question the motives, aüns and consequences of design more critically than was formerly the custom; but they would also supply plenty of food for thought. Born in Engelberg, a Swiss mountain resort, Herbert Matter soon left the confined life of his native village to go to Geneva and study painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He continued these studies in Paris, where he was lucky enough to meet Fernand Légér and Amédée Ozenfant. His confrontation with Léger's work, philosophy and working methods was no doubt a major event in Matter's life and helped to decide his artistic evolution. Even though he moved gradually away from painting to photography and graphic design, the criteria that he had learnt to apply to painting were to retain their validity throughout his later life. To understand Herbert Matter's espousal of applied art, we must remember that in the thirties graphic design seemed to offer a widening of creative scope rather than any limitation. His meeting with A. M. Cas-sandre and Le Corbusier may also have led him to see the mastering of problems affecting daily life as the more urgent task. In New York, that soon became his second home, he found the wide field of activity that best suited his temperament and that still keeps him on his toes. As in Paris he soon established contact with a circle of friends that included the painters of the New York scene in i960, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Alexander Calder and others. Among them he found confirmation of his own intentions and aims, he discussed his work on new projects with them and began to be aware of the great importance of the teaching he had already embarked upon. Herbert Matter is in many ways—as a graphic designer, a photographer, a film-maker, a teacher, a critic—an exception to the rule. If the aspect of his work, as presented here, that first surprises the observer is his insistence on dean design, on clarity of utterance, on the original use of lettering and image, it must be added that he also harbours a deep mistrust of everything specious and superficial. He endeavoured from the very first to close the gap that threatened to open between the higher aims of art and the lower standards that to many seemed adequate for the everyday uses of applied design. He was uniquely successful in giving the artistic development of photography a place in his graphic activities and in ensuring its validity in practical life. He sought with a perseverance equalled by very few of his colleagues the narrow and difficult path between the shaping area we tend to think of as fine an and that we have come to connect with the requirements of modern advertising. Design formulations of such experimental verve as we find in the posters for the Swiss National Tourist Office, in the Knoll advertisements and in the brochures done for a printing house would have been unthinkable if the aim had been merely the maximum economic effect. In the course of his years in New York, a conception based on a humanist philosophy of how modern man should react to word and image took on ever more distinct form in his mind. It was on the strength of this vision of his that he made the very finely conceived Calder film, that he began the preparatory work for the educational film about Buckminster Fuller, compiled the magnificent book on Alberto Giacometti and perfected his photographic work. Although Herbert Matter left his home country unconditionally in his early youth, it would be quite wrong to interpret this as a flight. On the contrary, it seems as though—just like Giacometti—^he was better able, in the far-off city, to grasp and process the deep impressions the mountain world had left upon his spirit. In his character, his outward appearance and his behaviour Herbert Matter remained a son of the mountains—quiet, modest, thorough and very critical. These are no doubt the qualities that made him such a success as a professor at Yale University. For apart from his high qualifications as a photographer, he was able to reply to the ever-repeated questions of his students as to which was the right path to take with the example set by his own life. As a teacher he has always been revered and loved; as an artist and photographer he ranks among the pioneers.