From Montana to London

Montana-born artist Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954) ranks as one of the most significant designers of the twentieth century, noted for his avant garde graphic design and poster art. With long years of living in London, connections to the artistic avant-garde in Britain and France put Kauffer at the forefront of developments in the visual language of advertising during the 1930s. Retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Two airbrush illustrations from the 1930 book, World Polity in 2030; both illustrations show the artist working in the style of vorticism which favored machine-like forms.

A Lithograph titled Cricketer done in 1923

By the age of twenty Kauffer was living in San Francisco and studying art at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. Through connections at the Art Institute, Professor Joseph McKnight of the University of Utah became aware of Kauffer and his work and chose to sponsor the young artist, paying for further study in Paris. In gratitude, Kauffer took his sponsor’s name as his own middle name.

Flea; Lithograph done in 1926 for the London Underground

Before leaving for Paris Kauffer studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago. While there he attended the much heralded Armory Show which introduced post-modernism to American audiences. The exhibition had a major impact on Kauffer, and many of the same styles showed up in his later career. He arrived in Paris in 1913 and studied at the Académie Moderne until 1914. He moved to London with the start of the World War, and remained there for the next twenty-six years. After only a year in London he had already become an extremely influential designer of posters, theatre costume, exhibition designs, murals, book illustrations, carpets and textiles. He and his wife-to-be Marion Dorn, also a designer, were a dynamic, glamorous couple in London’s art scene.

On the left is a lithograph from 1924 for Eno’s Fruit Salt; the right shows a lithograph for Gilbey’s Invalid Port done in 1933.

Kauffer is perhaps best known for the posters he produced for London Underground, and later London Transport. Those posters span a number of styles: many show abstract influences that include futurism, cubism, and vorticism, while others evoke the impressionist influence of Japanese woodcuts.

One in a series of illustrations done in 1946 for a 2-volume set on Edgar Allan Poe

The Lodger, 1926; tempura on paper

The artist returned to New York City in 1940 and sought work in advertising. He managed a few jobs designing posters for war relief agencies and the United Nations, but the atmosphere of the New York art world at the time was highly competitive and Kauffer struggled until 1947 when he was asked to do a series of posters for American Airlines. The airline continued to be his primary client until his death in 1954.

1931 lithograph, You Can Be Sure of Shell

The Drama of Black and White

A few days earlier space here was taken up with a rare book find on Japanese woodblock prints discovered in a small used bookstore. It could have been nothing less than serendipity that a day after finding this beautiful book, I came across another old book on woodblock prints in another section of the same store, this one focusing on printmakers of Latin America. I missed the book on my first day browsing because it was snugged flat on its back between two larger books on a high shelf. It is a 1946 publication titled, Portrait of Latin America As Seen by her Print Makers and contains 155 illustrations by 138 artists depicting facets of life in eighteen Latin American countries. All the prints are in black and white, which give to them a powerful sense of drama.

The examples presented in the book all have in mind a goal to reveal the temperament and inspiration of both the artists and the region they live and work in. Some is folk rather than fine art, modestly portraying the local scene or characteristics of the inhabitants. In his Introduction, French illustrator and painter Jean Charlot, a longtime resident of Mexico, warns that in order to appreciate the prints one must be aware of the milieu from which they spring, a world quite divergent from average twentieth century ways in Europe and North America.

But rather than relying on explanations or theories that try to translate the artist’s power, better to first of all throw oneself into the prints of these artists and feel for his special vision through nothing more than black ink on paper. Below are four prints that especially caught my eye.

This lithograph is by well known Mexican artist and social realist, David Alfaro Siqueiros (1898-1974). The work is titled simply Profiles. Along with Diego Rivera, Siqueiros was a member of the Communist Party and a well-known artist for most of his life. Accentuation of the angles of the body, its muscles and joints is very often a common feature in the work of Siqueiros, yet this lithograph stands out for the flowing curves of his subject’s face.

The artist is Salvadorian José Mejía Vides (1903-1993) and the woodcut is titled Panchimaco, which is the name of the village in this composition. Vides was a painter and graphic artist who studied at the National School of Graphic Arts in Mexico.

A wood engraving by Chilean artist, Marco A. Bonta (1889-?) called The Baking Oven. Almost an aroma of baking bread lifting off the page in this work.

Italian born artist Victor Rebuffo (1903-1983), immigrated to Argentina with his family at the age of three. He was a graphic artist who studied at the National Academy. The wood engraving here is titled Bread and challenges the viewer to paint his own backstory into the moment between the two figures.