PIET ZWART (1885-1977) ONTVANG UW TELEGRAMMEN TELEFONISCH. 1932.

9 5/8x7 inches.
Condition A-: minor overpainting in corners. Printed on card.
Piet Zwart, along with Paul Schuitema, was the leader of the contstructivist movement in Holland. He was a trained and practicing interior designer before he turned to the graphic arts. Within his field he had strong connections with many avant-garde artists and movements, most obviously de Stijl, but also with Kurt Schwitters and El Lissitsky, who introduced him to photograms and photomontages. Zwart got his first major commission in 1923, from the cable company NKF, for whom he invented labyrinthian typographic compositions (Zwart was a prominent figure in the New Typography movement). Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s he worked for the Dutch post office, for whom he designed catalogues, posters and stamps. This window-card, where New Typography is combined with photomontage is typical of Zwart's work. He uses sans-serif letters, organized with dynamic angles within a montage of imagery illustrating the process of telephonic telegrams.