Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life

Purposeful jumbles of eye-popping graphics, zany color insertions, zipping diagonals, mixtures of typefaces, and disparities in scale are hallmarks of the early 20th-century European graphic and design avant-garde and are featured in this studious exhibition catalog. Witkovsky, chair of the Art Institute's department of photography, gathers essays on John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Teige, and Piet Zwart. The collection emphasizes the range of their designs (e.g., posters, drawings, photographs, illustrated magazines, book jackets, advertising, postage stamps, clothing, table settings) influenced by Dada, surrealism, and constructivism. Scarce and fragile materials—left-wing books and magazines such as Young Guard, AIZ, and The Red Banner—as well as politics, like the New Typography movement's utopian promise of uplifting mass commodity, are rigorously examined and documented.