Karl Wobmann
The history of the poster takes us back to the oldest times, because since the Middle Ages poster-like messages are known to us. Election propaganda was painted on the walls way back in the first century A.C. Handbills, printed in 1556 by means of woodcut or the poster for the tightrope walker which was produced in Germany in 1758, are forerunners of the present poster.
Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing art in 1439 opened unthought of possibilities of the propagation of messages in large editions. The illustration was produced in woodcutting. The state, the church, the merchant and many others used the new technique to spread their messages fast.
However, Alois Senefelder’s invention of lithography in 1796 offered new possibilities of the reproduction technique. The great impetus of the poster lithography arose from England around 1860. In France great artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Jules Chéret, Theophil Steinlen and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, probably the most famous artist, accepted this technique enthusiastically. It was the beginning of a new era in the history of lithography. They used the chrome lithography in particular. This opened new and even wider possibilities to them. Paris in the real native place of the great poster era. Chéret sketched more than a thousand posters and was named ‘the creator of a street gallery`by the French people.
Toulouse-Lautrec, who died 1901 at the age of 37, left us 30 posters. But to this day he is known as the greatest poster artist. His poster art was debated on with great interest in public around the turn of the century.
The German and Austrian posters of the turn of the century contained also decorative themes of the art nouveau. A great poster composition by Alphonse Mucha with his famous poster for Sarah Bernhardt is unforgettable in this period. The twenties were no doubt a climax of poster art both in Europe as well as in the United States. World War I and the great inflation brought the poster production in Germany almost to a standstill. The poster creators at that time had practically no work and the poster pillars displayed only sad appeals of children in distress, of famine, strikes and the summons to work. Similar observations were made in the rest of Europe.
Switzerland on the other hand, which was spared from war, experienced a boom in the field of poster propaganda. The Swiss poster had its own appearance and our country’s culture was under the influence of various streams. Ferdinand Hodler was no doubt at the beginning of modern Swiss posters. But the real source of the poster era was to be found in Paris.
Eugen Grasset and Theophil Steinlen, two natives from Western Switzerland, were already operating in Paris and influenced greatly the Swiss poster. The Swiss poster of around 1900 contains all major European style tendencies. Emil Cardinaux initiated the era of the so-called “artists” posters. His poster with the “green horse”, the poster for the 1914 Swiss National Exhibition, went down into history of Swiss posters.
Around 1913 Cuno Amiet, Maurice Barraud, Edouard Vallet and other free-lance artists, began to deal with the poster intensively. Otto Baumberger, the Zurich painter, appeared on the poster walls with his expressive theater posters and also brought a bright style into traffic publicity. At the start of the thirties Niklaus Stoecklin began to design his objective temperate posters which were well received.
Soon Herbert Leupin and Donald Brun, two other Basel artists, appeared on the poster scene and akquainted us in a light manner with beverages, cigars and other consumer goods.
A lot of great names of Swiss poster art appeared in this period, such as the unforgettable Alois Carigiet who, like nobody else, brought the Swiss homeland to the poster walls. Ernst Keller was ordained to the Zurich Arts and Crafts School in 1918. The great master was devoted to the script poster and more than 100 posters picture him as the master of typography.
Hans Erni, with the means of his surrealism, showed us entirely new ways of poster art. The 1940 poster for the holiday ticket publicity of the Swiss Federal Railways in an apt example. Iwan Hugentobler was completely devoted to the horse and his picturesque posters for all horse events show the animal lover in him. Josef Müller-Brockmann created concert posters for the Zurich Tonhalle. They contained exclusively typographic elements.
The past five years showed again initiative young Swiss graphic artists. Niklaus Troxler with his jazz posters put the little community of Willisau in the Canton Lucerne into the limelight. Augusto Giacometti, Karl Bickel, Otto Morach, Daniele Buzzi, Burkhard Mangold, Herbert Matter, Max Bill, Alfred Willimann, Armin Hofmann, Wolfgang Weingart, to mention but a few, have brought the Swiss poster to world fame. The list of good poster creators could easily be enlarged to a fewhundred.
A few famous printers are connected to the Swiss poster history. In Western Switzerland there were the companies of Attinger in Neuchâtel, Roto Sadag in Geneva, Roth & Sauter in Lausanne and Säuberlin & Pfeiffer in Vevey. In Basel Morf & Co. as well as Wassermann. In the Ticino Veladini in Lugano. In Aarau Trüeb and Paul Bender in Zollikon. In Zurich Orell Füssli, I.C. Müller, Gebr. Fretz and J.E. Wolfensberger, perhaps the most famous one. With their highly qualified lithography departments they all have printed the artistic sketches with great skill. Thereby these companies and their products were brought closer to a wide general public.
1941 for the first time an annual production of Swiss posters was evaluated by a jury which was appointed by the Federal Home Office. Up to this day and every year “the best posters of the year” are chosen and awarded a prize. To begin with a jury of nine persons judged the thus presented posters. This is certainly no easy task when considering that more than 2000 copies have to be assessed. The conditions are fixed in a regulation. Political electoral and voting posters are exempt from the prize giving.
The Allgemeine Plakat Gesellschaft takes over the organisation of the competition and produces a coloured brochure containing all the awarded posters. At the beginning there was a great confusion in the Swiss poster field as far as the paper sizes were concerned. Through the initiative of J.E. Wolfensberger, the Zurich lithographer, who followed Karl Bührer’s suggestion, a uniform size of 90.5 X 129cm was laid down in 1910. For publicity abroad, which mainly concerned the touristic trade, the English measurements of 64 x 102cm were applied. 1986 the city measurements of 120 x 170cm were introduced, and 1987 the 12 square meter size. Approximately 20 printers own printing machines which are suitable for the printing of “world size” posters. Thanks to this standardization a simplification of the poster was possible.
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