Rajesh Punjabi GR.

616 - Making Ideas Visible Influences Piet Zwart Piet Zwart was born in Zaandjijk in the Netherlands on May 25th, 1885. He attended the School of Applied Arts in Amsterdam where he studied architecture from 1902 to 1907. At this time the Arts and Crafts movement was prominent and Zwarts exposure to the artwork during this time led would have a great impact on his career as a designer. This was evident in his design of the Childs chair (Figure 2.1). His training at the school led to successful career working at Jan Wils office as an architect, photographer, and designer. It was in 1919 when his architecture took on characteristics of the De Stijl movement, which makes use of symmetry with vertical and horizontal shapes. He began to experiment and push the boundaries of the movement while working as an assistant to the dutch architect H.P Belarge. During this time Zwart drew fame with his breakfast set, known for its use of circular and hexagonal shapes (Figure 2.2). It wasnt until the age of 36, in the early 1920s, when Zwart would break away from the De Stijl styles of design and embrace his future as a graphic designer with his work in typography. His lack of formal training as a typesetter allowed Zwart break free from the traditional designs and rules that bound his colleagues. Free from these boundaries, he represented a fresh perspective with the production of his first work in typography which was a letterhead to Jan Wils office (Figure 2.3). He would later be given the opportunity to design advertisements for a flooring company named Laga in 1923 (Figure 2.4), and the NKF catalog from in 1928 (Figure 2.5). In 1930 Piet was commissioned to design a book intended to educate dutch children about the basics of dutch postal system entitled Book of PTT (Figure 2.6). Along with his use of bright colors, and photography, he began to edit his photos with chalk and pencil. Zwart also created two personas for the book, The Post and J.Self , which were dolls that he would photograph. He would continue to work on the book and edit the photos until 1938, when it was finally published. In the late 1920s Piet began to teach as a professor at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts until he was fired in 1933 for wanting to redesign the arts education. He was then arrested by German soldiers in 1942 and detained along with approximately 1800 other artists until the end of World War II in 1945. After his release, Zwart spent the remainder of his career in industrial design producing works similar to kitchen design, Bruynzeel (Figure 2.7). Piet Zwart died in 1977 at the age of 92 but he would continue to receive recognition from his colleagues for years to come. In 2000, Zwart was named Designer of the Century, an award from the Association of Dutch Designers. The Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam would found The Piet Zwart Institute in 2001, an art school for postgraduate study.

Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4

(Top Left) Piet Zwart. Childs Chair. 1935. Wood and Metal. H.26 x W.12-1/2 x D.14 in. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (Top Right) Piet Zwart. breakfast set. 1923. Pressed glass. (Middle) Piet Zwart. Letterhead for Jan Wils. 1921. (Bottom) Piet Zwart. Laga Rubber Flooring Advertisement. 1923.

Figure 2.5 Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7

(Top Left) Piet Zwart. NKF Catalogue. 1928. (Top Right) Piet Zwart. The Book of PTT. 1938. (Bottom) Piet Zwart. Bruynzeel. 1939.