E d w a r d --M c K n i g h t --K a u f f e r -- --1 8 9 0 - 1 9 5 4
Edward
McKnight Kauffer was one of Europe's most prolific and influential advertising
poster artists during the Twenties and Thirties; as innovative as his
more celebrated French counterpart, A.M. Cassandre. In England, where
he lived and worked, Kauffer was hailed for elevating advertising to high
art, yet in America only the design cognoscenti knew of his achievements
when the Montana-born expatriate returned to New York City from London
in 1940–after 25 years there. Kauffer had attempted repatriation
once before in 1921, when he was invited to show his early posters at
New York's Art and Decoration Gallery; at that time he also attempted
to find work with American advertising agencies. Except for a few commissions
to design theatre posters, "America was not ready for him,"
wrote Frank Zachary in Portfolio #1 (1949). "So, feeling a 'great
rebuff,' he returned to England, where he continued to pile up honors." |
In 1937, The Museum of Modern Art in New York (under Alfred H. Barr's direction) gave Kauffer a prestigious one-man show. In America, however, the essential Modern poster with its symbolic imagery and sparse selling copy, which Kauffer helped pioneer, was acceptable on a museum wall, but not on the street. At that time most advertising agents blindly adhered to copy-heavy, romantic imagery, keeping all but a few progressive designers from breaking the bonds of mediocrity. Kauffer returned to his adopted country where his work was considered a national treasure. After the outbreak of war in 1940, Kauffer was prohibited, as an alien, from contributing to England's war effort; feeling he was a liability, he and Marion Dorn left the country on the last passenger ship to the United States (leaving most of their belongings behind). Kauffer lived in New York for the next 14 years, until his death in 1954. With a few notable exceptions, honors came to the artist posthumously, including, after 38 years, the prestigious AIGA award. |