![W BIO 1958](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/W_BIO_1958.jpg)
Anton Stankowski (June 18, 1906 – December 11, 1998) was a
German graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...
,
photographer
A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs.
Duties and types of photographe ...
and
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
. He developed an original Theory of Design and pioneered Constructive Graphic Art. Typical Stankowski designs attempt to illustrate processes or behaviours rather than objects. Such experiments resulted in the use of
fractal
In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illu ...
-like structures long before their popularisation by
Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975.
Early life
Anton Stankowski was born in
Gelsenkirchen
Gelsenkirchen (, , ; wep, Gelsenkiärken) is the 25th most populous city of Germany and the 11th most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher River (a tributary of the Rhine), it lies ...
,
Westphalia
Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants.
The territory of the regio ...
. Before embarking on the profession of graphic designer, Stankowski worked as a decorator and church painter. In 1927 he attended the
Folkwang Schule with fellow photographer,
Max Burchartz
Max Hubert Innocenz Maria Burchartz (1887–1961) was a German photographer.
Life
Max Burchartz was the son of a fabric manufacturer, Otto Burchartz and his wife Maria. After his basic schooling he received training in his father's weaving m ...
.
Professional career
In 1929, Stankowski moved to Zurich, where he worked at the renowned advertising studio of Max Dalang. This is where he developed 'constructive' graphic art with his new photo- and typographic view. His friends in Zurich
Richard Paul Lohse, Heiri Steiner, Hans Neuburg, as well as
Hans Coray, Hans Fischli,
Herbert Matter
Herbert Matter (April 25, 1907 – May 8, 1984) was a Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art. Matter's innovative and experimental work helped shape the vocabulary of 20 ...
, Ernst A. Heiniger,
Verena Loewensberg
Verena Loewensberg (May 28, 1912 – April 27, 1986) was a Swiss painter and graphic designer.
Life
Verena Loewensberg was the oldest daughter of a family of doctors in Zurich. After two years at the Kunstgewerbeschule (now: Schule für Ge ...
,
Max Bill
Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer.
Early life and education
Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith ...
and others formed a cultural circle. During these years Stankowski completed his famous 'Theory of Design' in which he worked out fundamental forms of expression.
![Berlin-layout-stankowski](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Berlin-layout-stankowski.jpg)
In 1934, he had to leave
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
due to the withdrawal of his official
work permit and, after staying in
Lörrach
Lörrach () is a town in southwest Germany, in the valley of the Wiese, close to the French and the Swiss borders. It is the capital of the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg. It is the home of a number of large employers, including the ...
in 1938, he came to
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
where he worked as a freelance graphic designer. In 1940, he joined the forces and became prisoner of war until 1948. After returning, he worked for Stuttgarter Illustrierte magazine as an editor, graphic designer and photographer.
In 1951, he established his own graphic design studio on the Killesberg in Stuttgart. With
Willi Baumeister,
Max Bense
Max Bense (7 February 1910 in Strasbourg – 29 April 1990 in Stuttgart) was a German philosopher, writer, and publicist, known for his work in philosophy of science, logic, aesthetics, and semiotics. His thoughts combine natural sciences, art, a ...
, Walter Cantz,
Egon Eiermann, Mia Seeger and others a new cultural circle developed. He taught at the
Ulm School of Design. His work on the graphic design field for IBM, SEL etc., especially his 'functional' graphic designs are exemplary.
![Viessmann logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Viessmann_logo.png)
In the 1960s, Stankowski created the now legendary 'Berlin layout', the city's visual identity, as well as the word trademarks IDUNA and VIESSMANN. Between 1969 and 1972 he was chairman of the Committee for Visual Design for the Olympic Games in Munich.
![Deutsche Bank logo without wordmark](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Deutsche_Bank_logo_without_wordmark.svg)
The 1970s saw the creation of famous logos and trademarks, such as the one for the
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
, the Münchner Rückversicherungen, REWE and Olympic Congress Baden-Baden alongside many others. The Deutsche Bank logo was ranked second in
Creative Review's top 20 logos of all time. As Patrick Burgoyne, the editor of Creative Review magazine put it,
"The Deutsche Bank square is neat visual shorthand for the type of values you might want in a bank security (the square) and growth (the oblique line)".
For Stankowski there was no separation between free and applied art. Many of his photographic and painterly works flow into his functional graphic design. From the mid-1970s onwards he increasingly turned to painting. His painterly oeuvre from the late 1920s to the late 1990s shows a continuity of constructive-concrete art. The exhibitions from 1928 onwards in the fields of graphic art, painting and photography point out the same way.
In 1976, the state of
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
conferred on him a professorship, and Stankowski, who was seen as a pioneer of graphic design, received innumerable awards and tributes, the most recent being the City of Stuttgart's Molfenter Award in 1991.
By 1980, Stankowski had produced a volume of trademarks for clients in and Switzerland. In 1983, he established the
Stankowski Foundation Stankowski is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Paul Stankowski (born 1969), American golfer
*Anton Stankowski (1906–1998), German graphic designer, photographer, and painter
*Albert Stankowski
Albert Stankowski (born 22 Oct ...
to make awards to others for bridging the domains of fine and applied art, as he himself had done. Following his death in December 1998, the
German Artist Federation awarded him the honorary
Harry Graf Kessler Award for his life work.
Stankowski's work is noted for straddling the camps of fine and applied arts by synthesising information and creative impulse. He was inspired by the abstract paintings of
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...
,
Theo van Doesburg,
Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich ; german: Kasimir Malewitsch; pl, Kazimierz Malewicz; russian: Казими́р Севери́нович Мале́вич ; uk, Казимир Северинович Малевич, translit=Kazymyr Severynovych ...
and
Kandinsky. He advocated
graphic design
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
as a field of pictorial creation that requires collaboration with free artists and scientists.
References and sources
;References
;Sources
*
External links
Stankowski FoundationHeroes – Anton StankowskiDepicting Process through Forms: Works by Anton Stankowski
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stankowski, Anton
1906 births
1988 deaths
German graphic designers
Logo designers
Photographers from North Rhine-Westphalia
20th-century German painters
20th-century German male artists
German male painters
People from Gelsenkirchen
People from the Province of Westphalia