Original scientific paper
Printmaker and Graphic Designer from Osijek Eugen Sekler
Marija Idžojtić
; School of Applied Arts and Design, Osijek
Abstract
The paper presents a segment of the oeuvre of Eugen Sekler, a forgotten printmaker and graphic designer from Osijek educated at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna and at the Akademie für graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig, where he studied under Professor Georg Belwe, a typographer and graphic designer highly renowned across Europe.
Sekler’s example demonstrates that graphic design as a new discipline had its foundations in the printing trade, from which it detached due to the new demands of industry and mass media and in combination with the designer sensibility of certain individuals.
In the context of the history of Croatian graphic design, Sekler is distinguished not only by the quality of his education as a graphic artist, but also by his interest for the then still marginal areas of visual communications design which arose through collaboration between designers and industry – design of signs and logos, packaging and advertisements, as well as complete visual identities for craftsmen and industrialists in Zagreb and Osijek. He also made a significant contribution to the design of books and commercial vignettes. The modernist concept of Sekler’s graphic design is evident in his concise expressionist graphic and typographic interventions, but it mostly corresponds to Art Deco vocabulary.
In Croatian museums there is only one catalogued work attributed to Eugen Sekler, preserved in the Collection of Graphic Design of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb.
Eugen Sekler’s prominent position in the history of Croatian graphic design is indicated by his participation in international exhibitions of applied arts – the Exposition Internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris in 1925 and the International Book Fair in Leipzig in 1927.
Keywords
Printing house Ljudevit Sekler; Printing house Eugen Sekler; graphic design; modernism; Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes; International Book Fair in Leipzig
Hrčak ID:
157234
URI
Publication date:
1.1.2016.
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