?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
LADISLAV SUTNAR (1897-1976) UNITED NATIONS / "WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS". Circa 1949. Two posters. Each approximately 28x22 inches. Condition varies, generally B+: repaired tears, creases and tape stains in margins; pinholes in corners; tape on verso. Paper. By the time Ladislav Sutnar moved to America, at the age of 42, he had already revolutionized book design in his home country of Czechoslovakia. He was a professor at Prague's State School of Graphic Art and was the official designer of the Czechoslovak Government's exhibitions in foreign countries (winning several awards for his work in this field). In 1929 he was hired as the Art Director for the Druzstevni Prace [Cooperative Works] publishing house, for whom he created a unified, unique and original appearance. This "unity" he created for Druzstevni Prace was the first appearance of a concept that Sutnar would later develop into creating corporate identity through visual recognition. In 1939 Sutnar came to New York to help set up the Czech Pavillion at the New York World's Fair. With the outbreak of war in Europe, Sutnar chose to stay in The United States. From 1941-1960 Sutnar worked with Sweet's Catalog Service, a company that produced complex technical catalogues for architects, engineers and builders. This two-decade long association resulted in the pioneering redesign of the company's catalogues in which Sutnar's uncluttered and organized vision and his Functionalist background brought order, clarity and ease of comprehension to a field muddy with technical information. Perhaps his best known but least acknowledged contribution is the use of parentheses for telephone area codes, now considered a milestone in information graphics. In 1946 he designed several posters for the one-year old United Nations. While these two are unsigned they clearly reflect his design sensibilities and echo the published photo-mural design which he created for a wall at NBC in Rockefeller Center in 1946. Sutnar Design np, Visual Design p. b/36.
