Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian and American

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 interdiscip ...

er, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. He was instrumental in the development of the

Atlantic Richfield Company ARCO ( ) is a brand of gasoline stations currently owned by Marathon Petroleum after BP sold its rights. BP commercializes the brand in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, while Marathon has rights for the rest of the United States and ...

's corporate art collection until his death in 1985.

Biography

Training and Bauhaus years

Bayer apprenticed under the artist Georg Schmidthammer in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital ...

. Leaving the workshop to study at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, he became interested in

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

's Bauhaus manifesto. After Bayer had studied for four years at the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

under such teachers as

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

and László Moholy-Nagy, Gropius appointed Bayer director of

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

and

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

. In the spirit of reductive minimalism, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all-lowercase,

sans serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ser ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

s for most Bauhaus publications. Bayer is one of several typographers of the period including

Kurt Schwitters Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, paint ...

and Jan Tschichold who experimented with the creation of a simplified more phonetic-based alphabet. From 1925 to 1930 Bayer designed a geometric sans-serif ''Proposal for a Universal Typeface

that existed only as a design and was never actually cast into real type. These designs are now issued in digital form as Bayer Universa

The design also inspired ITC Bauhaus and

Architype Bayer Architype Bayer is a geometric sans-serif typeface based upon the 1927 experimentation of Herbert Bayer. Bayer reacted to the Germanic use of capitalization for all nouns by abandoning uppercase. His new case combined characters based on the Caro ...

, which bears comparison with the stylistically related typeface

Architype Schwitters Architype Schwitters is a geometric sans-serif typeface based upon a 1927 phonetic alphabet designed by Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948). The digital revival, shown at right, was produced by Freda Sack and David Quay of The Foundry. Like many new ex ...

. In 1923 Bayer met the photographer Irene Bayer-Hecht at the first large Bauhaus exhibit in Weimar. They married in 1925, separated in 1928, had a daughter, Julia Alexandra, in 1929, and divorced in 1944.

Post-Bauhaus years in Germany

In 1928, Bayer left the Bauhaus to become

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vis ...

of Vogue magazine's

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

office. He remained in Germany far later than most other progressives. In 1936 he designed a brochure for the ''Deutschland Ausstellung'', an exhibition for tourists in Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Gamesthe brochure celebrated life in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, and the authority of Hitler. However, in 1937, works of Bayer's were included in the Nazi propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art", upon which he left Germany. Upon fleeing Germany, he traveled in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Time in the United States

In 1944 Bayer married Joella Synara Haweis, the daughter of poet and

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

artist

Mina Loy Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first-generation modernists to ...

. The same year, he became a U.S. citizen. In 1946 the Bayers relocated. Hired by industrialist and visionary Walter Paepcke, Bayer moved to

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Moun ...

as Paepcke promoted skiing as a popular sport. Bayer's architectural work in the town included co-designing the

Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The institute's stated aim is the realization of "a free, just, and equitable society" through seminars, policy programs ...

and restoring the

Wheeler Opera House The Wheeler Opera House is located at the corner of East Hyman Avenue and South Mill Street in Aspen, Colorado, Aspen, Colorado, United States. It is a stone building erected during the 1890s, from a design by Willoughby J. Edbrooke that blends ele ...

, but his production of promotional posters identified skiing with wit, excitement, and glamour. In 1959, he designed his "fonetik alfabet", a phonetic alphabet, for English. It was sans-serif and without capital letters. He had special symbols for the endings ''-ed'', ''-ory'', ''-ing'', and ''-ion'', as well as the digraphs "ch", "sh", and "ng". An underline indicated the doubling of a consonant in traditional orthography. While living in Aspen, Bayer had a chance meeting with the eccentric oilman, outdoorsman and visionary ecologist,

Robert O. Anderson Robert Orville Anderson (April 12, 1917 – December 2, 2007) was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist who founded Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). Anderson also supported several cultural organizations, from the Los Angele ...

. When Anderson saw the ultra-modern, Bauhaus-inspired home that Bayer had designed & built in Aspen, he walked up to the front door and introduced himself. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two men and instigated Anderson's insatiable passion for enthusiastically collecting contemporary art. With Anderson's eventual formation of the

, and as his personal art collection quickly overflowed out of his New Mexico ranch and other homes,

ARCO ARCO ( ) is a brand of gasoline stations currently owned by Marathon Petroleum after BP sold its rights. BP commercializes the brand in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, while Marathon has rights for the rest of the United States an ...

soon held the unique distinction of possessing the world's largest corporate art collection, under the critical eye and sharp direction of Bayer as ARCO's Art and Design Consultant. Overseeing acquisitions for ARCO Plaza, the newly built (1972) twin 51-story office towers in Los Angeles that served as the new company's corporate headquarters, Bayer was also responsible for the ARCO logo and designing all corporate branding related to the company. Prior to the completion of ARCO Plaza, Anderson commissioned Bayer to design a monumental sculpture-fountain to be installed between the dark green granite towers. Originally titled "Stairway to Nowhere" Anderson laughed, but felt the Shareholders wouldn't see the irony; thus he suggested it be named '' Double Ascension'' and it still stands between the twin skyscrapers today. Under Bayer's direction, ARCO's art collection grew to nearly 30,000 works nationwide, managed by Atlantic Richfield Company Art Collection staff. ARCO's collection was eclectic, and consisted of an extremely wide range of media & styles; ranging from contemporary and earlier paintings, sculpture, works on paper (including drawings, watercolors and signed original lithographs, etchings and serigraphs) and signed photographs to tribal and ethnic art from many cultures, as well as historic prints and artifacts, all displayed throughout ARCO's buildings in Los Angeles and several other cities. Three years after ARCO was taken over by BP in 2000, that company's then-chairman, Lord Brown, personally ordered ARCO's art collection liquidated. It was sold through Christie's and LA Modern Auctions. Chromatic Gate sculpture by Herbert Bayer

Chromatic Gate sculpture by Herbert Bayer

Bayer made provisions to donate, after his death, a collection of his works which had been housed in ARCO's conference center in Santa Barbara to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The works have been loaned previously to the

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between ...

. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1979.

Legacy and influence

Bayer's works appear in prominent public and private collections including the MIT List Visual Arts Center. Bayer designed the

Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks The Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks is a public park, storm water detention dam and Modernist "masterpiece" of environmental art located in Kent, Washington, United States. The earthworks was created by Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer in 1982 and desig ...

, an environmental sculpture located in

Kent, Washington Kent is a city in King County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue metropolitan area and had a population of 136,588 as of the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest municipality in greater Seattle and th ...

. In 2019, the philanthropists and entrepreneurs Lynda and

Stewart Resnick Stewart Allen Resnick (born December 24, 1936) is an American billionaire businessman. In 2018, Resnick was the wealthiest farmer in the United States. Resnick and his wife, Lynda Resnick, bought The Franklin Mint in 1986 and sold it in 2006. Si ...

donated $10 million to the nonprofit

for a center dedicated to Bayer that will be located on the Institute's Aspen Meadows campus, which Bayer designed. The facility, the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies, is to have galleries, educational programs, and an overall aim to provide tools for the preservation and study of Bayer's work. Herbert Bayer was the architect for the

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (widely referred to as The Modern) is an art museum of post-World War II art in Fort Worth, Texas with a collection of international modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1892, The Modern is located in the c ...

, in Fort Worth, Texas. The institution moved to its new location designed by architect

Tadao Ando is a Japanese autodidact architect whose approach to architecture and landscape was categorized by architectural historian Francesco Dal Co as "critical regionalism". He is the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize. Early life Ando was born a few m ...

in 2002. The building, owned by the City of Fort Worth, is now th
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
which features seven galleries highlighting regional and national artists.

Fonts designed

* ''Proposal for a Universal Type'' (1925–1930), this face existed only as designs. * ''Bayer Type'' (

Berthold Type Foundry H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era, making the transition from foundry type to cold type successfully and only coming to dissolution in the digital type era. ...

, 1933)

Decorations and awards

* Culture Prize of the German Society for Photography (Cologne, 1969) * Inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Art Directors Club (1975) * Architecture Forum Upper Austria in

* Honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Graz (1977) *

Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (german: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst) is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system. History The "Austrian ...

(1977) * Ambassador's Award for Excellence (London)

References

General references

* * * *
Herbert_Bayer:_Kunst_Universell._Vienna,_Austria:_Edition_Suppan_Fine_Arts
,_1997.html" ;"title="Suppan Fine Arts">Herbert Bayer: Kunst Universell. Vienna, Austria: Edition Suppan Fine Arts
, 1997">Suppan Fine Arts">Herbert Bayer: Kunst Universell. Vienna, Austria: Edition Suppan Fine Arts
, 1997

External links

herbert bayer
*
Art Directors Club bio and portrait of Herbert BayerHerbert Bayer: Bauhaus and Beyond
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bayer, Herbert 1900 births 1985 deaths AIGA medalists American graphic designers ARCO Austrian graphic designers Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United States Austrian emigrants to the United States Bauhaus alumni Bauhaus teachers Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Grieskirchen District American typographers and type designers Recipients of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art Austrian typographers and type designers 20th-century American architects Federal Art Project artists