Peter Behrens

Peter Behrens
Design for a poster advertising an AEG metal filament light, 1907. color lithograph, 67 x 52 cm. AEG company archives, Frankfurt/Main.


1868, Hamburg - 1940, Berlin.
Behrens was a German architect, painter, graphic artist, industrial designer, applied artist, typeface designer, and book artist. He studied painting in Karlsruhe, Dusseldorf, Munich and with the luministes in Netherlands from 1885-19=892. from 1899-1903 he was a member of the Darmstadt artists' colony, where he designed furniture and furnishings (wallpapers, textiles, decorative glass) as well as theatre sets , and where he first turned is attention to architecture. From 1903-07 he was head of the School of Arts and Crafts in Dusseldorf. His buildings from this period are characterized by simple cubic forms with a linear ornament.


From 1907-14 he was a member of the AEG artistic advisory committee in Berlin, in which capacity he designed - alongside all AEG's factories and office buildings- typefaces, advertising material, and electrical goods (including domestic appliances and lighting).


In his graphic works, which reveal the strong influence of van de Velde, he fused classical motifs with abstract Jugendstil ornament. He also created 2 new typefaces: Behrens Italic and Behrens Roman. He is one of the founders of the Munich Secession. (1892) (Gabriele Fahr-Becker)

Charley Harper

Squirrel in a Squall

Box Seat

Cornprone

Birdwatcher

At age 3, Charley Harper fell head-first from the second-story window of the family farmhouse onto a stump, which was unaffected by the crash. He was, too, his parents thought, until a few years later when he announced that he wanted to be an artist. His work has appeared in nature magazines and books, on posters for such organizations as the National Park Service, and on limited edition serigraphs, accompanied by his writing. "There are times," he says, "when a word is worth a thousand pictures."

(The images and blurb from the flap of the book, Beguiled by the Wild: the Art of Charley Harper, Flower Valley Press, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 1994.)

Ephraim Mose Lilien

Illustration to Gensis 1:1-6 in Die Bucher der Bibel, Berlin and Vienna 1908.

I was facinated by this book page and had to post it. Love the layout and swirling stars and night sky in this illustration. Lilien was much inspired by English book illustrations.

"Lilien was a Polish painter, graphic artist, and illustrator. After an apprenticeship as a signpainter, he studied under the history painter Jan Matejko (1838-93) at the Krakow School of Art. In 1894 he won an honorary diploma in a competition in his hometown. He founded the Jewish Press in Berlin and was also the editor, publisher and illustrator. He followed in the footsteps of English Art Nouveau, but his work was a bit "tighter". He was one of the great Jewish artists." (Gabriele Fahr-Becker)