AB

Alexey
Brodovitch
AB
ContentS

1 The Principal Modern Art Director

2 The Early Years

2 The Paris Years and A New Start

1
The Principal, Modern Art Director

A photographer, a painter, a designer, an art patron,

a passionate teacher of gifted students, colleagues and protégés,
one of the pioneers of the 20th century graphic design.

A Renaissance man of fine and applied arts, Alexey Brodovitch

belongs among those, who produced timeless work.

A dedicated professional with a rich portfolio that remains compelling,

fresh and inspiring, despite the fact that it was created more
than half a century ago.

A commercial art genius who widely known and remembered for

his twenty-­‐four years long art-­‐directing tenure at Harper’s Bazaar,
where “he became the model for the modern magazine art director”.

A dashing career, a captivating, extremely productive and influential

journey; A journey he begun as a young and promising Russian émigré
and ended as the Dean of American Graphic Designers.
2
The Early Years

Alexey Vyacheslavovich Brodovitch was born in Ogolichi, Russian Em-

pire, now Belarus, in 1898 into a wealthy family; to a respected physician
father and an amateur painter mother.

Alexey was sent to study at the Prince Tenisheff School, a prestigious

institution in Saint Petersburg with the intention to eventually enroll to
the Imperial Art Academy.

At the start of World War I he decided to abandon his dream and joined
the Russian White Army. Due to his father’s insistence and a hired pri-
vate tutor, Alexey manages to finish school; however, mid-1918 finds him
seriously wounded, retreating to the south of the country where he meets
his family and future wife, Nina.

After some rough imprisonement by the Bolsheviks time in Novorossi-

ysk, the Brodovitch family, finally united in the Turkish city of Instabul,
decides to move permanently to France.
3
Paris and A New Start

Living in a tiny apartment in the artists’ neighborhood of Montparnasse,

Paris, he finds himself poor, untrained and in need for a basic income for
the first time in his life. He joins a group of Russian artists already set-
tled in Paris and along with them he takes his first painting and sculpting
classes at the Academie Vassilief.

In the cosmopolitan, 1920s Parisian atmosphere where arts and ideas

flourished, Alexey is being exposed to the most important European art
movements; Dadaism, Constructivism, Bauhaus, Futurism, De Stijl,
Cubism, Fauvism and Surrealism excite creatively his artistic genius,
which just starts to unfold. Soon enough, his connections and his ap-
parent talent earn him
his first artistic job and he becomes a part-­‐time backdrops painter
for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

At the same time, he starts to produce his first professional designs

for textures, china and jewelry, which he sells to fashionable shops.

Additionally, he performs aesthetically demanding page layouts
for Cahiers d’ Art and Arts and Metiers Graphiques, gaining valu-
able experience, acting as an informal art director, in two highly
respectable Parisian periodical art publications.
 4 The Bal Banal Poster

In 1924, his work gains public recognition and he

comes to the attention of other designers and ma-
jor advertising agencies.

The Bal Banal was a poster announcing an artists’

soiree and it was on the walls of Montparnasse for
weeks along with a drawing of Pablo Picasso who
won second place.

Brodovitch’s design was a beautiful combination

of impressive typeface and the sketch of a Vene-
tian-type carnival mask, symbolizing the eternal
play of black and white.

The Bal Banal poster was a piece of work that made

him proud throughout his life. He always kept a
copy of it pinned on the wall of his office.
He continued to gain recognition as an applied art-
ist due to his success at the Paris International Ex-
hibit of the Decorative Arts in 1925. He received
five medals: three gold medals for kiosk design and
jewelry, two silver medals for fabrics, and the top award
for the Beck Fils pavilion “Amour de l’Art.”
5
Paris and A New Start

A
In 1926 the advertising agency Maximilien Vox asked him to de-
sign for Martini Vermouth.

The result was an impressive design based on strict geometric

forms and basic colors which resembled the constructivism style
as seen in El Lissitsky’s work.

Brodovitch was politically sympathetic to czarist Russia,

on the other hand, though, his artistic works shared the ideas
of the avant-garde which were thought to be post-revolutionary,
but non-political in origin.

Soon after his work was in great demand and he worked full time
as a freelancer, designing posters and advertisements for a great
number of notable clients. It was the time that Brodovitch’s ca-
reer had started to take off.
6
Athelia - Aux Trois Quartiers

After having established his position in the Parisian artistic mar-

ket, in 1928, Brodovitch was hired by “Athelia” the design studio
of the famous Parisian department store “Aux Trois Quartiers”.
to design and illustrate catalogues and advertisements for their
luxury men’s boutique, Madelios.[17] Brodovitch was aware that
many of the customers were fairly traditional in their tastes, so
he balanced out his modern designs with classical Greek refer-
ences.
Although employed full-time by Athélia, Brodovitch offered his
service as a freelance designer on the side. He started his own
studio, L’Atelier A.B., where he produced posters for various
clients, including Union Radio Paris and the Cunard shipping
company. He was also commissioned by the Parisian publishing
house La Pléiade to illustrate three books: Nouvelles by Alexan-
der Pushkin, Contes Fantastiques by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and
Monsieur de Bougrelon by Jean Lorrain.
 B
7
Early Teaching Career

at the time he had become one of the most respected designers

of commercial art in Paris but
Paris began to lose the spirit of adventure it initially had
he looks across the Atlantic for new opportunities and
he is asked to come to Philadelphia to organize design classes
at the Philadelphia College of Art

1930s: (early): he is invited by the Philadelphia College of Art

to create an advertising art department in its museum school
(now university of arts) oddly enough, staid (conservative) Phil-
adelphia became
the birthplace of Brodovitch’s revolutionary design laborato-
ries
whose flame of inspiration was carried to other cities and
was to illuminate new pathways of personal vision in the de-
cades to come

by that time he also worked as an advertising designer

for N.W. Ayer with Charles Coiner, the creative director

he is at the time one of the pioneers to bring

7
The Design Laboratory

1933: the ‘Design Laboratory’

A
he starts workshops known as the ‘Design Laboratory’
open to all professions
in every assignment the students were challenged
to avoid clichés, to capture the essence, to use their mistakes and
to look within themselves for a solution

Brodovitch was known for contradicting himself

he would say on ething and the next week he would say the oppo-
site
as to urge his students to think for themselves

he conducted ‘Design Laboratories’ at

the New School
the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Young and Rubicon

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, professional models,
theater people and photographers
x
The AlBro Typeface

1933: t he ‘Design Laboratory’

he starts workshops known as the ‘Design Laboratory’
open to all professions
in every assignment the students were challenged
to avoid clichés, to capture the essence, to use their mistakes
and
to look within themselves for a solution

Brodovitch was known for contradicting himself

he would say on ething and the next week he would say the
opposite
as to urge his students to think for themselves

he conducted ‘Design Laboratories’ at

the New School
the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Young and Rubicon

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, professional models,
 x Portfolio Magazine

the short-lived Portfolio magazine (1950-1951), the one

that is considered
by the professionals of arts, advertising and of graphic
design,
as fully-representative of his talent; the most influen-
tial and inspiring
of his creations, the quintessence of his artistic ge-
nius.

Portfolio was “a 10X13 edition with over 100 pag-

es of the finest editorial graphic design of all
time”, with a list of contents and contributors
that “reads like a guest list at some great event
hosted by an enlightened art patron” .

The emphatic rejection of advertising by

both Brodovitch and Portfolio’s
co-editor Frank Zachary allowed them to apply their
much likened cinematography technique. According to the latter,
“directing and editing
are one and the same thing …you have to tell two stories, one in words,
x
The Legacy Of A Myth

1933: the ‘Design Laboratory’

he starts workshops known as the ‘Design Laboratory’
open to all professions
in every assignment the students were challenged
to avoid clichés, to capture the essence, to use their mistakes
and
to look within themselves for a solution

Brodovitch was known for contradicting himself

he would say on ething and the next week he would say the
opposite
as to urge his students to think for themselves

he conducted ‘Design Laboratories’ at

the New School
the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Young and Rubicon

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, professional models,
BALLET x
PhotoGraphy

the short-lived Portfolio magazine (1950-1951), the one that is con-

sidered
by the professionals of arts, advertising and of graphic design,
as fully-representative of his talent; the most influential and inspir-
ing
of his creations, the quintessence of his artistic genius.

Portfolio was “a 10X13 edition with over 100 pages of the finest
editorial graphic design of all time”, with a list of contents and
contributors that “reads like a guest list at some great event host-
ed by an enlightened art patron” .

The emphatic rejection of advertising by both Brodovitch and

Portfolio’s
co-editor Frank Zachary allowed them to apply their much lik-
ened cinematography technique. According to the latter, “di-
recting and editing
are one and the same thing …you have to tell two stories, one
in words, one
in pictures, completely separate - but like railroad track,
leading to the same place” . Portfolio under Brodovitch’s
x
The AlBro Typeface

1933: t he ‘Design Laboratory’

he starts workshops known as the ‘Design Laboratory’
open to all professions
in every assignment the students were challenged
to avoid clichés, to capture the essence, to use their mistakes
and
to look within themselves for a solution

Brodovitch was known for contradicting himself

he would say on ething and the next week he would say the
opposite
as to urge his students to think for themselves

he conducted ‘Design Laboratories’ at

the New School
the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Young and Rubicon

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, professional models,
 x
The Legacy Of A Myth

1933: the ‘Design Laboratory’

he starts workshops known as the ‘Design Laboratory’
open to all professions
in every assignment the students were challenged
to avoid clichés, to capture the essence, to use their mistakes and
to look within themselves for a solution

Brodovitch was known for contradicting himself

he would say on ething and the next week he would say the opposite
as to urge his students to think for themselves

he conducted ‘Design Laboratories’ at

the New School
the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Young and Rubicon

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, professional models,
theater people and photographers
 x
The Legacy Of A Myth

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, professional models,
theater people and photographers

the ‘Design Laboratory’ format was simple

Brodovitch would present a very open-ended problem
for the group who would work on their own
during the time
between classes meetings
 x
The Legacy Of A Myth

the ‘Design Laboratory’ was a class

for aspiring or already arrived
artists, designers, art directors, profession-
al models,
theater people and photographers

the ‘Design Laboratory’ format was simple

Brodovitch would present a very open-end-
ed problem
for the group who would work on their own
during the time
between classes meetings
 x
The Legacy Of A Myth

“Alexey Brodovitch, Biography by Andy Grundberg”. American Institute of Graphic Arts(AI-

GA). April 12, 2015, http://www.aiga.org/medalist-alexeybrodovitch/

«Alexey Brodovitch». Design is History. April 25, 2015,

http://www.designishistory.com/1940/alexey-brodovitch/

«Alexey Brodovitch». Icon of Graphics. April 25, 2015. http://www.iconofgraphics.com/

Alexey-Brodovitch/

«Alexey Brodovitch». Luminous-Lint. April 29, 2015.

http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/photographer/Alexey_Brodovitch/A/