Cooper Hewitt says...
Ludwig Hohlwein was the most innovative Munich-based graphic designer of his era. Hohlwein’s bold images, high-keyed colors, and decorative fonts on uniform grounds have impacted the graphic design work of everyone from A. M. Cassandre and Jean Carlu to Herbert Matter, Joseph Binder, and Paul Rand, to name a few.
Hohlwein owes his aesthetic style to a major 1898 design exhibition held at Munich’s Glaspalast that showcased the French art nouveau graphics of Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Alphonse Mucha, as well as the English Arts and Crafts design team known as The Beggarstaffs, comprised of James Pryde and William Nicholson. The Beggarstaffs pioneered the use of cut colored paper to create their designs, which juxtaposed flat forms and patterns with positive and negative shapes. A number of Beggarstaff poster maquettes were on exhibition in the Munich show.
Hohlwein began his career as graphic designer in 1906, after studying architecture. Hohlwein combined flat forms with a rich range of texture and decorative patterning. Many of his early posters advertised clothing manufacturers and retail stores such as his poster and logo for his friend Hermann Scherrer’s clothing shop (1907) or his poster and Marque PKZ logo for the Swiss candy company Kehl (1908). Hohlwein is also well known for his propaganda posters during World War I and World War II.
