Having received an introduction into poster history in grade 2 from my elementary school teacher Lily Graf (god bless her for that),
Herbert Leupin and Donald Brun were my first poster heroes. And of course everybody recognized their work in the streets of Switzerland, and loved it. Donald Brun was so famous internationally, we were told, that
he got commissions from as far away as Belgium !
Although Donald Brun ( 1909 - 1999 ) seems to be largely forgotten today, heroes never die, and so his standing in my universe solidified when I learned much later that he was one of the four founding members of AGI, the prestigious international graphic designers association, and even more when I heard that the Museum fuer Gestaltung in Zuerich was organizing a personal exhibition and publishing a monograph, their first after a pause of many years. Justice had finally been done.
Imagine my shock and disbelief when I heard a poster dealer making disparaging remarks about the quality of Brun's posters ( "a few are good, the bulk is just soso" ), and when I read in the catalogue introduction sentences from Felix Studinka like
Some prestigious commissions gained Brun the reputation of being one of the most successful swiss graphic artists. But what was "Modern" about his work, where can we detect "the future" ?
and even more disturbing, although less clear
.. he revealed, at a high level, the dubious morality surrounding the "good and beautiful poster" ..
Looking back at Brun's posters from a distance of fifty years, it is obvious to me that he painted whatever people liked at the time, and succeeded admirably, and developed a rich graphic vocabulary in so doing.
His fall from the grace of the experts worried me sufficiently that I checked what happened to some of his contemporaries in this respect:
- Cassandre ( b. 1902 ) ultimately paid with his life for refusing to make concessions to public tastes. He was temporarily forgotten, but today is considered one of the greatest posterist of all time.
- Savignac ( b. 1907 ), like Brun, did not care too much whether his works were "modern" or pointing to "the future", but fortunately lived long enough so that the question became moot, and he remained everybody's darling until today.
- Armin Hofmann ( b. 1920 ), Brun's colleague in Basel, fought valiantly against visual pollution, which earned him a high and lasting reputation in academia, but not so much on the street.
Should we conclude that Donald Brun traded short time popularity for long time fame ?
Who knows. The catalogue fortunately is well illustrated so that you can make up your own mind. Jean-Charles Giroud, who's poster collection at the Bibliotheque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva holds Donald Brun's graphic estate, and who wrote the essay in the catalogue, takes a more pragmatic approach. Rather than classifying Brun as an artist, he looks at each poster and comments and compares them:
Together with Herbert Leupin, also hailing from Basel and working in a style similar to his own, Brun became a master of the humorous poster. Over a period of some ten years, he created a unique series of works that have, in the meantime, become classics. The leading firms of his times entrusted him with their publicity:
1944, There is nothing better than Persil
1946, Use the phone!
1947, Aronal vitamin toothpaste
1953, Zwicky silk thread