The Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s style magazine “Z” mentions in its first issue 2019 the recent opening of PLACART, focusing on the essence of the gallery: “Original Vintage Posters”, “Le Corbusier’s artistic œuvre”, “at the heart of Zurich”, “profound conoisseur” — accompanied by the poster that Fritz Bühler designed for the Swiss zipper company Riri 1949. Thanks @nzz. Only recently available, the best of both worlds: The first Original Lithograph in color by Le Corbusier was a poster that he designed for his exhibition «Œuvre Plastique» 1938 at the Kunsthaus Zürich (100×71 cm); the print run was only 100 exemplars – and this one is moreover even hand-signed by LC as well as dated and annotated «Zurich, janvier 1938».
The Original Poster promoted Le Corbusier’s first solo exhibition ever. He stopped to get his art shown in the early days of the 20s when his seminal “Vers une architecture” was published. Sigfried Giedion, one of the Swiss pioneers of modernism, had to persuade him to show the result of his morning work – in the early hours LC was an artist in his private atelier, afternoon he was the architect and urban planner at 35 Rue de Sèvres.
After he agreed to the show, he became quite hopeful and confident, as he wrote to his mother: «I expect that from now on one recognises me not only as an architect but as a painter as well.» © FLC/2018, ProLitteris, Zurich Bettina Richter, curator of the poster collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, giving our guests on the occasion of the opening of PLACART a diverting overall picture of developments in Swiss poster history on the basis of available posters on-site – commencing with Jules Chéret’s «Palais de Glace» from 1893 and a by comparison very modest Swiss poster from the same time, continuing with Ferdinand Hodler and the following catch-up thanks to Burkhard Mangold, Emil Cardinaux, Otto Baumberger, Niklaus Stoecklin, Herbert Matter… Well, finally: This evening the opening of the gallery takes place – with a short introduction to Swiss Poster History by Bettina Richter, the curator of the poster collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, with a few words by Thomi Wolfensberger about the tradition and the process of lithographic printing, followed by Simon Zehnder, head of the Pavillon Le Corbusier at Zürichhorn – LC’s last designed and executed project –, who gives a short outlook concerning the plans and the first exhibition there in May 2019.
A gentle hint: space is limitied, RSVP required – only a few places are still available.
Looking forward to the evening,
Tomas Rabara, owner
