Non-Figurative Painting in Switzerland – Kunstmuseum Winterthur

Original Vintage Poster by Richard Paul Lohse, the leading Swiss concrete artist alongside Max Bill, created on the occasion of the survey exhibition Ungegenständliche Malerei in der Schweiz, which premiered in Neuchâtel in 1957 («La peinture abstraite en Suisse»). After the exhibition in Winterthur, the Pro Helvetia cultural foundation brought the show, which was primarily dedicated to geometric abstraction, to West Berlin, which meant that official Switzerland had definitely accepted local contemporary – i.e. abstract – art to such an extent that it dared to present it abroad on a larger scale.

Even if Lohse (1902 – 1988) is today primarily regarded as a co-founder of constructive-concrete art, he started out as a commercial artist. At the age of 16, he began an apprenticeship as an advertising illustrator in the studio of Max Dalang, the first actual Swiss advertising agency, where he came into contact with photomontage. In 1930, he set up his own graphic design business and, from the mid-1930s onwards, began to further develop avant-garde trends in photomontage as well as typography (this trends had begun in the Soviet Union and Germany in particular, but were no longer accepted there) and applied them to advertisements, book covers, brochures and posters. Finally, as co-founder and editor of the magazine «Neue Grafik» (1958 – 1965), he was instrumental in establishing constructive Swiss graphic design, which, thanks to the consistent interweaving of industrial precision and objectivity, became relevant beyond the country’s borders and is still referred to today as «Swiss Style».

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