Cassandre

(b Kharkiv, Ukraine, 24 Jan 1901; d Paris, 17 June 1968). French designer, painter and writer. His family settled in Paris in 1915. After very briefly attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1918, he studied in Lucien Simon's studio, at the Acad?mie de la Grande Chaumi?re and at the Acad?mie Julian. In 1922 he began designing posters (for an illustration, see POSTER, fig. 5), using the name 'Cassandre'. His first notable success was The Woodcutter (1923; Paris, Mus. Affiche & Pub.), executed in clear, simplified forms, somewhat influenced by Cubism. In 1926 he published his first text on poster design in Revue de l'Union de l'Affiche Fran?aise, in which he emphasized the poster artist's connection with the ancient and medieval traditions of communicating messages through pictures. He designed his first typeface, the advertising Bifur face, in 1927 and in 1930 designed the sanserif Acier display face; these reflected his growing interest in the typographic elements of his posters. In the 1930s his output of posters for French and foreign firms was prolific. It included the popular triptych Dubo Dubon Dubonnet (1932; New York, MOMA), which illustrated the pleasure of drinking Dubonnet by increasing the coloured areas of the design. Others, such as Paris (1935; see Mouron, pl. 53), were influenced by Surrealism, in particular the empty, haunting spaces of De Chirico's works. In 1935 a collection of Cassandre's posters was published as Le Spectacle est dans la rue, with a preface by Blaise Cendrars. He spent the winters of 1936-7 and 1937-8 in New York, where he worked for Harper's Bazaar, and in 1937 he designed his first all-purpose typeface, Peignot. After returning to Paris in 1938 he concentrated on painting until 1944, producing austere, realistic portraits such as that of Pierre Reverdy (1943; see Mouron, p. 121), as well as landscapes. After earlier commissions in the 1930s, in the 1940s and 1950s Cassandre was much occupied with stage designs, such as those for the ballet Les Mirages. This was performed in 1947 and had a narrative written by Serge Lifar and Cassandre himself. He designed a few posters in the 1940s and 1950s and in 1958 designed a typeface for Olivetti. His productivity waned in the 1960s, but he did design the famous logo for Yves Saint Laurent and produced tempera paintings such as the bleak The Frontier (1962; see Mouron, p. 151), as well as occasional posters, before his suicide.

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One of the most important poster designers of the 20th century, Cassandre lived in Russia until 1918, when he moved to Paris, studying at the La Grande Chaumière and the Académie Julian. His first poster for La Bûcheron dated from 1923 when he adopted the name A. M. Cassandre for his commercial graphic work. His output was closely allied to the work of the other leading French poster designers of the 1920s—Paul Colin, Charles Loupot, and Jean Carlu—making use of the flat, abstract forms associated with late Cubism and the Modern Movement. By the late 1920s his striking geometricized poster designs for railway and ocean liner companies became widely known on both sides of the Atlantic. Prominent among them were such dramatic images as his Etoile du Nord (1927) poster for French railways and that of the Normandie (1935) for the CGT shipping line. Other well-known commercial work by Cassandre included his poster designs for the Nicolas wine company. He was a member of the Union des Artistes Modernes and, in the 1930s, became interested in Surrealism. Cassandre also had a strong affinity for lettering and typography and began designing typefaces from the late 1920s. His alphabets included Bifur (1929), Acier (1930), Peignot (1937), and Graphica 81 (1950) for Olivetti typewriters. Between 1936 and 1939 he travelled several times to the USA, designing covers for Harper's Bazaar as well as other graphic work for the Container Corporation of America and Ford. Confirming his status as a leading designer the Museum of Modern Art, New York held its Posters by Cassandre exhibition in 1936 and, in 1950, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris also mounted an exhibition of his work. During the 1930s Cassandre had developed interests in theatre design and rediscovered his interest in painting to which activity he devoted much of his energy from 1940 onwards.