June 16 – July 17, 2005
The Art of DER SPIEGEL
Cover Illustrations over Five Decades
Refined without being elitist, full without seeming plump, and funny without forfeiting a serious theme.
(Walter Grasskamp)
Since 1956, leading international illustrators have been designing the covers for one of the leading European weeklies. The artists include, among others, Boris Artzybasheff, Ursula Arriens, Hermann Degkwitz, Loriot, Michael M. Prechtl, Marie Marcks, Ludvik Glazer-Naudé, Braldt Bralds, Nancy Stahl, Rafal Olbinski, Jean-Pierre Kunkel, and Michael Pleesz.
Amid the flood of photographic images that generally leave their mark on magazine covers and our perception of modern-day history, this is a remarkable tradition. The caustic visual language and ambiguous unambiguousness, the clever metaphors and brazen impertinence of many of these works have become firmly embedded in collective memory.
On exhibit, for the first time, is an extensive selection of original illustrations that were commissioned by DER SPIEGEL – as drawings or even paintings, in ink or chalk, done with watercolor or airbrush, acrylic tempera paints or oil on canvas – and presents them along with the published cover. What emerges is not only an unusual political and historical documentation of the last fifty years, but a rich cross-section of the stylistic possibilities intrinsic to contemporary applied graphic arts – a genuine subject for a museum, in which graphic design forms one of its core collections.
In 1972, at the legendary documenta V in Kassel, 40 DER SPIEGEL covers were shown; the theme: "Questions of reality – image worlds today." Seen from this vantage point, the cover illustrations have lost none of their topicality as they relate to present-day aesthetics.
A cooperative exhibition between Die Neue Sammlung, State Museum of Applied Arts and Design | Design in the Pinakothek der Moderne – and DER SPIEGEL Verlag. |
