For over 12 years now, Pierre Mendell’s opera posters have adorned billboards and repeatedly created exciting highlights in downtown Munich. On the occasion of the 2006 Opera Festival Die Neue Sammlung is devoting a special show in the light-filled wintergarden of the Pinakothek der Moderne to this highly diverse and entertaining topic.
Pierre Mendell, born in 1929, has won countless international awards for his oeuvre – and the work of this graphic designer has focused on two international cultural institutions: Die Neue Sammlung (the State Museum of Applied Arts and Design in Munich), for whom he has created posters year-in year-out since 1980 and whose corporate identity he likewise devised until 2003, and the Bavarian State Opera, for whom he has worked in a similar capacity since 1993.
Good graphic design stands out for the intellectual approach behind it: stringent, minimalized, always vibrant, never claiming to be something it is not. In this vein, Pierre Mendell has developed a style that is truly his own, yet flexibly adapts to the respective task and thus does great justice to the respective themes. For this reason, his posters are as simple as they are convincing, and thus withstand the test of time.

An exhibition in cooperation with Bayerische Staatsoper on the occasion of the Münchner Opern-Festspiele (Munich Opera Festival) 2006

Exhibition catalogue in German and English. Lars Müller Publishers, CH-Baden. Design: Pierre Mendell, Munich. € 25,00.

Pierre Mendell Design Studio
Bayerische Staatsoper