Anton Stankowski - Professional Career

Professional Career

1929 Stankowski moved to Zurich, where he worked at the renowned advertising studio of Max Dalang. This is where he developed ‘constructive graphic art’ with his new photo- and typographic view. His friends in Zurich Richard Paul Lohse, Heiri Steiner, Hans Neuburg, as well as Hans Coray, Hans Fischli, Herbert Matter, Ernst A. Heiniger, Verena Loewensberg, Max Bill and others formed a cultural circle. During these years Stankowski completed his famous ‘Theory of Design’ in which he worked out fundamental forms of expression.

1934 he had to leave Switzerland due to the withdrawal of his official work permit and, after staying in Lörrach in 1938, he came to Stuttgart where he worked as a freelance graphic designer. 1940 he joined the forces and became prisoner of war until 1948. After returning, he worked for the ‘Stuttgarter Illustrierte’ as editor, graphic designer and photographer.

1951 he established his own graphic design studio on the Killesberg in Stuttgart. With Willi Baumeister, Max Bense, Walter Cantz, Egon Eiermann, Mia Seeger and others a new cultural circle developed. He taught in Ulm at the College of Design. His work on the graphic design field for IBM, SEL etc., especially his ‘functional graphic designs’ are exemplary.

In the 1960’s he created the now legendary ‘Berlin layout’, the city’s visual identity, as well as the word trademarks IDUNA and VIESSMANN. 1969–1972 Anton Stankowski was chairman of the Committee for Visual Design for the Olympic Games in Munich.

The 1970’s saw the creation of famous signmarks, such as the one for the Deutsche Bank., the Münchner Rückversicherungen, REWE and and Olympic Congress Baden-Baden. In the meantime a multitude of further sign- and workmarks, or visual identities respectively, have been developed. For Anton Stankowski there was no separation between free and applied art. Many of his photographic and painterly works flow into his functional graphic design. From the mid 1970’s onwards he increasingly turns to painting. His painterly oeuvre from the late 1920's to the late 1990's shows a continuity of constructive-concrete art. The exhibitions from 1928 onwards in the fields of graphic art, painting and photography point out the same way.

1976 the land of Baden-Wurttemberg confers on him a professorship, and Anton Stankowski, who is seen as a pioneer of graphic design, receives innumerable awards and tributes, the most recent being the Molfenter Award of the City of Stuttgart in 1991.

By 1980, Stankowski had produced a volume of trademarks for clients in Germany and Switzerland. In 1983, he established the Stankowski Foundation to award others for bridging the domains of fine and applied art. Like Stankowski himself. Following his death in December 1998, the German Artist Federation awarded Anton Stankowski the honorary Harry Graf Kessler Award for his life work.

Stankowski's work is noted for straddling the camps of fine and applied arts by synthesising information and creative impulse. He was inspired by the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Malevich and Kandinsky. Stankowski advocated graphic design as a field of pictorial creation that requires collaboration with free artists and scientists.