Letters from the Avant-Garde

Letters from the Avant-Garde presents designs for businessephemera -- including stationery, envelopes, postcards, andbusiness cards -- created by F.T. Marinetti, AndréBreton, Herbert Bayer, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky, Mies van der Rohe,Jan Tschichold, Ladislav Sutnar, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and many others.

Working in Europe and the U.S. between 1909 and 1950, these designers usedprinted stationery to project the public identities of avant-gardemovements to an international community, disseminating modernist theoryand practice around the globe via the postal service. Letters from theAvant-Garde features over 150 illustrations, in color and black andwhite, of printed ephemera from the collections of Elaine Lustig Cohen andother sources. Letters from the Avant-Garde is an invaluableresource for all those interested in graphic design, typography, and thehistory of modernism.

Critical essays show how artists and designers mobilized the techniques ofcommercial communication to promote their ideals and ambitions. Gatheredtogether for the first time, the materials presented in this book aretypographic self-portraits of the most influential people and institutionsin the development of modern design.