“Avant-Garde” highlights the advent of the poster and the beginnings of graphic design as an independent design discipline: between the wars, photography, typography and visual abstraction were at the heart of the poster; based on the reform movements at the turn of the century and the various “isms” in art after 1900, it became both a refl ection of innovative design ideas and an expression of the zeitgeist and its radical socio-political utopias.

Posters served as a medium for propaganda and education, promoted new products and technical achievements, encouraged new discussions about “Neues Bauen und Wohnen” (new building and living) and attracted people to photography, film and advertising exhibitions. Both the traditional concept of art and the conventional role of artists were questioned. A rational, sober approach that rejected all individualism became a commitment to universal modernism and confi dently demanded a new way of seeing.

Posters of Russian constructivism by El Lissitzky or Valentina Kulagina held their own alongside art deco posters by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre or Jean Carlu. Jan Tschichold, Herbert Matter and Maja Allenbach experimented with photography in very different poster genres. It came to a temporary end with the totalitarian movements around 1935 – but its inspirations continue to have an impact today.