Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)

Ferenc Csaplár: Kassák the Book and Advertisement Artist

des bruits et des odeurs". The typographical composition made out of the letters of the word Dada for the cover of the Hungarian translation of Tristan Tzara's play Gas-Heart has been the most often reproduced emblem of the -ism ever since.

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8 The basic geometric shapes can be seen as the organising principles for various picture-poems and figures made up of letters, words and texts on book cover designs. This also characterises the newspaper collages, which are closely tied to Kurt Schwitters' merz paintings. In some of these collages and compositions created with letters and words, a process that could be called transfunctionalisation can readily be seen. These works give the impression of being works of art, but each one, captioned with a title, becomes an advertising graphic. One of these collages was given the title Ma and another the title Bécsi Magyar Újság ( Vienna Hungarian News).'

9 The title on the cover of the 1 February 1923 issue of Ma can also be traced back to the typographical work of Doesburg. Evidenced in the first title on the cover of De Stijl in 1917, Vilmos Huszár had sought to employ characters wholly constructed of rectangles, i.e. of only horizontals and verticals, so as to have even the characters express the ideals of Constructivism as well as to suggest the characteristics of the Dutch variety of the movement. It would be Doesburg who designed the whole typeface based on this Falak (Walls), 1920, ink, collage on paper, 148x107 mm, Kunsthalle, Nürnberg Ma-Buch. Gedichte von Ludwig Kassák (Berlin: Der Sturm, 1923) Title page, 240x160 mm principle in 1919.

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0 He then created a whole series of advertising graphics with this set of type, for instance the cover of the magazine Klei (1919), the poster Section d'or (1920), the cover design for the book Klassiek-barok-modern (1920).

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1 With Doesburg moving to Weimar, his typeface with all lines of the same width and based on the square and the rectangle, thus representing an absolute version of geometric abstraction, also had an impact on Bauhaus circles, and appeared in Egon Engelin's poster design Kölner Messe,

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2 and in many prints at the Bauhaus exhibition held in August-September 1923: Fritz Schleifer's poster, Joost Schmidt's handout and Paul Häber's post card.

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3 It was half a year before the Bauhaus exhibition that Kassák had designed his own characters M and A using right angles. Their figures resembling buildings, or the structural frames of buildings, give the impression of a Constructivist graphic. The characters M and A constructed at right angles appear again on the cover of the 15 September 1923 issue of his journal, and again and again, in varying proportions and widths, on the covers of further issues.

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4 That Kassák cherished this typeface and thought of it as a typographical realisation of Constructivism is also demonstrated by the fact that he used them for the graphic representation of his magazine and movement in such important works as the title page of the German translation of his volume of poems entitled Ma-Buch, the cover of the book Ma - Ungarische Gruppe published in the Bauhaus-Bücher series, and the poster, invitation card and programme for the Ma evening held in Vienna on 8 May 1926.

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5 He also used it in advertising the Mentor book shop in Budapest, which sought to spread works by avant-garde writers and artists,

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6 or when he designed the cover of the Magyar Grafika (Hungarian Graphic Arts) issue that displayed his work in typography and advertising graphics.

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7 It was presumably from the cover of Ma that the types designed with right angles found their way on to several non-Hungarian avant-garde publications; for example on to the cover of the catalogue for the 1924 Vienna theatre technology exhibition designed by Friedrich Kiesler

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8 as well as on to the cover of the last three issues of the Tokyo avantgarde journal Mavo edited by Tomoyosi Murayama.

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9 This latter case is rather special because only the first syllable of the word Mavo is designed with right angles; in other words, it is the typographical emblem of Kassák's Vienna journal Ma that appears in the title of the Japanese journal. Traces of the intellectual relationship to Dutch Contructivism can be found in certain advertisements of Kassák's as well. On the back covers of the 15 October 1922, the 15 September 1923 and the 1 July 1924 issues of Ma, there appeared a typographical scheme - a rectangular plane divided into smaller squares by horizontal and vertical lines, with the titles of avant-garde sister magazines in these "windows" created by the rectangular division - which recalls similar elements and structural characteristics in the works of Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Vilmos Huszár. Kassák, working as a Constructivist typographer, made use of the possibilities inherent in advertising not only to promote books, but also to propagate ideas. It was thus that he produced his typographical composition with the line "Destroy in order to build, and build in order to triumph" to sum up the views on art and politics he held in the 1920s. In this composition, which appeared in the 25 October 1922 68