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

Ferenc Csaplár: Kassák the Book and Advertisement Artist

Lajos Kassák, 35 vers (35 Poems) (Budapest: Munka, 1931) Cover, 192x145 mm flags on to the background, and, instead of the original inscription, he placed the following slogan under the composition: "All Power to Adolf Hitler!" This cover design is not only an example of the intellectual link with German montage art but also reflects the fact that political and social propaganda was part and parcel of Kassák's concept of advertising and typography. In the early 1920s, this propaganda had aimed at mobilising for a radical transformation of society, the establishment of a new order to replace the old one. In the second half of the 1920s, upon his return home from exile, Kassák, the advertisement and book designer, sought to work toward common pursuits in the context of the consolidation of the Hungarian political system and economic recovery, such as modernising the Budapest cityscape, developing a business culture, fostering the competitiveness of Hungarian goods, propagating a type of book that is at once available to all and aesthetically pleasing in its typographical form, publicising leftwing cultural organisations and programmes, founding a society for the renewal of the art of book and advertisement design in Hungary, and organising exhibits. With regard to the social utility and necessity of a moral and aesthetic rebirth of advertising, he referred to two examples. One was post-revolutionary Russia: "The formation of this state, which strives toward larger units and a more collective form of organisation, has not abolished advertising, she has only freed it from the claws of private interests bent on booms, making this formerly antisocial force into propaganda that serves the interests of the community. Thus Russian advertising was reborn not only in a moral sense but in artistic significance as well."

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0 And the other example he brought up was Germany: "Having lost the War, Germany quickly realised that the fastest and surest way to regain her political and economic significance was to economise on her production and raise the quality of the goods she produced. Her production is based on scientific considerations, and so are her attempts to gain market positions for her products. Her apparently indestructible instinct to survive and the conscious stress on this instinct is what governs the development of German advertising. An elementary art of advertising has been created for products made with care out of good materials, one with boundless opportunities to develop; advertisements made in this way are in many cases more like social propaganda than a mere hawking of goods that thrives on a buying public that is uninformed and naive in its good will."

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1 With the onset of the Great Depression and the close of economic and political consolidation, the raison d'être of the activities in the art of advertising striving to reform conditions was called into question. Social struggles were intensified and the role of political agitation became more important. The first period of Kassák's activities in the art of book design and advertising that lasted from 1921 to 1933 came to an end with his drawing the cover for a planned publication entitled Munkát, kenyeret! (Give Us Work! Give Us Bread!).

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2 One of the first signs of the interest in and recognition of Kassák's work in the art of book design and advertising was that Gorham B. Munson, the editor of the New York-based magazine Secession, which for a time was being printed in Vienna, asked Kassák to design the cover of its second number. In a departure for the journal and for the industry as a whole, Secession actually introduced the designer of the cover of that July 1922 issue. The text informing American readers of the artist ran as follows: "The cover design is by Ludwig Kassák, a Hungarian Communist and refugee in Vienna. He is the editor of Ma, a publication in tune with those of the advance guard in France, Russia, Germany and America." Sophie Täuber-Arp was so enthusiastic about Ma and Új művészek könyve that she designed a "Kassák memorial" in late 1922.

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3 In the fifth, July 1923 issue of Secession, Gorham B. Munson, in praising Ma, noted its outward appearance: "I recommend as a counterirritant the Hungarian activist review, Ma, edited by Ludwig Kassák. Ma excels in experimental typographical composition."

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4 In May 1924, the Berlin Sturm gallery mounted a Kassák exhibit that also displayed a typographical and an advertisement piece. The latter, a plan for a newsstand, familiar to many by the title The Kiosk appeared not only in the catalogue of the exhibition but also in the July 1924 issue of the magazine Der Sturm - thanks to its editor, Herwarth Waiden, whose interest it had piqued.

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5 Jan Tschichold in his special edition of Typographische Mitteilungen entitled "Elementare Typographie" listed Kassák's magazine, Ma, among those publications "which struggle for a new typography". Ernő Kállai in his Új magyar festészet (New Hungarian Painting) published in 1925 declared the typographical works in Kassák's Constructivist oeuvre as the most significant. He also praised the typographical formation of Ma and Új művészek könyve as outstanding achievements "even by international comparison".

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