Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)
Ferenc Csaplár: Kassák the Book and Advertisement Artist
that one of the four texts contained in the publication made for the exhibit, "The Photomontage", was by Kassák. 8 4 Another example of his standing at the time is the dispute over his cover designs for Korunk. This Kolozsvár journal appeared with pictorial architectures of squares, titles and rules of varying colour on the cover of each issue from January to April 1929. Succumbing to the objections of readers and authors - notably those of Zoltán Fábry - the editors, László Dienes and Gábor Gaál, removed Kassák's composition made up of coloured squares from the cover of the journal, beginning with the May issue. 8 5 Fábry had argued that it was a mistake to place an abstract geometric figure on the cover of a journal open to all questions and problems of society. The Ring „neue werbegestalter" (New Advertisement Designers' Circle) initiated by Kurt Schwitters in December 1927 had been counting on the co-operation of Kassák in launching mutual undertakings from the end of 1928. On the proposition of a Dutch member, Paul Schuitema, the group was planning to publish an international journal of advertising in Holland from the spring of 1929. Its foreign editors were to have been Lissitzky in Russia, Schwitters in Germany, Karel Teige in Czechoslovakia, and Kassák in Vienna. Schuitema and Schwitters had thought that Kassák was still living in Vienna at the time. According to Schuitema's concept, each foreign editor, including Kassák, would have edited two issues of the journal annually. Short of money, plans for the magazine never materialised. 8 6 However, Kassák participated in the international advertisement graphics exhibition in Berlin in the spring of 1929. As part of the exposition in the halls of the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek, which opened on 20 April 1929, an introductory collection demonstrated the aims and development of avant-garde typography. One of the exhibits was Új művészek könyve. According to the intentions of Moholy-Nagy, who arranged the collection, the cover designed by Kassák and the cover pages of an issue of Veshch and Stavba were meant to illustrate that in avant-garde typography, characters might become independent elements of form and that compositions are characterised by a withdrawal from centred axial structuring. 8 7 What Kassák sent from Budapest in response to Schwitters' invitation, and what was in fact included in the collection demonstrating the current state of the new typography, cannot be determined today, as the exhibition prospectus only listed the names and addresses of the participants. 8 8 These Berlin exhibits of Kassák were displayed again at the "Der neue Druck - Das schöne Buch" ("The New PrintingThe Beautiful Book") exhibit held in the halls of the Magdeburg Ausstellungsgebäude am Adolf-Mittag-See in the same year, as part of a special collection called "Neue Typographie" ("New Typography") arranged by Schwitters and his colleagues. 8 9 By way of the exhibitions arranged by the Schwitters-led circle, these works by Kassák were then displayed at the Essen Folkwang Museum in September of the same year, and to the Basel Museum of Applied Arts in March 1930. 9 0 Kassák's stature as an advertising graphic artist was also demonstrated by the fact that Schwitters proposed that his fellow artist in Budapest, together with Karel Teige, Johannes Molzahn, Moholy-Nagy, Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg, and Herbert Bayer, should be elected as regular members of the Ring " neue werbegestalter". In his letter to the decision-makers, he wrote as follows: "In my opinion, men like Teige, Kassák, Molzahn, Moholy, Lissitzky, Doesburg, and Bayer ought to be members of our society." 9 1 We know neither what the fate of the proposal was nor the results of the election. A few months later, Kassák participated in a new initiative organised by Schuitema and Schwitters, an international advertising art exhibit at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum which opened on 20 June. 9 2 In 1974, the exhibits displayed here were bequeathed to The Hague Gemeentemuseum from the estate of Schuitema. 93 This was how two prints, the posters entitled Új magyar regény and Munka, 9 4 from among the material sent to the Amsterdam exhibition were preserved. They are the only surviving copies known. A few weeks after the Amsterdam exhibition, in August, 1931, a number of Kassák's works were displayed at the world exhibit on the art of book design presented at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Reporting on the event, the poet Miklós Radnóti designated Kassák and the other Hungarian participants "the moderns of the Salon". 9 5 In a sentence depicting the mood, Radnóti wrote: "Serious and forlorn, Picasso and company listen to the plans of Kassák and his associates in the halls of the Palais des Beaux-Arts." It was after an interval of almost a decade and a half that Kassák returned to advertising graphics as the typographer of his new journal Alkotás (Creation) 9 6 and in designing the covers and bindings of his books which appeared again from the mid-1950s. Almost all of these works refer back to one or another characteristic of the avant-garde typography and art of the period after 1920. The fully lowercase title of Alkotás and the similarly lowercase title of the book Kassák irodalma és festészete (Kassák's Writing and Painting) 97 recall the titles of Munka and the Bauhaus typography with no capitals, even though the title of Alkotás did not employ the sans serifs preferred by Bauhaus. The innovation of Rodchenko and Lissitzky, the repetition of a word, as a typographical device that determined the whole composition, had already appeared on the title page of Tisztaság könyve and on the cover designed for the May-June 1928 issue of Magyar Grafika. Now, after several decades, Kassák designed the cover of A tölgyfa levelei (Oak Leaves) using this method. 9 8 The covers of the new edition of Missilió királysága (Missilló's Kingdom) and Vagyonom és fegyvertáram (My Fortune and My Arsenal) with their horizontal and vertical lines forming rectangles in various colours reflect the world of the works of Dutch Constructivists. 9 9 This was also evoked by the assemblage of light grey squares enclosed within a black structure on the cover of the new edition of Munkanélküliek (The Unemployed).™ 0 The geometric composition on the cover of the novel Egy lélek keresi magát (A Spirit in Search of Itself) is a late descendant of Kassák's lino cuts of the 1920s. 10 1 With the circle at its centre, a basic form of Supremacism appeared again. It was a novelty that the covers of the volumes of short stories Marika énekelj! (Marika, Singf) and Mélyáram (Deep Current) were decorated with calligraphy, 10 2 as was the white cover of Mesterek köszöntése (A Tribute to Masters).' 0 3 The idea that the cover graphic of the volume of poems Szerelem, szerelem (Ah, Love) contained both abstract and 80
