Gefesselter Blick: capturing the eye, 1930

February 1930 saw the publication of Gefesselter Blick, edited by Heinz and Bodo Rasch and the Ring Neue Werbegestalter (Circle of New Advertising Creators), featuring the work of the best German, Swiss, Czech and Dutch graphic artists, Kurt Schwitters and Jan Tschichold, including Lissitsky, Moholy-Nagy, Max Bill and Max Burcharz, as well as John Heartfield, whose photomontages were a hit with the German Communist magazine AIZ. Most of these designers were members of the Ring, promoting the “New Typography” advocated by Tschichold. The latter endeavored to develop the principles of “typo-photo”, omnipresent in the pages of Gefesselter Blick, through the best examples of press advertisements, title pages, posters, commercial and industrial brochures, etc.

The Ring organized twenty-two exhibitions across Europe between 1928 and 1931. It’s worth noting that neither Herbert Bayer nor Joost Schmidt were among them — although Bauhaus typographers were not to be outdone in terms of publications and exhibitions — and that Cassandre was the only Frenchman invited from 1931 onwards. The numerous Ring exhibitions, as well as those devoted to photomontage and the new photographic vision, were in full swing in Germany at the turn of the 1930s, often associating the same protagonists. The most famous of these, Photo-Auge, had an international scope and was the subject of a major catalog edited by Franz Roh and designed by Tschichold. French artists such as Roger Parry and Maurice Tabard were also invited to take part.

Document: Heinz and Bodo Rasch, Gefesselter Blick, Stuttgart, 1930.

Reprinted in facsimile by Lars Müller, 1996.

Archives Signes.