30 Jahre Plakat Kunst

The great tradition of poster art in Basel began around the turn of the twentieth century and was noted for such distinguished names as Burkhard Mangold, Niklaus Stocklin, Peter Birkhäuser, Donald Brun, Herbert Leupin, and others, who received their training in Basel and worked there for Swiss and foreign clients. Surprisingly enough, with the exception of Burkhard Mangold and Donald Brun, none of these poster designers taught at the AGS in Basel, an institution which had evolved out of a drafting school for craftsmen, founded in 1796. In 1946 Armin Hofmann was hired, first as a replacement teacher, from 1950 on as a teacher of graphic arts and in 1968 as head of the specialist class for graphic arts, of the advanced training class and of the School of Design. This is the story of what happened next as it covers thirty years of Baselian posters made in the 1950s into the 1980s.