Being a Graphic Artist | Kunstmuseum Luzern

Bold Original Typographic Poster by Jacques Plancherel (1926 – 2011), created on the occasion of the exhibition 1957 at the Kunstmuseum Luzern on the essence of the profession of a graphic artist.

As a practitioner himself, Plancherel had the utmost interest in the exhibition (conceived by Gottfried Honegger-Lavater): As a – how could it be otherwise – a former student of Ernst Keller in Zurich, he was appointed in 1953 at the mere age of 27 to the then sleepy Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts to take over the management of the graphics department. There, as a former student recalled, he found a monastery-like atmosphere in which each drawn stroke was a world event and gave rise to profound reflections on art.

Plancherel’s focus was therefore not to teach design per se (“There is no doubt that a graphics student can design; after all, he has talent” he used to say) than to educate students to be independent, to be sensitive to perceive changes in the spirit of the time and to create the conditions to survive in the free market economy.

on display at the Righini | Fries Foundation until mid-July as part of the exhibition on the graphic artist duo Beno Blumenstein and Jacques Plancherel