Herbert W. Kapitzki

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Gestaltung/Design: Methode Und Konsequenz Ein Biografischer Bericht/Method and Consequence A Biographical Report

Herbert W. Kapitzki

Synopsis:
A chalk-mark on the floor of his life -- that is how Herbert W. Kapitzki sees the notes he has presented here and his selection from the work of half a century. Kapitzki, who was born in Danzig in 1925, soon realized that he would have to seek work in a creative field. The painter Willi Baumeister was the first to draw his attention to the fact that design in the visual sphere cannot be restricted to free art, but that everyday objects used for mutual understanding or better handling of life are no less important as tasks for the designer. These premises served Kapitzki as a guideline for all his output and logically led him to Ulm. The invitation to the Hochschule fur Gestaltung is a crucial reference point in his life. He was greatly challenged by the educational work, and also by coming to terms with the scientific and technical trends of the period, which were focused in Ulm as if by a burning-glass. It was at that time that Kapitzki started to develop his theory of design modernization, and he is still working on and publicizing it today. Kapitzki's practical work as a designer in the field of visual communication made a major contribution to defining the image of the graphic designer, an unknown phenomenon well into the sixties. His poster, catalogue and exhibition designs still provide impressive evidence of this. When the HfG model came to an end for largely political reasons, Kapitzki's appointment to Berlin brought him into the midst of the student unrest of the late sixties. He did crucial work under the most difficult conditions on the merger of the various academies and schools to form the artistic and scientific university institution known as the Hochschuleder Kunste Berlin and still found, as he also had in Ulm, time and energy for important design commissions that are part of design history today.

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Other editions: 1990, 1980