Art as a mirror of the times
The focus of the new series “Poster art” is on historic posters and their designers. We are kicking it off with a poster designed by the Hungarian graphic designer and author Gitta Mallász.
Gitta (full name Margit) Mallász (1907–1992) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where she met Hanna Dallos. Together with Hanna and Hanna’s husband Joszef Kreutzer, she founded a successful atelier, where, among other things, they worked together on designing advertising posters for the tourist industry. Their circle of friends also included Lili Strausz, who, like Dallos and Kreutzer, was of Jewish descent. In her book “Talking with Angels”, Mallász, the only one of the group to have survived the war, subsequently moving to France, published the spiritual conversations and experiences that the four friends shared during the Nazi occupation. In recognition of her saving hundreds of Jewish women and children in Budapest, she was posthumously honoured as “Righteous among the Nations” by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Center Yad Vashem.
Posters illustrate how graphic design transitions between art, communication and advertising. They not only send a message but also reflect the spirit of the particular era. During her younger years, Gitta Mallász was a successful swimmer, and this fits well with the poster entitled “Döblinger Strandbad” from 1927. A public swimming bath was once located at the given address, with the sign “Entrance to the baths” on the building’s façade still reminding us of this. The poster is taken from the Vienna City Library’s poster collection.
