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1984 AIGA MEDAL
The name Lionni conjures many mental references: “The
Family of Man,” Swimmy the fish, Century Schoolbook Expanded,
exotic flora, Olivetti and more, because the man behind the name
has affected our visual “landscape” for almost three generations.
He has been a committed teacher, author, critic, editor, painter,
sculptor, printmaker, designer, cartoonist and illustrator.
Leo Lionni was born in Holland in 1910, into a world on the cusp
of radical change—with cultural and political revolutions in the
air and on the streets. His father was an artisan, a diamond cutter
from a well-to-do Sephardic Jewish family, and his mother was a
singer. Her brother, Piet, an architect, allowed his adoring,
five-year-old nephew to play with his drafting supplies. And two
other uncles, both collectors of modern art (whose extensive
collections are now held by major museums), fed his artistic
inclinations by osmosis. One uncle refused to pay taxes in Holland,
and hence was only able to live in the country six months minus one
day. Part of his collection was stored a Lionni's house, including
Marc Chagall's “Fiddler” which hung outside his bedroom.
At that time, Amsterdam's government was influenced by a
Socialist party whose ideas underpinned a progressive educational
system. “There was great emphasis on nature, art and crafts,”
recalls Lionni. “In an early grade I was taught to draw from a big
plaster cast of an ivy leaf; I remember rendering all of the
shading with cross-hatched lines. There was something magical about
it. I can still draw that leaf today, and probably not better than
I did then.
He was given a permit to draw at the Rijksmuseum where he drew
from casts. ”Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Mondrian, design, architecture,
even music,“ explains Lionni, ”were one big mood to me.
Except for brief periods of artisan enthusiasm, I have denied
cultural hierarchies. Ancient art is as important to me as
contemporary art. Art is as important as design.“
Lionni moved to Philadelphia at 14, and in 1925 was transplanted
again to Genoa, Italy. Unable to get in to a ”classical“ high
school, he was enrolled in a ”commercial“ one (no Greek was taught
in the latter). He learned Italian and became conversant in its
art, literature and poetry. But most significantly, at the age of
16, Lionni discovered Italian politics through his friendship with
Nora Maffi, who later became his wife and lifelong companion.
Nora's father was one of the founders of the Italian Communist
party, and was imprisoned in 1925 by the Fascists. Later he was
placed under house arrest with six live-in Fascist policemen. ”This
was quite a shock, having come from a happy Philadelphia school,
where I played basketball and went to proms. It fell on my head
like a bomb, and conditioned my life enormously.“
Lionni was conscious of wanting to become a graphic designer. He
created signs for ships and produced his own comp advertisements
for Campari, which were presented to Mr. Campari himself. But, most
important, he came under the influence of Futurism, which as a
movement of painting and graphic design was at its height.
By 1921, at the age of 21, Lionni was on the crest of the second
Futurist wave. ”I was living the life of the avant-garde: We had
blue plastic furniture and Breuer chairs.“ He was painting
turbulent abstract pictures typical of the era, but his work had a
flair of its own—so much so that it caught the eye of F.T.
Marinetti, codifier of the Movement, who pronounced the young
Lionni to be 'A great Futurist.'
Thanks to Marinetti's support, Lionni's paintings were exhibited
in shows throughout Italy. On the eve of one such exhibition,
Marinetti received a portentous telegram announcing that the
Bauhaus had been closed by the Nazis. ”We sat up the entire night,“
recalls Lionni, ”and decided to send a telegram back inviting all
the Bauhaus artists to Italy, and offered our homes for them to
stay in indefinitely.“ Not only was Lionni indignant and fearful
about Nazi repression, but the Bauhaus teachings were deeply
seeded—its rational philosophy his true underpinning. ”I never
really felt comfortable as a Futurist, even though Marinetti
proclaimed me to be 'the heir of aero-dynamic painting.' I actually
resented it; I had never even been in an airplane
before. I am really Dutch. I felt closer to DeStijl, and I
responded to the patterns and symmetry of the tulip fields. In
fact, I rarely ever put type or image on angles unless there was a
good reason to do it. My ultimate design influence is the Bauhaus,
although I've never been directly connected with them.“
With the birth of the first of two sons, Lionni decided to move
the family to Milan, the hotbed of the Italian avant-garde. ”We
were the first tenants to live in the first rationally designed
apartment building in Milan. There I made a living doing graphic
design, architectural photography and some advertising with a
friend who was a German refugee.“
Later in Milan, the earliest marriage of easel and applied art
can be traced to ads Lionni did for a wool company, and ad pages
done for Domus magazine. He also began writing
architectural criticism for the renowned magazine,
Casabella. He worked closely with Eduardo Persico, a hero
in anti-Fascist circles, who had a marked influence on Lionni's
writing and design. ”Persico not only edited the magazine, he
'designed' it as well. It never looked more beautiful,“ remembers
Lionni. ”I watched him do layouts that, I would say, reflected
rationalism—and rationalism has been the greatest influence on my
life.“
Lionni soon devoted himself to advertising design, ”simply for
the joy of putting good imagery onto pages,“ he says. He also
attended the University of Genoa, from which he received a
Doctorate degree in Economics in 1935. ”I wrote my dissertation on
the diamond industry, of course,“ he says. ”I finished something
for which I had no real use, but my obsessive necessity to finish
what I begin caused me to do it.“
When a darker specter of Fascism began to shroud Italy, Lionni,
ordered by official decree to declare whether or not he was Aryan,
opted instead to emigrate to the United States. He went to
Philadelphia to N.W. Ayer, the advertising agency which handled the
account for Atlantic Refining Company (the company for whom his
father was working). A fortuitous meeting with Charles Coiner, vice
president and art director, was the beginning of a career and a
friendship. Coiner arranged for Leo to do some ads for Ladies
Home Journal. Later he had Lionni teaching a layout course at
the Charles Morris Prince School. ”At the time I knew nothing about
typography,“ he admits, ”because in Italy all we had to do was
indicate a block of text and the printer would fit in whatever was
on hand.“
The classic break came in the early Forties when N.W. Ayer was
in the throes of crisis with its multimillion dollar Ford Motors
account. Ford was not happy with the new ad proposals. All members
in the creative pool were asked to offer solutions, so Lionni
created a series of ads which were to be scrutinized by Edsel Ford.
Word later came back that Lionni had the job. In one week, he went
from a $50 a week assistant to a $500 a week art director on one of
the largest accounts in the United States. Offers from prestigious
New York agencies followed, but he stayed in Philadelphia until
1947. ”It was the ideal place to be. Where we lived, I could go out
at five o'clock in the morning to fish for trout before going to
work.“ Challenging accounts came his way. Comptometer was one, for
which he commissioned drawings by Saul Steinberg. He hired a
neophyte Andy Warhol to do sketches for Regal Shoes. And for
Chrysler Plymouth, he developed a unique, teaser billboard
presentation, which is still a model of creative marketing.
Among Lionni's most exciting endeavors was being the art
director for the Container Corporation's ”International Series.“ He
returned to his Modernist roots, commissioning Morre, Calder,
DeKooning and others to do posters and ads. For one such project,
Léger, who was then living in New York, was asked to do a painting,
which he did in color. When Lionni showed it to Walter Paepcke, he
was asked if Léger would also do it in black and white as a
newspaper ad. Lionni drew up a copy in line which he showed to
Léger. Seeing the ”rough,“ the painter said 'That's as good as I
would do it,' and signed the Lionni sketch, which was later
printed.
Lionni continued painting, and he took a year off to study and
work on mosaics. But ”in 1948 I started to get restless,“ he
remembers. There was a subtle difference between being an
advertising designer and a graphic designer, and Lionni wanted to
become ”a general practitioner of the arts.“ He left the agency,
moved to New York, and opened a small office. ”I called the
promotion art director at Fortune, whom I had dealt with
in the past, to ask for work. Instead, he told me that
Fortune was looking for an art director and asked if I was
interested.“ While it was an alluring offer, Lionni wasn't looking
for a job. ”I told them I would do it on a freelance
basis, three days a week, and that I wanted an assistant who would
go to all the meetings.“ Fortune readily agreed, and after
a brief trout fishing vacation, Lionni began his 14-year
relationship with Time/Life.
Lionni's feelings for magazine design are profound. Though he
had never designed a magazine before, ”it fit me like an old shoe,
because it brought everything that I had learned with passion to
some kind of concrete manifestation. I employed my rationality in
designing its architecture. As with all the arts I'd been involved
with, I defined exactly what Fortune's limitations
were—what it was and wasn't. That to me is a real Bauhaus
approach.“ Lionni redesigned Fortune two times. In each
case, he eschewed cold functionality for a more human approach. He
introduced Century Schoolbook, his favorite type. ”I don't know
much about type but Century Schoolbook is a human face.“
From its inception, Fortune was known for its
intelligent use of art, both fine and applied. During Lionni's
tenure, painters were encouraged to do illustrations and picture
essays, and illustrators were commissioned as graphic
journalists—not as renderers of proscribed imagery, but free to
draw upon and interpret firsthand experiences. Lionni urged artists
”to do things which they were not accustomed to doing.“ Hence, many
young talented practitioners, and quite a few masters of the pen
and brush received globe-trotting assignments. Today many artists
credit the nurturing Lionni as a seminal influence.
Lionni consulted with Henry Luce on many Time/Life projects,
including a prototype design for Sports Illustrated. He
also maintained outside clients, including The Museum of Modern
Art, for whom he did The Family of Man catalogue design, and as
design director for Olivetti, he did ads, brochures and
environmental (showroom) design. Also in the realm of the third
dimension, Lionni deigned the American Pavilion at the Brussels
World's Fair. Sponsored by Fortune and titled ”Unfinished
Business,“ it was a long tunnel in which were shown images
representing the unresolved problems of American society.
Ironically, it was abruptly closed after a visiting Congressman
objected to its controversial negative focus.
Perhaps the most satisfying accomplishment of Lionni's career
was his short tenure as co-editor and art director of
Print. During the mid-Fifties, he elevated graphic design
commentary and criticism, offering a platform for varying
disciplines and points-of-view. He opened up the design
community—then as now polarized between the classicists and the
modernists—to possibility and invention, through in-depth coverage
of international trends and national currents. Print was
an example of Lionni's rationalism in the service of his colleagues
and his art. ”I've looked back on those issues,“ he says proudly,
”and they are very civilized.“
The notion of creating ”civilized and human“ art became Lionni's
obsession. After all his tangible accomplishments, ”I felt the only
way I could really reach my goal was by doing painting, sculpture,
writing and graphics the way I wanted to do it.“ His professional
career, except for the few found moments to study mosaics, had been
in the service of others. ”Everything I had done was a happy
compromise that I've never felt ashamed of in the least.“
But the time had come for movement. At 50 years old, at the peak
of his endeavors, Lionni left Time/Life. He moved to Italy where he
owned a house and life was less expensive. ”Everyone thought I was
crazy because I had very little money, but it was what I needed to
do.“
Lionni's fate, however, was not sealed by a seemingly irrational
act, for just before he was ready to leave on his new adventure, a
remarkable accident took place while he was riding on a commuter
train with his grandchildren. To entertain them, he tore little
bits of colored papers from Life magazine and made a
magical story. Lionni returned home, he placed what he'd done into
a book dummy. Fabio Coen, who had just become children's book
editor of Obolensky Inc., published it as ”Little Blue and Little
Yellow,“ and Lionni became a picture book author. Now with 30 books
to his credit, and a 75th birthday anthology that will be published
this year, he is a household name among parents and children. For
Lionni, the children's book is an organic synthesis of all his
talents, beliefs and obsessions, wedding as it does his artistic
sense of humor, color and abstraction with the desire to teach.
Bruno Bettelheim states in an introduction to the recent anthology
that Lionni ”is an artist who has retained his ability to think
primarily in images, and who can create true picture books.“ And he
continues: ”It is the true genius of the artist which permits him
to create picture images that convey much deeper meaning than what
is overtly depicted.“
Despite his resolution to devote himself to painting and
sculpture, Lionni agreed when Time/Life contacted him in Italy to
become editor/art director of Panorama, a monthly general
interest magazine, a collaboration between Time/Life in New York
and Mondadori in Milan. He enjoyed being in charge, and hence
published some extraordinary work. Yet the position was fraught
with ”political“ problems from the outset. ”Mondadori couldn't
understand why Time/Life installed a impaginatore (layout
man) as the editor of an important magazine,“ Lionni ruefully
recalls, ”and after a year and a half I was replaced, the American
collaboration ceased, and the magazine was turned into a weekly,
now one of the highest circulation journals in Italy.“
From that time on, Lionni has taken advantage of his freedom.
Living in Italy six months of the year, he continues to expand the
boundaries of the children's book, while exploring the natural
world through his drawings and sculpture. In recent years, he has
cast in bronze a garden of strange flora, which was derived from
his imagination. In 1977, he published ”parallel Botany,“ a satiric
documentary account of his bizarre botanical discoveries.
Lionni has left an impressive mark. As an art director at N.W.
Ayer, he wedded fine art to applied art. As co-editor of
Print, he elevated the level of graphic design criticism.
As art director of Fortune, he launched the careers of
many formidable practitioners. As a children's book author and
artist, he has engaged the minds and hearts of several generations.
His own graphic endeavors are enlivened by youthful innocence,
sage-like logic and humor. His astute essays on the teaching and
practice of graphic design are invaluable additions to the lexicon
of the field. Moreover, in word and deed, he has been an
unfaltering rationalist, a devout humanist and a passionate
artist.
Copyright 1984 by The American Institute of Graphic
Arts.
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