“‘A Poster Has to Be Joyous’. The Energy and Enthusiasm of Willem Sandberg”, 2016-07-11 (; backlinks; similar):
Born in 1897, Sandberg studied art in Amsterdam before travelling around Europe where he met and learned from printers, artists and teachers, including Johannes Itten, Naum Gabo and Otto Neurath. Upon returning to Amsterdam he became involved with the Stedelijk Museum, initially as a designer and later as curator of modern art from 1937–4194183ya. It is after this period that the Second World War became a defining factor in his life. I have, in previous drafts of this piece, tried to summarise his involvement in the conflict, but he did more than is possible to do justice to here. Suffice to say, many items in the Stedelijk collection, not to mention Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and the collection of Van Gogh’s heirs, probably owe their survival to his resistance efforts. Others, such as Simon Garfield, have written about his wartime achievements. I recommend this piece by Mafalda Spencer, my old tutor and daughter of Herbert Spencer, who was one of Sandberg’s pen pals. (Their correspondence, which Mafalda has inherited, is featured in this exhibition.)
After the war Sandberg was made director of the Stedelijk and oversaw hundreds of exhibitions during his 18 years in the role. Throughout this period he carried on designing the catalogues and posters that feature in this exhibition…Among Sandberg’s wartime experience was the period he spent on the run from the Nazis, from 1943 until the end of the war. While in hiding, Sandberg wanted to occupy himself and decided to create a series of small booklets, each ranging 20–60 pages. It is in making these that he seems to have refined what would later be the style he used for the majority of his design work at the Stedelijk. The booklets, which he called experimenta typographica, were filled with illustrations of inspirational quotes, which Sandberg took from great thinkers and other designers…The posters don’t really establish any sense of a coherent identity in the way that a modern designer might be driven to do these days. There isn’t really any consistency in layout, the typefaces chosen to spell out the Stedelijk’s name vary widely and while the use of red in each poster is a constant, it’s not always the same shade. But they do fulfil the criteria for Stedelijk posters of the time that Sandberg himself drew up:
a poster has to be joyous
red has to be in every poster
a poster has to provoke a closer look, otherwise it doesn’t endure
with a respect for society, designer and director both are responsible for the street scene, a poster does not only have to revive the street, it also has to be human
every poster has to be an artwork