Piet Zwart (1885-1977)

Piet BLACK (Zaandijk 1885 - Voorschoten 1977)

Piet Zwart owes his fame mainly to his design of the Bruynzeel kitchen in 1938 and to his progressive graphic designs for companies such as the PTT and the Nederlandsche Kabelfabriek. He worked as an interior designer, industrial designer, advertising typographer, photographer, critic and teacher and in all these capacities played an important role in the Dutch design climate of the twentieth century. Due to his versatility and his influence on current designers, the Professional Organization of Dutch Designers named him 'Designer of the Century' in 2000. Piet Zwart preferred to call himself a form engineer or form technician than a designer. He believed in functionality, standardization and machine production and profiled himself as one of the first industrial designers in the Netherlands. In his view, a design had to take into account ergonomics and user-friendliness as well as mass production. The kitchen he designed for the Bruynzeel company in 1938 is a good example of this. The same urge to innovate can be recognized in Piet Zwart's graphic work. His designs are sleek and functional, but at the same time have a playful character. A ?group man? was not Black. He was not part of the Amsterdam School and De Stijl, but was influenced by them. At the same time, he focused on the international avant-garde, especially Russian constructivism. In the 1920s, when Piet Zwart started working for the progressive Nederlandsche Kabelfabriek in Delft, he was able to experiment freely with large and small letters, lines, circles and grids for the first time. He made use of alliterations, the visual effect of letterforms, repetitions and combinations of numbers and letters. In this way he created a completely unique and new style that has a great influence to this day. Zwart soon also incorporated photos in his advertising printed matter. His photographic work is also characterized by a businesslike approach, a preference for lines and surfaces and a special eye for detail. In addition to advertising photography, for a while he took pictures of surface structures of wood, metal and textiles and close-ups of organically grown forms. Often these photos have an almost mechanical element of repetition, which shows Zwart's great admiration for structure and balance. His work is now collected by museums at home and abroad. The following museums/institutions have work in their collection: Fotomuseum The Hague, The Hague, National Glass Museum Leerdam, Leerdam, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, The Hague/Scheveningen, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.