Modern Lighting of the ’50s

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Alexander Koch

Bernd Dicke

ARNOLDSCHE Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany, 2012, English

Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design

8.2 x 11.5 inches, hardcover, 128 pages, 266 illustrations

ISBN: 9783897903678

Suggested Retail Price: $70.00

From the Publisher. In 1953 the journalist and publisher Alexander Koch published his book Neuzeitliche Leuchten (Lighting in the Modern Era). Nowadays Koch’s then selection of lighting by international designers and manufacturers seems truly visionary.

Koch presents a spectrum of diverse designs, whose origins lay not only in the addition of basic geometrical shapes as with the pre-war avantgardists, but also in the respective temperaments of the different countries of origin. It is very apparent that after the war America, Scandinavia and Italy exerted a strong influence on designs hitherto rather dominated by Bauhaus purism in Germany.

An organic design concept, emancipated from the ideal of a machine and inspired by artists such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Naum Gabo, along with new materials and manufacturing techniques, gave rise to designs with enormous innovative energy. As in architecture, one can also speak of an "international style" with regard to lighting design, whose protagonists are now amongst the designer elite of the twentieth century. Despite the new orientation towards linear, dynamically fl owing forms that cross national borders, diversity within the sculptural appearance of lighting itself remains important as the primary design goal, along with the effect the lighting exudes. The space-defining quality of modern-era lighting has been dedicated its own chapter, in which interiors by figures such as Richard Neutra and Walter Gropius testify to the scenographic potential of the new lighting culture.

More than 250 original images show the design trends of im portant manufacturers from America, Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy. Apart from numerous lesser known designs, one can also see lighting by prominent artists, designers and architects. This new edition of the almost obsolete original book is an indispensable standard work for collectors and modern lighting enthusiasts.

Designers include: Isamu Noguchi (U.S.), Jean Royère (France), Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (Italy), Gino Sarfatti (Italy), Wolfgang Tümpel (Germany), Alexey Brodovich (U.S.), Paavo Tynell (Finland), Franco Buzzi (Italy), Arvid Böhlmarks (Sweden), Herta Witzemann (Germany), Walter Gropius (U.S), and Richard Neutra (U.S.).

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