CASSANDRE Adolphe Mouron

French ( 1901 - 1968 )

A.M. Cassandre was a painter, commercial poster artist, typeface designer, and stage designer. Born in 1901 in Charkov, Ukraine, his real name was Adolphe Jean Édouard-Marie Mouron but he used the pseudonym A.M. Cassandre from 1923. A.M. Cassandre went to Paris in 1915, studying painting at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. For a while he worked as a student at the Hachard & Co. press. In the 1920s A.M. Cassandre belonged to avant-garde circles; his friends included Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and the composer Erik Satie. A.M. Cassandre earned a reputation as the designer of bold, stringently geometric posters in the Art déco style. He received his first commission for a large poster rom the Paris furniture store Au Bûcheron in 1923. Then, he designed hundreds of posters, among them posters for the apéritif Pivolo (1924), the newspaper L'Intransigeant (1925), and Pernod (1934). Near 1930, he worked for the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Nord and for the italian railroad company and several passenger steamship lines, A.M. Cassandre designed posters in a stringently Constructive formal language that pays obvious tribute to the power of the machine. A.M. Cassandre posters make their impact through the emphasis laid on typography and over the years A.M. Cassandre developed the typefaces Bifur (1929), Acier (1930), Acier noir (1936), and Cassandre (1968). In 1930 A.M. Cassandre joined forces with Charles Loupot and Maurice Moyrand to found Alliance Graphique Internationale, an advertizing studio that existed until 1934. In 1934 A.M. Cassandre taught at the École des Arts Décoratifs and had his own art school until 1935. Between 1936 and 1939 A.M.Cassandre lived in New York, where he freelanced as a commercial artist. Alexey Brodovitch commissioned several covers for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar from A.M. Cassandre. In 1939 A.M. Cassandre returned to Paris, where he continued to work as a graphic designer, also designed stage sets, and again turned to painting. In 1963 A.M. Cassandre designed the Yves Saint Laurent monogram. He died in Paris in 1968 Source ketterer kunst