The Masters Series: Heinz Edelmann

October 24 - December 3, 2005

Opening Reception:Monday, October 24, 6 - 8pm

School of Visual Arts (SVA) honors Heinz Edelmann, one of the leading art directors, illustrators and designers of our time, with its Masters Series Award and retrospective exhibition.

The exhibition will include over 100 posters, screen prints, magazine spreads, book designs, animations and comic books spanning Edelmann’s prolific career. His work is internationally known, and he has been actively working in Germany, England and the Netherlands since the late ‘50s, doing design, illustration, advertising and animation. Unlike many designers working today, Edelmann has never made a clear distinction between the role of the designer and the role of the illustrator, and the majority of his designs for books, magazines and posters use his own illustrations. He was always a solo operation with no assistants, and was able to create a new technique or style for each job, depending upon its needs. “I was always a one-man band” says Edelmann, “I was my own art director, illustrator, designer and paster-uper and I also swept the floor and made the coffee.”

Edelmann is best known for his work on the 1968 animated feature film, Yellow Submarine, where he is credited as art director but was also closely involved in creating the characters and developing the story itself. The film was built around 12 Beatles’ songs, with a special look given to each song, incorporating some of the latest graphic techniques. The playful use of bright colors and forms and the integration of mixed media, created innovative, even risky, results. The unusual aesthetic approach, coupled with the Beatles’ music, made Yellow Submarine an instant hit and it went on to influence the animation industry, if not Western society.

Edelmann is also well known for, among other things, the posters he created for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk German radio station, the book covers he designed for Klett-Cotta publishing house in Stuttgart and his illustrations for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung magazine and Willy Fleckhaus’ magazine Twen. He has won numerous medals and awards and has had several solo exhibitions in Europe, the U.S. and Japan.

Edelmann was born in 1934 in the former Czechoslovakia and he currently resides in Amsterdam. He studied art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf, at a time when graphic design was not really being taught. In addition to his many artistic pursuits, Edelmann has taught at various art schools throughout Europe for over 30 years, most recently at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts in Germany.

Exhibition

The Masters Series: Heinz Edelmann