Matter, Herbert

Grammar school received in a monastery school in his native Engelberg. In 1925-1927 he studied painting at the School of Fine Arts ( École des Beaux-Arts ) in Geneva and then, from 1828-1929 at the Paris Academy of Modern Art ( Académie de l'Art Moderne ), with Fernand Leger and Amede Ozanfana . After a series of experiments with the camera, G. Matter leaves painting to take up photography. In 1929, he began his career as a graphic designer with the Paris advertising company Deberny & Peignot . Here he also studies the technical side of printing, and also meets Le Corbusier and A. M. Cassander . In 1932, the artist returned to Switzerland and created here a series of advertising posters commissioned by the Swiss Ministry of Transport. These works gained international fame thanks to such an innovation as a combination of printing sheets and photo montage on sheets. In 1938, G. Matter received a paid trip to the USA in payment for performing advertising work for the Swiss ballet ensemble. As a result, he decides to stay in this country. Having met through one of his friends with Alexei Brodovich . Matter with his help signs a contract as a photographer with the famous Harper's Bazaar fashion magazine , and then with the magazines Vogue , “Art and Architecture” Arts & Architecture , “Fortune”, “ Fortune Magazine ” and “ Town and Country ”. during World War II, he also worked as a designer for various private companies.In 1944, Matter received an order from the New York Museum of Modern Art to make a documentary about the life and work of his friend Alexander Calder.This was the first cinematic experience of G. Matter, besides great success. Music for n it was written by John Cage .

In 1952-1978, G. Matter, as a professor, taught graphic design and photography at Yale University . In 1959-1969, he was also an adviser to the Guggenheim Museums in New York and the Fine Arts in Houston. In 1960, Matter began photographing sculptures by Alberto Giacometti . This shooting lasted about 25 years and as a result had a voluminous album out of print after Matter. In the 1950s - 1960s, G. Matter belonged to the elite of New York cultural life. Among his friends should be named Franz Klein , Willem de Kooning , Jackson Pollock , Philip Guston . The first retrospective exhibition of the works of G. Matter was held in 1978 at Yale University. In the same year, an exhibition of his early works from the 1930s was held in Zurich.

Herbert Matter is the founder of the art of photo poster in Switzerland. In the early 1930s, he integrated his photographs as an integral part into advertising posters, which previously had exclusively graphic, hand-drawn forms. The combination of photography and printing was an integral part of his works, his distinctive symbol. At the same time, he always maintained a reasonable balance in the combination of art norms and commercial requirements for his posters. Other topics of interest to him were illustrating magazines and creating cover pages for literature. As a talented photographer, G. Matter in his works captured the work of various artists and sculptors, especially Alberto Giacometti.

• 1943 Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
• 1962 American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), New York
• 1978 Swiss Foundation for Photography at the House of Arts, Zurich (Schweizerische Stiftung für die Photographie im Kunsthaus Zürich)
• 2005 Gallery Beyeler , Basel (Galerie Beyeler, Basel)

• Poets Camera . Studio Publications, New York 1949
• Photographs an Graphic Symbols . The American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York 1961
• Alberto Giacometti . Benteli, Bern 1987
• Hebert Matter FotoGrafiker. Sehformen der Zeit. Das Werk der zwanziger und dreissiger Jahre . Lars Müller, Baden 1995.
• Kurt Blum, Herbert Metter: Two Swiss Artists Encounter Mark Rothko . Galerie Beyeler, Basel 2005.
• Alexander SC Rower (Hrsg.): Calder by Matter: Collector's Edition. Bildband mit Herbert Matters Aufnahmen von Werken Alexander Calders, Cahiers d'Art, Paris 2013.

• 1949 Works of Calder
• 1950–55 The Spirit Moves and Dancing with Mura Dehn

• website about Herbert Matter from the Matter family
• Herbert Matter website from the Swiss Foundation for Photography
• Herbert Matter Historical Posters