E. McKnight Kauffer

Caitlin Condell is associate curator and head of the department of Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt. Emily M. Orr is assistant curator of Modern and Contemporary American Design at Cooper Hewitt.

"...a superbly designed and illustrated accompanying book..." —DESIGN OBSERVER"Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890 – 1954) was an American visual artist and designer who was a veritable giant of poster design in the ’20s and ’30s. He spent a lot of time in the United Kingdom, and is perhaps best known for the treasure trove of iconic work he created during his time there. The “poster king” created eye-catching artwork for the likes of the London Underground, Random House, the Great Western Railway, and American Airlines. He also created Allied propaganda posters during WWII. E. McKnight Kauffer: The Artist In Advertising, fresh out from Rizzoli Electa, in association with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, takes a thorough look at his eclectic poster work as well as his theater stages, book covers, costumes, and even rugs. The inventive designer called upon avant-garde artistic movements like Surrealism, Cubism, Impressionism, and Vorticism to inform his ground-breaking work, which seems diverse in style and technique, and is perhaps hard to pin down to any particular signature style as a result. This impressive new hardcover monograph compliments an upcoming exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum on McKnight’s catalog. The layout of the book seems to pay tribute to Kauffer’s unorthodox and modern work with its own unusual layout, something I think works tremendously well here. With over 300 color illustrations, an in-depth storytelling, you get a very strong sense of the somewhat dizzying breadth and scope of the poster king’s virtuosic output." — TYPO-GRAPHICAL.COM