Stankowski photos

In the thirties, the painter, photographer and graphic artist Anton Stankowski began establishing a private archive of contact prints featuring all kinds of objects for his applied graphic sheets for the Zurich-based advertising agency Max Dalang.

Influenced by the great designers of his age like Max Burchartz, El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters, Stankowski in his works soon developed an own imagery.

His archive is full of strongly reduced, perhaps terse but often witty images of things seen from unusual perspectives. Stankowski's catalogue of worlds comprises thousands of negative prints.

This immense reservoir first surfaced in the estate of the artist after his death in 1998, the catalogue raisonne published in his lifetime makes no mention of them.

Karl Duschek, Stankowski's Stuttgart-based successor in his studio, chose 180 motifs from the convolute work, which now serve to close this gap.