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 PORTRAITS DETAILS;)
In 1951 five graphic artists, two Swiss and three French, founded AGI. |
By 1950, there was a great deal of curiosity amongst the surviving designers - especially in Europe - as to what their colleagues had been doing in the intervening ten years. A few of the European designers who had made a name for themselves before the war, wondered what had happened to their colleagues in other countries. This curiosity led to a meeting of, at first, some Swiss and French designers who had known each other's work but had never met face to face. It concerned not only their mutual work but also a natural interest to meet and know personally the people behind the work. At the suggestion of the Swiss publisher Alfred Girardelos, who had lived in Paris for the past 40 years, Heiri Steiner from Switzerland established contact between Jean Picart Le Doux, Jacques Nathan Garamond and Jean Colin from France and Fritz Bühler and Donald Brun from Switzerland. The idea of the AGI was born as it was thought such an association would be timely and welcome so that the best known designers in many countries could meet each other and possibly organize joint exhibitions of their work. Thus, in 1951, the decision was taken to form such an 'Alliance Graphique Internationale' and a few designers were invited to join from France and Switzerland, then from Great Britain and also from Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and eventually the USA and Germany. Statutes were discussed, drafted and finalized according to French and international legal requirements, a process which took quite a long time. The first legal headquarters were in Paris and Jean Picart Le Doux became the AGI's first president, Fritz Bühler and FHK Henrion the vice presidents, Jacques Nathan Garamond treasurer and Jean Colin general secretary. Cathy, Nathan Garamond's wife, acted as general factotum during the first years, when she carried the burden of satisfying the many legal and business requirements, which the establishment of a new association, especially in France, seemed to entail. She provided the energy, the perseverance and the necessary good humour to do this job - qualities which the early AGI members did not seem to possess to the same degree. These prolonged efforts eventually resulted in the issue of the first AGI statutes. Her hard work and devotion were later recognized by voting her an honorary vice president for life. FHK Henrion, AGI annals 1989 |
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