STAMFORD — Famous in his native Germany as one of the most distinctive and prolific graphic designers of the post-war period, Anton Stankowski was a photographer and visual artist who insisted on the interrelationship of the applied and fine arts in every aspect of his oeuvre.
Trained in the mid twenties at the Folkwangschule—a Bauhaus-like progressive art school in Essen—as a photographer and typographer, Stankowski developed a formal vocabulary based in the constructivist style of abstraction and composition. His drawings and paintings from this period reveal the influence of artists such as Russian constructivist El Lissitzky and the collage technique of Kurt Schwitters, while his photographs feature the unusual angles, radical perspectives, interest in industry and products, and technical experimentation of pioneers such as Alexander Rodchenko, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and even Man Ray. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, while working in Max Dalang’s design agency in Zurich, Stankowski created a stock image bank from his photographs of people, places, and objects. After the revocation of his Swiss residency permit in 1934, Stankowski was forced to return to Germany. In 1940, at the age of 34, he was drafted into the German army, sent to the Eastern Front, and became a prisoner of war in Russia, until he was released in 1948. In 1951, Stankowski restarted his career in Stuttgart and became a celebrated designer of corporate logos, graphic identities, and posters, with clients ranging from the Deutsche Bank to the 1972 Munich Olympics.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Stankowski decided to focus exclusively on making art, revisiting and reworking earlier compositions and motifs into paintings, drawings, and silkscreen prints. He began to also exhibit his photographs alongside his paintings and increasingly in dedicated exhibitions that celebrated his pioneering work as a photographer in the 1920s and 1930s. Stankowski never printed his photographs in editions; instead, those printed from the 1930s through the 1950s were working objects, printed as source material for advertisements and graphic compositions. Later, from the 1970s onwards, he produced exhibition prints for his increasing exhibition activity. While generally not in editions and often not in standard sizes or formats, Stankowski printed and signed all of his own photographs during his lifetime.
On view until October 15th, 2025 Saturday and Sunday, 12pm - 5pm and by appointment.
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