CLOSE AD ×

Design Week Mexico dives into the history of Swiss design

Diseño Suizo

Design Week Mexico dives into the history of Swiss design

A major theme throughout this year’s Design Week Mexico, held during the second week of October, was the connection between Mexico and Switzerland. Each year, Design Week chooses a different country to explore design and collaboration. The most prominent portion of this year’s international exchanges is the current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Mexico City, entitled 100 Years of Swiss Design.

As the name would imply, the show gathers 250 objects produced in the past century, producing a survey of one of the world’s most influential design cultures. Included in the show are 210 originals, 21 reprints, 13 special editions and six reproductions, which are augmented by an additional 50 posters and 42 books. The content of the show has been collected from 27 collections of museums and galleries, private companies, and private collectors. The objects range from vegetable peelers and a tea pot to downhill skis and train station clocks.

While many of the objects will be familiar, including chairs by Le Corbusier and knives designed by Max Bill for the Victorinox company, others show a different side of Swiss design. Strikingly, a number of heavily patterned pieces and brightly colored works break the typical image of austere Modern Swiss design. Yet any show about Swiss design would not be complete without the inclusion of the ubiquitous Swiss typefaces, Helvetica, Univers, and Frutiger. The show includes a large wall covered in the dozens of famous logos which have used these Modernist typefaces over the past half century.

100 Years of Swiss Design was originally exhibited at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich in 2014. This latest version of the show has been expanded with the inclusion of work that directly ties together the history of Swiss and Mexican design. Specifically, the show includes works of once–Bauhaus director, Hannes Meyer, who worked in Mexico as director of the Institute of Urban Planning and Planning of the National Polytechnic Institute and the Popular Graphic Workshop. Also included is the more recent work of Yves Béhar, who contributed to a project promoted by the Mexican Secretary of Public Education with eyeglass lens designs for students with vision problems. Adding to the cross-national collection is the work of Mexican designers who worked in Switzerland, including Uzyel Karp and Moisés Hernández.

On view through February 25,2018, 100 Years of Swiss Design was curated by Francisco Torres, and is a collaboration between the Embassy of Switzerland in Mexico, Design Week Mexico, The Ministry of Culture, and the National Institute of Fine Arts, through the Museum of Modern Art.


CLOSE AD ×