Piet Zwart archival materials digitised
Some 1700 items from the archive of Piet Zwart have recently been digitised. Piet Zwart (1885-1977) was a leading figure in the modernist avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s. He was active as a photographer, architect, interior designer, industrial designer and graphic designer.
2 November 2015
His work operated at the boundaries of different disciplines and was characterised by an unconventional approach. While working in the offices of architects Jan Wils and HP Berlage, Zwart developed mainly as a draughtsman, interior designer and furniture designer. His graphics for clients such as the PTT and the Nederlandse Kabelfabriek Delft (NKF) were unprecedented in their fresh and modern look and attracted international attention. From the 1930s until after the Second World War Zwart worked principally for Bruynzeel developing a standardised kitchen system.
Inspired by El Lissitzky, in 1924 Zwart first used a photogram in a booklet for the NKF. In the second half of the 1920s photography began to play an increasingly important role in his advertising work and in 1929 he began to take his own photographs. The image gallery below contains a small selection of the photographic works in Zwart's archive. Although the archive contains works by other photographers, all these images are believed to have been taken by Zwart himself. They include photographs taken at home, on the beach, in the city centre and during events such as the Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne (CIAM) and during business appointments. The archive has been catalogued but does not yet include a detailed description of each item.