Designing Through the Wall: Cyan in the 1990s
June 20–October 6, 2019
Born in East Berlin, Detlaf Fiedler and Daniela Haufe started the commercial graphic design agency Cyan soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. They would go on to become some of the first poster artists to utilize early desktop publishing tools like Photoshop and QuarkXPress into their work, while also looking back and drawing from the intellectual history of the famous Bauhaus art academy.
Cyan expands upon Germany’s rich history as a leader in the printmaking world, their posters bursting with saturated colors, perfectly-executed text, and a precision of alignment few could replicate. They turn the tenets of “good design” on their head, proving that advertising does not necessarily need to be immediately interpretable to be successful. This Jewel Box show presents their early posters for the first time in New York City.
- Curator
- Angelina Lippert
- Exhibition Design
- Ola Baldych
- Located
- Jewel Box Gallery
- Visitor Information
- Allot approximately 15 min
- Parental Guidance
- Classic nudes
- Audio Guide
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- Share this Exhibition
Selected Artworks
Magmec Berlin, 1991
Bobeobi, 1996
Bauhaus Program März, 1996
Bauhaus Program Januar Februar, 1993
Bauhaus Program Mai, 1996
Bauhaus Program März Apri, 1995
Experimental Studio Dessau Nord, 1992
Bauhaus Program Juli August, 1994
About the Artists
Daniela Haufe (born East Berlin, 1966) has no formal arts education, but was trained as a manuel typesetter in a publishing house. She joined the graphic design group Grappa where she met Detlef Fiedler, with whom she would go on to form Cyan—an agency they still run today. Between 1991 and 1995, she and Detlef co-edited the acclaimed critical design magazine form+zweck.
Detlef Fiedler (born Germany, 1955) is a trained architect and one of the five original founders of Grappa, the first graphic design agency in East Germany. Along with Daniela, he taught graphic design at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 1996 to 2006, and continues to run Cyan with her today.
