Erik Nitsche

General Dynamics, Atoms for Peace, Conference in Geneva – Original Poster

1955

Original Vintage Poster, issued 1980 on the occasion of the exhibition in Lugano named after Le Corbusier's famous dictum "creation is a patient sea...

Original Vintage Poster, issued 1987 by the ETH in Zurich on the occasion of its exhibition on Le Corbusier's famous – and revolutionary – Villa Savoye, c...

Original Swiss Travel Poster promoting St. Moritz as winter destination, featuring Germaine Aussey, then a famous French actress. Created by Walter Herdeg who – together with Herber...

A poster belonging to Erik Nitsche's second series for General Dynamics, promoting its nuclear research. Founded 1952, General Dynamics hired Nitsche as Art Director – a Swiss (1908 – 1998) educated at the Collège Classique in his birth town Lausanne and at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich. 1934 he emigrated to the United States and became an incredibly versatile graphic designer whose work became exemplary modernist. General Dynamics for its part focused on – amongst others – aerodynamics, aerospace, electronics and nuclear power. So here the company had a problem: Only a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki it wasn’t exactly the simplest thing to explore nuclear energy and not to be suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. The International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy 1955 in Geneva was a great opportunity to be seen as a provider of peaceful technology. The guys in charge chose Erik Nitsche to communicate this message. He created four poster series. Atoms for Peace was the first consisting of eleven posters. The second was made for the Conference 1958; these posters are titled Exploring the Universe and represent different aspects of technological research. The third series promoted General Dynamics’ departments. The last series of six smaller posters...