Poster, Jürgen Uhde – Konzertante Klaviermusik,

1953

Comprehensive education in all areas of knowledge and culture was part of the program at the Ulmer Volkshochschule. Otl Aicher and his wife, Inge Aicher-Scholl (1917–1998), founded the school, which was a predecessor to the famous Ulmer Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm School of Design), immediately after World War II. They saw their work as a legacy, because Inge Aicher-Scholl was the sister of students Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were hanged in 1943 for their part in the White Rose resistance movement in Germany.
Aicher saw visual design as his personal sociopolitical mandate and as an ethical profession. In his posters, dynamic organic forms on a colored ground are juxtaposed with sober black-and-white designs arranged in geometric grids. But their ostensible austerity is misleading. For the announcement of Jürgen Uhde’s piano concert, Aicher used the order of the black piano keys to set the rhythm for a set of free-flowing lines. The intrusion of the word “Klaviermusik” also serves as a brief moment of disruption. (Bettina Richter)