Boldly juxtaposed shapes and colors, drastic geometries converging with text—elements of the extraordinary designs that poured out of American advertising agencies and graphic studios from the 1940s through the ’60s. The Moderns is a hefty survey of that striking period in commercial art with many pages of full-color illustrations and tightly packed page-long biographies of some 60 artists, nearly a third of them émigrés who brought the Bauhaus into American homes. A few are well known, such as Hollywood poster artist Saul Bass. Most remained obscure even if their images brightened everyday life through everything from book and magazine covers to ads for furniture and pharmaceuticals.
