Franz von Stuck
Self-portrait of Franz von Stuck
Franz von Stuck (1863–1928) was among the most celebrated German artists of his generation: painter, sculptor, architect, and graphic designer. A Symbolist at heart, he co-founded the Munich Secession in 1893 and contributed cartoons to Jugend, the magazine that gave Jugendstil, the German branch of Art Nouveau, its name.
As a professor at the Munich Academy he taught Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Josef Albers. His best-known painting, The Sin (1893), presents the same frontal, unsettling gaze that later defined his poster work, and his Munich residence, the Villa Stuck, survives today as a museum to his work.
In 1911 he designed the poster for the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden, the first world's fair devoted entirely to medicine and public health: a single enormous eye, ringed with golden rays, floating above a Greek temple against a deep violet-blue night. The image became one of the most famous in poster history and remains in use as the emblem of the museum the exhibition left behind.
The works
Read the story: The Eye That Watched Dresden: Franz von Stuck's 1911 Hygiene Exhibition Poster