Ernst Aufseeser

Ernst Aufseeser (1880–1940) was a German painter, illustrator and graphic designer. His design work included trademarks, stamps, book covers, typography, posters and textiles.

Career Aufseeser was born in Nuremberg, Germany the son of a merchant and of Jewish ancestry. Intended for a commercial career himself, he completed an apprenticeship at the Nuremberg School of Commerce. Afterwards he volunteered at an export company in Nuremberg and then worked in England for some years. After deciding to embark on an artistic career, he attended the Stieglitz workshops between 1900 and 1903 in Berlin under the direction of the designer and typographer Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, who later called Aufseeser to be his successor. In 1905 he moved to London where he attended the Slade School of Art for two years and by 1907 was working as an artist in Munich. He was a competitor in the art events of the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. From 1914 he taught as a professor of commercial art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, later succeeding Ehmcke as director of graphic design in 1919. In 1933 he was dismissed from his post as a result of the Nazi anti-Jewish laws. He died on 12 December 1940 in Düsseldorf. His son Hans Tisdall became a successful designer in England.

His style characterised by the use of typographic ornaments, usually in black-and-white. His works were reproduced frequently in Das Zelt, journal of the Ehmcke-Kreises. Examples of his design work are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Gallery

Exhibitions Deutscher Werkbund, Cologne, 1914 Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museums, Duisburg, 1983 Kunstverein, Hannover, 1983 Kunsthalle, Wilhelmshaven, 1983 Düsseldorf, 1985 (group).