Imre Reiner has an international reputation as a type designer. But other aspects of his work are not so well known. Here we show some examples of that work, ad rather than ask a critic to write at length concerning their aesthetic implications we asked the designer himself to give us a brief record of his life. Over the dinner-table it seemed an odd background for a type-designer. In print it seems odder still.

When I made up my mind to become a sculptor—like my father—I was five years old; and when I changed my mind in favour of my present profession, I was twenty.

In the winter of 1915 I left home. Endless trains packed with soldiers would their way through the country, which was embedded in snow, towards the ‛Siebenbürgener’ frontier. In one of those trains among soldiers’ packs, rifles, and merry songs, I entered on my journey into freedom, with nothing but a small packet of clothes—14 years old.

Tail-pieces for ‛Madame Bovary’

A small mountain town was my aim. The School of Sculpture I entered there was the best possible place for serious and concentrated work, and I owe much to the years I spent there.

The time which lay between war and peace was dark and bewildering for me; I saw that life in the capital, to which I had moved, was different from that in the little mountain town. Not until I went to Germany as pupil of Professor Schneidler did I quieten down. That, too, was the time when I changed my profession to a painter and designer. Under the guidance of Schneidler I learnt to understand the drawings of the old Chinese masters, and was initiated in the technique of the graphic arts. Years of enthusiastic, intensive work followed, easily missing the pleasures of town life, and solely devoting myself to study and work. Those years may have had the most deciding influence on the development of my career.

Illustration for ‛Madame Bovary’

In New York and Chicago I worked in factories and on building sites. I was porter, stonemason, and had several other occupations which had nothing to do with either sculpture or painting; but the life was interesting and instructive. Only in later years did I realize how valuable those two years had been to me, giving me a fuller understanding of life and its everyday tasks.

I then returned to Europe longing for my own work, and painted the pictures which brought me my first success. In 1930 I exhibited for the first time in Paris, pictures which had been painted in Brittany, Holland, and in Florence.

Then I lived for some time in Paris. The new work I encountered there bewildered me. I saw little sincerity in the problems of modern painting, much forced ‛Snobismus’, and—with the exception of the work of some Spaniards—found very little which was of real interest. The Louvre and my stay in quiet Ruvigliana helped to restore my mental balance, and work could continue.

Left: wood engraving for menu card; right: decoration for publisher’s list

Beautiful lettering always interested me. Already as a young sculptor I loved visiting churchyards to copy inscriptions. Beautiful letters and types are just as pleasing to my eye as beautiful pictures, and I cannot understand those who are surprised that painters should want to design types.

The more the graphic trade is mechanized the more necessary it is for art to come to its assistance, and the larger become the possibilities of achieving beautiful presentation. Having attained to this understanding I devote a large amount of my time to commercial art, by working for typefounders, printers, and advertising firms, and in future I shall endeavour to develop this side of my work still more.

Illustration and decoration for Hungarian folk tales.

Reiner translated by Eleanore Loescher from an unknown periodical, pp. 7–15.