Type Case Art
At the Creative Review blog, a nuanced essay about Spanish printers adapting to 20th-century aesthetic revolutions, despite limited resources:
When the European avant-garde reached Spain in the 1930s, local printers found themselves ill-equipped to respond. Small printshops were mostly reliant on turn-of-the century typefaces: hardly fitting for expressing this bold new world. But, in a remarkable show of ingenuity, they found their own means of responding to art deco, futurism et al: ‘type case art.’
Printers found that they could imitate modernity by using the geometric shapes they already had in their jobbing cases… The printers’ enthusiasm to embrace this new world triumphed over their lack of means and, perhaps, their limited understanding. It would not be too unfair to say that, initially at least, the main goal was mimickry.
Great posting.