60's

In the third volume of the series of posters from the Wienbibliothek Collection decade by decade, the focus is now on Viennese poster advertising of the 1960s.

More than 300 colour-printed posters as well as four texts by prominent experts offer the chance to follow the way changes of a visual nature took place in Vienna during the 1960s.

1960s poster advertising expresses social as well as political and economic changes, and on closer interpretation of the posters’ content and designs, this decade is revealed as one of transition. In his contribution Christian Maryška shows the history of Viennese graphic design and new developments in Vienna’s advertising scene up to the first agencies. He points out the incisive formal transformation from the painted to the photographic poster design: Bernhard Denscher devotes himself to political clashes on posters. Thanks to his fine instinct and thorough research, Denscher has succeeded for the first time in attributing certain works to a style-defining graphic artist of the political poster, Otto Stefferl.

Julia König-Rainer sheds light on the origins of images of women in the 1960s, tracking the shift from housewife and mother to early attempts at working and thus at self-determination. The signs of social awakening can also clearly be seen in the posters of the late 1960s.

Finally Thomas Mießgang traces an arc from the "Uni Mess" of June 1968, the folk music of the Oberkrainer, Peter Alexander, Udo Jürgens, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones up to the beginnings of Austro Pop; from the transitory work of writer Gerhard Fritsch to the cultural scandal around Thomas Bernhard of 1968. All contributions are lavishly illustrated.

Of some 300,000 posters currently found in the Wienbibliothek Collection, around 150,000 are available online in the catalogue (at www.wienbibliothek.at ). Some 20,000 posters date from the 1960s. The uniqueness of the Wienbibliothek Poster Collection is based not only on its impressive scale, but also on the range of the posters collected. This range enables us to gain a comprehensive yet deep overview of Vienna’s poster art, above all for the second half of the twentieth century.