Max Gebhard

Biography

Born 12 April 1906 in Triberg/Schwatzwald. First job as window display designer, then studied at Malerfachschule, Hagen. 1927-9: studied at Bauhaus, Dessau, under Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt. From 1927: member of Communist Party. 1928: moved to Berlin; worked in Bayer’s Studio Dorland. Assisted László Moholy-Nagy. Designed sets for Kroll-Oper and Piscator-Bühne. From 1929: freelance; worked on the mass-circulation communist paper AIZ (Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung) [Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper, banned by the Nazis 1933, continued publication from Prague until 1938]. 1939: military service in Wehrmacht – worked as technical artist in a construction office. From 1946: worked on the journals Vorwärts, then Neuen Deutschland. Became designer, later art director, for the publisher Dietz, Berlin. 1952-3: lecturer at Institut für industrielle Gestaltung of the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, Berlin Weissensee. Died 23 April 1990 in Berlin.