getting in demand

Parisian friends helped Alexey secure a job as artist-decorator in Sergei Diaghilev's renowned company Ballets Russes. The young man created posters and decorations and took photos of dancers during rehearsals and try-ins. Alexey’s first success in design was a Grand Prix at a poster contest in 1924 for the charitable party Bal Banal: he outrun Pablo Picasso, who took the second prize. In 1925, Alexey won five medals for fabric, jewelry, and display design at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. Soon he was in great demand, designing décor, posters, and advertisements for department stores and restaurants.

brodovitch viewed the page as a three-dimensional space, in length, breadth, and depth.

—william owen, author of modern magazine design book

Alexey Brodovitch at work at Harpers Bazaar

Alexey Brodovitch at work at Harpers Bazaar. Gelatin silver print. Photographer unknown. Photo via doyle.com.

 

breaking rules at harper’s bazaar

In 1930 Alexey moved to the U.S. and headed the Advertising Design Department at the Pennsylvania Museum. Four years later, Carmel Snow—the editor of Harper's Bazaar—foresaw the genius of Brodovitch and asked him to head the magazine’s design team. Alexey accepted the offer and introduced a variety of innovations: reiteration, dynamic pagination, scale contrasts, captions, and typography. Marvin Israel, a painter and designer who was an associate of Brodovitch at Bazaar, called him a man “obsessed with change.”

 

Cover of the September 1958 issue of Harper's Bazaar. A model wearing blue between columns
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