
For Upton Sinclair
Excerpt From Nancy Roth’s 1993 Essay:
Heartfield and Modern Art
[ Even before he was known as a master of satirical political art ] … Heartfield’s reputation grew quickly during the 1920’s, though less as a political activist or as a fine artist than as a graphic designer.
His notable design innovations moved in a discernible direction towards a combination of photographs, text, and color that abruptly switches the expected meaning of each separate element and yields a new meaning.
He is credited, for example, with the introduction of a book jacket conceived as a three-dimensional object, its two surfaces bearing related images that together convey an abstract idea central to the book in question.”