MICHAEL SNOW
JEFF SCHER
PETER ROSEJEFF
TAKAHIKO LIMURA
BARBARA HAMMER
MATTHIAS GROEBEL
SEYMOUR CHWAST
NISI JACOBS

Seymour Chwast
Biography

SEYMOUR CHWAST was born in New York City and is a graduate of The Cooper Union, where he studied illustration and graphic design. He is a founding partner of the celebrated Push Pin Studios, whose distinct style has had a worldwide influence on contemporary visual communications. In 1985 the studio’s name was changed to The Pushpin Group, of which Mr. Chwast is the director.

Mr. Chwast’s clients include leading corporations, advertising agencies and publishing companies both here and abroad. His designs and illustrations have been used in advertising, animated films, corporate and environmental graphics, books, magazines, posters, packaging and record covers. He created background images for the production of Candide at Lincoln Center in New York, and The Philadelphia Opera Company production of The Magic Flute. He has designed over 100 posters and over thirty children’s books and has developed many typefaces. The studio published “The Pushpin Graphic,” a bi-monthly illustrated journal. A retrospective of the eighty-six issues, produced 3over a quarter century, was published by Chronicle Books.

Seymour Chwast works in a variety of styles and media. His work has been exhibited in major galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, Japan, Brazil and Russia. Mr. Chwast and Push Pin were honored at the Louvre in Paris in a two-month retrospective exhibition titled The Push Pin Style. Among others, he has exhibited in the Kunstgewerbe Museum in Zurich, The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, and The Museo de Arte in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and he has had several one-man shows of his paintings, sculptures and prints in this country and abroad. His posters are in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Cooper-Hewitt Museum of The Smithsonian Institution, The Library of Congress, The Gutenberg Museum and The Israel Museum.

Mr. Chwast’s work has been the subject of numerous magazine and newspaper articles. “IDEA,” Japan’s leading graphic arts magazine, published a complete issue on his work. Push Pin was the subject of a feature in the “New York Times Magazine.” Harry N. Abrams published a book of his work titled The Left Handed Designer. He is a recipient of the St. Gauden’s Medal from The Cooper Union, and was the American Institute of Graphic Arts 1985 Gold Medalist. In 1984, Mr. Chwast was inducted into the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design in 1992, and The Master Series Award from The School of Visual Arts in 1997. Mr. Chwast has been a member of the faculty at The Cooper Union Art School and the School of Visual Arts and is a frequent guest lecturer to student and professional groups. His favorite skyscraper is the Chrysler Building.

-Seymour Chwast