Powerful and poetic graphic work by Philips brought together in the exhibition ‘Eyecatchers’

Little is sadder than the great promise, who died young, which was the fate of Mathieu Clement (1905-1929), gifted advertising artist for Philips in the Artistic Propaganda department. An overview of his work, plus that of talented other artists and designers, has been arranged in the Philips Museum in Eindhoven: eye catchersabout the graphic art of Philips from 1910-1965.

Especially from the second half of the 1920s, the advertising department of the light bulb factory produced a high quality of work. Skilled draftsmen such as Albert Hahn, Raoul Hynckes, Mary Aubele, Carl Probst and Louis Kalff struck a poetic and sometimes homely tone when imagining products that bore little poetic names such as ‘miniwatt’ and ‘rectifier’. For example, Clement translated the functionality of a miniwatt – a radio tube – into a stylized red-blue hummingbird with a musical note in its beak. A surprisingly graceful and accurate image of the then 22-year-old draftsman.

The great imagination of the artists from that period before (and shortly after) the Second World War makes the overview eye catchers worth the effort. Photography hardly played a role at the time. The drawing hand had the freedom to promote a novelty like bicycle lighting in a powerful graphic scene: a string of bicycles in the blue night, along a straight canal, with headlights that cast a crescent-shaped beam of light on the pavement, an advertising brochure by Louis Kalff from 1926.

It was the same Kalff who set the Philips advertising department in a new direction in 1925. Kalff, trained as a designer and architect, had written a critical letter of application to Anton Philips, the man who was rapidly building up a multinational. How is it possible, Kalff wondered, that a company of this allure promotes its products with only girls in old Dutch costumes? Because that was Philips’ most important advertising strategy until 1925. In response to the criticism, Anton Philips Kalff immediately made it head of what would later be called the Artistic Propaganda Department.

It was also Kalff who recognized the talent of Mathieu Clement, a youngster who came to Philips in 1925 fresh from the HBS with a folder of drawings. Despite his early age, Clement dared to take the liberty to develop his own signature, both in his work for Philips and in his own, autonomous landscapes and portraits. The promise of artistry is visible in both facets, which prompted a small biography of Clement, published on the occasion of the exhibition. The edition clearly shows that his untimely death meant a great loss to the Artistic Propaganda Department.

A good example is a 1928 advertising poster by Clement promoting a receiver. The radio technology is still relatively new and the minds have to be prepared for wireless reception. Clement draws a well-groomed gentleman in a fashionable suit with a waistcoat, thin trouser legs and a pipe, on the table an angular device that should be placed in all living rooms. The window offers a view of a filled urban landscape. The image breathes modernity, Clement’s casual scene has to tempt people to open a new window on the world.

Temptation was at the heart of the communication strategy in the years when Philips’ growth seemed to explode. In 1927, the ten-thousandth employee was welcomed in Eindhoven, two years later the counter was already at twenty thousand. The advertising talent that had to stimulate sales did not only come from the Netherlands, but also from the US, England, Germany and France and was diverse in its style. eye catchers shows that boss Kalff on the one hand tries to introduce a house style and unity, but on the other hand also gave his draftsmen freedom, which produces a rich and diverse picture of an innovative company.

Philips had money to spare for talent. Carl Probst was a German draftsman who in 1929 was on the payroll for 700 guilders a month, a hefty salary. The German was a craftsman who plays with light and dark contrasts in his posters and other work, with dark blue shadow areas versus white-yellow window light, as on the cover of the Philips Bulletin from May 1930.

Mathieu Clement has never experienced this again. In 1928 he fell into a crisis of inspiration, visited Amsterdam to refuel and saw the work of painter and photographer Breitner: ‘The only one who had the color of Amsterdam on his palette’, he wrote to his brother. He returned to Eindhoven to work again for the Artistic Propaganda department. In 1929 he died quite suddenly of a disorder of the adrenal glands.

‘I am convinced’, his boss Kalff said in an interview a year later, ‘that he possessed a great talent and that he would certainly have been capable of great things if he lived longer.’