Henry Wolf
Encyclopedia
Henry Wolf was an Austria
n-born American
graphic designer
, photographer and art director
best known for his art direction of Esquire
, Harper's Bazaar
, and Show
magazines in the 1950s and '60s.
, Melvin Sokolsky
and Art Kane
before launching his own photography studio in New York's Upper East Side.
Wolf became art director of Esquire
in 1952. His creative designs were influential in developing the sophisticated image the magazine is now known for. In 1958, Wolf became the art director of Harper's Bazaar
, succeeding Alexey Brodovitch
. At Harper's Wolf worked with Richard Avedon, and Man Ray
. Wolf is also credited as having given the then up-and-coming fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky his first big break. After three years at Harper's Bazaar, Wolf left to start a new magazine, Show for A&P
Heir Huntington Hartford
.
In 1965 he began working for McCann Erickson
where he directed high-profile advertisement campaigns such as Alka Seltzer, Buick
, Gillette
and Coca-Cola
. Later he joined advertising executive Jane Trahey to form Trahey/Wolf, with Wolf as the vice president and creative director. For the next few years he worked on many commercial campaigns, including Saks Fifth Avenue
and I. Magnin
, as well as advertisements for Xerox
, IBM
, Revlon
, De Beers
, Blackgama Mink, Charles of the Ritz
, Elizabeth Arden
, and Union Carbide
.
In 1971 he launched Henry Wolf Productions, a studio devoted to photography, film and design. For the next three decades, Wolf worked as both a photographer and a designer. He created over 500 television commercials and nine films, shooting for Van Cleef & Arpels
, RCA
, Revlon
, Borghese, Olivetti
and Karastan among others. His work was published in many magazines, including Esquire
, Town and Country
, Domus
, and New York
.
He taught graphic design at Parsons School of Design in New York, as well as the School of Visual Arts
and Cooper Union
.
He died February 14, 2005 at age 80.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-born American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
, photographer and art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
best known for his art direction of Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
, and Show
Show (magazine)
Show is a bi-monthly magazine, founded and published by Sean Cummings in 2005. Show is geared toward young urban men and showcases glamour photography of female pin-up models from around the world...
magazines in the 1950s and '60s.
Life and work
Henry Wolf was an influential graphic designer and art director. He worked with photographers Richard AvedonRichard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
, Melvin Sokolsky
Melvin Sokolsky
Melvin Sokolsky is an American photographer and film director.Born in New York City, Sokolsky had no formal training in photography, but started to use his father's box camera at about the age of ten. Always analytical, he started to realize the role that emulsion played as he compared his own...
and Art Kane
Art Kane
Art Kane , born Arthur Kanofsky in New York City, was a fashion and music photographer active from the 1950s through early 1990s...
before launching his own photography studio in New York's Upper East Side.
Wolf became art director of Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
in 1952. His creative designs were influential in developing the sophisticated image the magazine is now known for. In 1958, Wolf became the art director of Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
, succeeding Alexey Brodovitch
Alexey Brodovitch
Alexey Brodovitch was a Russian-born photographer, designer and instructor who is most famous for his art direction of fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar from 1938 to 1958.- Early life in Russia :...
. At Harper's Wolf worked with Richard Avedon, and Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
. Wolf is also credited as having given the then up-and-coming fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky his first big break. After three years at Harper's Bazaar, Wolf left to start a new magazine, Show for A&P
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, is a supermarket and liquor store chain in the United States. Its supermarkets, which are under six different banners, are found in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. A&P's liquor stores, known as...
Heir Huntington Hartford
Huntington Hartford
George Huntington Hartford II was an American businessman, philanthropist, filmmaker, and art collector. The heir to the A&P supermarket fortune, he owned Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and had numerous other business and real estate interests over his lifetime including the Oil Shale Corporation...
.
In 1965 he began working for McCann Erickson
McCann Erickson
McCann Erickson is a global advertising agency network, with offices in more than 130 countries. McCann is a subsidiary of the Interpublic Group of Companies, one of the four large holding companies in the advertising industry....
where he directed high-profile advertisement campaigns such as Alka Seltzer, Buick
Buick
Buick is a premium brand of General Motors . Buick models are sold in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, and Israel, with China being its largest market. Buick holds the distinction as the oldest active American make...
, Gillette
Global Gillette
Gillette is a brand of Procter & Gamble currently used for safety razors, among other personal care products. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was one of several brands originally owned by The Gillette Company, a leading global supplier of products under various brands, which was...
and Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
. Later he joined advertising executive Jane Trahey to form Trahey/Wolf, with Wolf as the vice president and creative director. For the next few years he worked on many commercial campaigns, including Saks Fifth Avenue
Saks Fifth Avenue
Saks Fifth Avenue is a luxury American specialty store owned and operated by Saks Fifth Avenue Enterprises , a subsidiary of Saks Incorporated. It competes in the high-end specialty store market in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, i.e. 'the 3 B's' Bergdorf, Barneys, Bloomingdale's and Lord & Taylor...
and I. Magnin
I. Magnin
I. Magnin & Company was a San Francisco, California-based high fashion and specialty goods luxury department store. Over the course of its existence, it expanded across the West into Southern California and the adjoining states of Arizona, Oregon, and Washington...
, as well as advertisements for Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Revlon
Revlon
Revlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...
, De Beers
De Beers
De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea...
, Blackgama Mink, Charles of the Ritz
Charles of the Ritz
Charles of the Ritz is a former cosmetics brand known for its line of perfume fragrances.-Foreground:In 1916, coiffeur Charles Jundt took over the Manhattan beauty salon of the New York City Ritz hotel. He founded his own cosmetics company in 1919, and in 1926, began marketing beauty products...
, Elizabeth Arden
Elizabeth Arden
Florence Nightingale Graham , who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian-American businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire in the United States. At the peak of her career, she was one of the wealthiest women in the world.-Biography:Arden was born in 1884 at Woodbridge, Ontario,...
, and Union Carbide
Union Carbide
Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. It currently employs more than 2,400 people. Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some are high-volume...
.
In 1971 he launched Henry Wolf Productions, a studio devoted to photography, film and design. For the next three decades, Wolf worked as both a photographer and a designer. He created over 500 television commercials and nine films, shooting for Van Cleef & Arpels
Van Cleef & Arpels
Van Cleef & Arpels is a French jewellery, watch, and perfume company that was founded in 1896 by Charles Arpels and Alfred Van Cleef. They opened their first boutique in 1906 at 22 place Vendôme, Paris...
, RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
, Revlon
Revlon
Revlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...
, Borghese, Olivetti
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...
and Karastan among others. His work was published in many magazines, including Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Town and Country
Town & Country (magazine)
Town & Country, formerly the Home Journal and The National Press, is a monthly American lifestyle magazine. It is the oldest continually published general interest magazine in the United States.-Early history:...
, Domus
Domus (magazine)
Domus is the name of two magazines, one published in Italy and one in the United States.* Domus is an Italian magazine, first published in 1928, which focuses on design and architecture. It is bilingual, with articles printed in both Italian and English....
, and New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
.
He taught graphic design at Parsons School of Design in New York, as well as the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
and Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
.
He died February 14, 2005 at age 80.
Awards
- The Medal of the American Institute of Graphic ArtsAmerican Institute of Graphic ArtsAIGA is an American professional organization for design. Organized in 1914, AIGA currently has more than 22,000 members throughout 66 chapters and more than 200 student groups nationwide...
was awarded to Henry Wolf on October 12, 1976 for Lifetime Achievement - Inducted in the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and the Royal Society of Arts in 1980
- Received the Herb Lubalin Award from the Society of Publication Designers in 1989
- Awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts by Parsons School of Design in 1996
Publications
- Wolf, Henry. Visual Thinking: Methods for Making Images Memorable (1988) *Wolf, Henry. Photographed by Henry Wolf
- Kane, Art. Photography Book (with introduction by Henry Wolf)
- AIG Henry Wolf: A Retrospective (1976)
External links
- Henry Wolf Collection in the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives
- Design Pioneers: Henry Wolf (Communication Arts)
- Harper's Magazine: Subjects: Henry Wolf
- American Photographer Magazine, Feb 1983, Henry Wolf (model: Stephanie Quinn)
- In Memoriam: Henry Wolf, 80 Photo District News
- Obituary: Henry Wolf; graphic designer and photographer; 79 (Sign on San Diego)
