News — Nov 24, 2015

The sad news reached us that yesterday Pierre Bernard (1942-2015) passed in his hometown Paris. To mark the award of the Erasmus Prize for 2006 to Pierre Bernard, the Stedelijk Museum showed his work at the SM Central Station in November 2006.

In 1970 Bernard  set up the Grapus design collective, together with Gérard Paris-Clavel and François Miehe, whom he had met during the student revolt in Paris in May 1968. After François Miehe’s departure, Jean Paul Bachollet and Alex Jordan joined the group. They only accepted work that they could all support, which meant no commercial assignments at all. Grapus designed for the Communist party, for the theatre, cultural institutions, for the aid organisation Secours Populaire, for trade unions and local government bodies.

After 20 years, the collective closed its doors and each of the members went their own way. Bernard then established the Atelier Création Graphique studio where he cooperated with the Dutch designer Dirk Behage. His studio remains true to the principle of working only for clients outside the commercial sector: clients ranging from the Louvre, the Georges Pompidou Centre and the government.

Pierre Bernard not only had a long record of service to design for the public domain, he also played an important role in the organisation of international designers meetings. In the world of graphic design, he has developed a reputation as an internationally respected designer, the loss is that he no longer will be part of this community. His work is extensively represented in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum.