Israel’s most passionate exponent of design, Dan Reisinger, has died in Tel Aviv, aged 85. The designer, painter, sculptor, and Israel Prize laureate, was born in Kanjiža, Yugoslavia, now Serbia, in 1934 and spent much of his childhood hiding from the Nazis.
Having lost many family members in the Holocaust, including his father Armin, who died in a forced labour battalion of the Hungarian Army, Dan and his mother Katja emigrated to the nascent state of Israel in 1949. Descended from four generations of painters and master-craftsmen, Dan soon found work as a house painter. His sights however, were set on acquiring a profession in the field of art and design.
In 1950 former Bauhaus student Mordechai Ardon, head of Jerusalem’s New Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, accepted the eager 16 year old into the school. Dan’s first poster for the National Lottery was published in 1953, and a year later he won the ‘Struck’ prize for the Bezalel’s most outstanding student.
In 1956, my father, British designer Abram Games, held a Stamp Reproduction course for Israel’s Philatelic Services for which 25 established designers and students signed up. Reisinger, now in the uniform of the Israel Air Force and head of its publishing division, needed a special pass to leave the base and attend the course. Other students were producing artwork using an airbrush but Dan, who did not have one, skilfully replicated the airbrush effect using only brush strokes.
Abram took an instant liking to the immensely skilled but modest young man and a great friendship and mutual respect flourished between them. From their first encounter my father knew that Dan was destined to become Israel’s greatest designer. In 1960, my father was Dan’s best man at his wedding to Annabelle Cammerman. Theirs was a happy and lasting marriage.
In 1958, Reisinger’s poster for the science pavilion at the Brussels Exposition Universelle won first prize in an international competition.
In the same year he came to London to study graphic and 3D design at the Central School of Art. Abram introduced him to his professional contacts and other designers, including George Him and FHK Henrion. Dan worked as a freelance for the General Post Office and for other British clients. Between 1958 and 1966 he travelled between London and Tel Aviv, where he eventually settled. He was gaining an international reputation, but he left his mark all over Israel, his adoptive home.
The Games family still gets excited when spotting a ‘dash of Dan’ while travelling through the country. His output was extraordinary. He designed over 150 striking symbols and corporate identities, and successfully reworked Otto Treumann and George Him’s 1963 EL AL logotype in 1971. He designed all three medals of the Israel Defence Force and seven stamps for the Israel Philatelic Service between 1962 and 1996. He also experimented with Hebrew lettering and calligraphy.
For 60 years, Reisinger’s memorable posters for the Habimah National theatre, the Maccabiah Games, EL AL, the Israel Defence Forces, national campaigns, festivals and self-initiated social and political posters dominated Israel’s hoardings.
Following Bauhaus principles, Dan kept his work bold, straightforward and colourful. His three dimensional and environmental designs were no exception. Israel’s Pavilion at Montreal’s Expo ‘67, Tel Aviv’s seaside promenade, Bar Ilan University, medical schools, hospitals, buildings and industrial plants were all given the brightly painted Reisinger treatment. His interactive calendars are masterpieces of paper engineering.
Dan Reisinger experienced his life through the three primary colours. Starting life smelling paint and remembering his father holding a paintbrush, he soon learned how to mix pigments to create the most vibrant spectrum. To him, colour represented the rebirth he experienced on first arriving in Israel. Yellow was the star he was forced to wear in the Second World War. The liberating Russian Army flew a red flag, and once safe in Israel, the skies were blue. He said, “Colour, like music, is an emotive value which nourishes the human soul.’”
His most moving works however, are for a subject close to Dan’s heart and are not in colour. His memorial for the forced labourers of the Hungarian Army during the Second World War stands defiantly in central Budapest and his 50-meter-long aluminium-cast typographic relief for Holocaust victims is in Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem.
In 1998 he received the country’s highest cultural honour – the Israel Prize, “in recognition of his mark on the visual language of the State”. In 2004 the Hungarian Republic honoured him with the Order of the Knight’s Cross, acknowledging his contribution to cultural relations between Hungary and Israel. He had one-man shows in Israel, Europe, the Far East and America, and his posters are on permanent display in international museums.
Always curious and forever young, Dan’s mantra was “turning play into work, and work into play”. He wanted his work to make people smile. When I look at his calendar brightening my kitchen, I smile and think of him. He is survived by Annabelle, their sons Yoram, Eitan and Ilan and five grandchildren.
Dan Reisinger: born August 3, 1934.
Died Nov 26, 2019
