Erik Nitsche

Swiss-born Erik Nitsche studied in Lausanne and Munich and worked in Cologne and Paris before emigrating to the USA in 1934. There, he specialised in graphic design for magazines such as Vanity Fair, Life and Look as well as the technical magazines Air Tech and Air News.

On the occasion of the first and second international Conferences on the Use of Atomic Energy in 1955 and 1958, Erik Nitsche was commissioned to design poster series by General Dynamics, one of the largest US armaments corporations. They were meant to convey to the public how the corporation was conducting scientific and technological research for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The poster series were very successful and Nitsche designed many more posters and other products for General Dynamics until 1960.

In 1960, Erik Nitsche moved to Geneva and founded the ENI S.A. publishing company, where he published two encyclopaedias: the twelve-volume New Illustrated Library of Science and Invention as well as a twenty-volume history of music. From 1965 to 1980 Nitsche lived in Paris, where he worked, among other things, on the five-volume encyclopaedia L’Épopée Nationale d’un Siècle for Hachette. Afterwards, he lived in Munich and finally moved back to the USA two years before his death in 1998.

Posters by Erik Nitsche