Edward McKnight Kauffer

Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890 to 1954) was an American artist and graphic designer who spent much of his working life in the United Kingdom. He is remembered chiefly for poster art, though he also worked as a painter, a book illustrator and a theatre designer. Born Edward Leland Kauffer in Great Falls, Montana, he studied at the California School of Design, then at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1913 went to Paris, where he studied at the Académie Moderne. He settled in London in 1914 and produced around 140 posters for the London Underground and later London Transport, alongside work for Shell, the Great Western Railway and other clients. Those posters range across abstract styles influenced by futurism, cubism and vorticism. He also illustrated books, designed covers and later turned to textiles and interior design. He returned to New York in 1940, and his best known late work is the dust jacket for Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man in 1952.