MATTER, HERBERT

born April 25, 1907, Engelberg, Switz. died May 8, 1984, Southampton, N.Y., U.S. Swiss-born American advertising designer and photographer known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art. Matter studied under the painters Fernand Lger and Amde Ozenfant in Paris, where he later assisted the graphic artist Adolphe Mouron Cassandre and the architect Le Corbusier. His own international reputation was firmly established from 1932 to 1936, when he made travel posters for the Swiss National Tourist Office in Zrich. These posters were among the earliest effective uses of photomontage, the technique of constructing a picture from parts of more than one photograph. In 1936 Matter moved to New York City to work as a photographer for such fashion magazines as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, a pursuit he continued until 1957. He also collaborated on the design work of the Swiss and Corning Glass pavilions of the New York World's Fair of 1939 and was closely associated with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, from 1958 to 1968. He also made a film on the work of the sculptor Alexander Calder (1949) for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was a professor of graphic arts and photography at Yale University from 1952 to 1976.