Warja Lavater and Gottfried Honegger founded the studio Honegger and Lavater in 1937. Their first business address was on Stockerstrasse in Zurich. Initially, the commissions were mainly advertising posters for restaurants and hairdressers' salons. Honegger took care of the orders and Lavater provided the graphic design. The two of them gained a foothold and received commissions from larger companies such as PKZ, Grieder, Bally and Geigy. The emblem design for the Swiss National Exhibition in 1939 and the logo for the Swiss Bank Corporation (now UBS) helped them establish themselves in the Zurich area. After a stay together in Paris in the winter of 1938, the couple became engaged and married on June 21, 1940; the studio was henceforth called Honegger-Lavater. In 1943 and 1944 daughters Bettina and Cornelia were born.
After the war, the family moved into a ten-room apartment at Kirchgasse 50 in the middle of Zurich's old town. It was not only the new place of work for the now established graphic artist couple, but also a place of intense social exchange, a meeting place for intellectuals and artists from all over Europe. In addition to resident artists such as Max Bill, Max Frisch, Emil Oprecht and Robert Gessner, Benjamin Britten, Richard Hülsenbeck and many more can also be mentioned. From 1944 to 1958, Warja was in charge of editing and designing the children's and youth magazine Jugendwoche. She turned a cumbersomely large newspaper into a handy little magazine, pioneering future media. To practice drawing, she regularly went to rehearsals at the theater. During this time she had various commissions, which also took her abroad for studies. In 1949 appeared the first children's book Sandy and the Children.
Saffa 1958
Warja Lavater received a commission from the Women's Office of the Swiss Exhibition for Women's Work. She was to " visualize generally understandable ideal thoughts" of Saffa. What were the "ideal thoughts" that were "behind" the Great Project? Warja Lavater formulated them retrospectively as follows:
"Saffa was the second major exhibition at which women as a whole in Switzerland made their demand for women's rights, the right to vote and to be elected (13 years after the end of the war). The first Saffa exhibition was in 1928. In the 2nd World War, women had played an eminent role: to replace the many men in active service and to fulfill the strict requirements in a disciplined manner. The moment seemed to have come to make demands." (Source: Work Logs, 1984)
Together with the theologian and feminist Marga Bührig (1915-2002), Lavater selected 19 portraits of historical female figures from 10 centuries, such as the martyr Wiborada of St. Gallen, the Inselspital benefactress Anna Seiler of Bern, or the caricaturist Barbara Bansi from Engadin. Bührig wrote the texts for the representations that lined the entrance way, "The Line," to the exhibition grounds. Lavater painted ten panels, which measured 4 x 10m.
The clothing corresponded to the fashion of the century, and each woman wore an emblem-like sign that reflected her social function. For example, the rounded vessel in Barbara von Roll's hand symbolized her occupation as a healer and nurse.
Retrospectively, "The Line" can be seen as a modern and feminist interpretation of historicized representations - which had been common at national exhibitions in Switzerland since the turn of the century. In the texts, it emphasized the equal, if not always visible, "contribution of women to the events and shaping" of their time.
Architectural Installations
Lavater also used the principle of abstract visual sign language in her art-in-building works for the Zurich water supply in the 1970s and 1980s. She created four ceramic works for different locations. She used her abstract signs to illustrate the water cycle in the wall mosaics for the Strickhof water reservoir (1971/72) and for the valve plant on Hubenstrasse (1984/85) in Schwamendingen. She also used circles, semicircles, squares and wavy lines in her architectural installations for the Gontenbach spring surge chamber in Langenberg Wildlife Park (1974/75) and for the Hardhof groundwater works (1980/81). The Hardhof installation is the most aesthetically and conceptually convincing work. The wall mosaic was staged by a colourful light show, sounds as well as the reciting voice of Jean Pierre Gerwig. It thematised not only the extraction of, but also the vital element of water, without which no life would be possible. Unfortunately, the distribution centre built in 1981 was shut down by the industrial companies in 2002/03. Thus Lavater's art installation is also no longer accessible. It is up to the politicians to take on the renovation in order to make this aesthetically outstanding and one of the first art installations in the city of Zurich accessible. How much the work pleased the director at the time, Marteen Schalekamp, can be read in his letter of 13 October 1981: "I am convinced that you have succeeded here in creating an artistic work which will find the interest of the population. That man will have increased access to his "life element water"."
