The Ivan Chermayeff Collection came to the archives in 2019, graciously donated by Chermayeff’s four children, Catherine, Sasha, Maro, and Sam. The pandemic caused a delay in fully organizing and describing these materials, but we’re finally all caught up.

As well as complementing our collection of materials from the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar, the Ivan Chermayeff collection showcases Chermayeff as an artist and illustrator, including an extensive array of fine-art collages incorporating found objects, pebbles and bits of bark, envelopes, and what appear to be his favored media, discarded gloves. Of the latter, his daughter Maro said,

[O]ne of his favorite things to collect and make art with were gloves that were run over by cars. He loved the effect of how they got squished. [...] To him, for some reason, they looked like people. He collected them for decades. Looking for gloves was a childhood job. We’d give them to him for Christmas.

For the illustrations, there is some overlap with his work as part of Chermayeff & Geismar, and much of his individual work highlights the playful side of a firm most known for its austere, abstract logo for Chase Bank. But one finds this mix of structure and improvisation through much of the design work of Chermayeff & Geismar, as in their cover for the September/October 1962 issue of Print magazine.

Chermayeff & Geismar was itself a productive paradox, embodied in the contrasting but complimentary styles of its namesakes—the conceptual precision of Geismar and the breeziness of Chermayeff. In a 2010 interview with the magazine Designboom, Geismar describes their collaboration, 

Chermayeff’s style is often playful and childlike—bright colors, roughly cut out (if not torn out) and collaged—which fits with his forays into children’s book illustration,

The Ivan Chermayeff collection is open to researchers. You can find more information about this collection by viewing the collection guide at the top right of the collection page.