Martin Peikert
Martin Peikert was born in 1901 in Zug and died there in 1975.
He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and worked as an advertising illustrator until he graduated in 1921. In the years 1921 to 1923 he travelled to Stuttgart, Hamburg and Paris. From 1923 he worked in Geneva as a commercial painter and decorator and from 1925 to 1927 he designed the newspaper “Wochenschau” by Orell Füssli AG Zurich. From 1927 he worked as a freelance graphic artist and painter.
Peikert’s 1920s posters were greatly influenced by Art Deco. His tourism posters had a unique, clear, memorable style and his logo for Villars chocolate, the “Villars cow”, became famous. In the 1940s he lived in French-speaking Switzerland, where he created tourism posters in his fresh, youthful style for the Valais and the Bernese Oberland.