The Lyman Allyn Art Museum presents Norman Ives: Constructions & Reconstructions, a major exhibition of his work as artist and designer. Ives was a pioneer in using type and letterforms as primary subjects for his designs. Ives’s work was continually evolving as he created paintings, collages, prints, bas-reliefs and murals. His innovations revolutionized the field of graphic design. 

After attending Wesleyan University, Ives was recruited for Yale’s first class in its bold new program led by Josef Albers, Alvin Lustig and Alvin Eisenman. Albers, who included letterforms in his teaching at Yale, became Ives’s preeminent mentor at Yale University’s School of Art.

Ives became a professor in the University’s Department of Graphic Design in 1973. Alvin Eisenman, the director of that department, had collected a stellar faculty who aided in reshaping the field of commercial art into the more demanding profession of graphic design.

Norman Ives is a rarity in his success in multiple fields; artist, designer, publisher and teacher. There was an effortless transition from one to the other. Corporate symbols and murals were natural extensions of his love for letterforms in their whole or in fragments. 

His passion and his pleasure shine in both. This exhibition illustrates the wide range of his brilliance and diversity.