This exhibition celebrates the career of Anna Monika Jost, winner of the Swiss Design Grand Prix in 2025, whose work embodies the international influence of Swiss graphic design. Through a selection of original documents, we trace the journey of a woman who, having set out from the village of Klosters-Serneus in Graubünden, trained and then practised in the nerve centres of modernity: Zurich, Milan and then Paris.
Jost’s work embodies a form of resistance within the very male-dominated world of design in the 1960s. She worked alongside the greats – Walter Ballmer, Tomás Maldonado and Roger Tallon – whilst remaining for a long time in the shadow of these imposing figures. One of the highlights of her career was the design of two posters for a travelling exhibition by the Italian brand Olivetti in 1966. With a clever twist, the young intern at the time had concealed her own initials within the colour fields, transforming a simple design into a signature.
Her shift from commercial advertising towards a deeper institutional commitment marked the second phase of her career as a freelance graphic designer. In Paris, she put her talent to work for universal causes: from the scientific dissemination of the journal *Technè* for the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, to public service communications, such as the visual identity for the municipality of Mouans-Sartoux and posters for UNESCO.
By presenting a selection of her works, mock-ups and studies, this retrospective does justice to the career of a graphic designer whose talent for colour, her quest for a clear and precise graphic language, and her approach—both sensitive and visionary—form the foundations of her work: a method rather than a style.
Davide Fornari
Chiara Torterolo
Maxwell Ashford
Santiago Martinez
CNAP / Centre national des arts plastiques
OFC / Office fédéral de la culture
ECAL / Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Carine Bachmann
Martin Bethenod
Alexis Georgacopoulos
Anna Monika Jost
Véronique Marrier
Anna Niederhäuser
rue des Francs-Bourgeois 32
Paris