Warja Lavater - Passion and Reason / Cornelia Hesse-Honegger

Warja Lavater (1913, Winterthur) moved with her work between literature and art, between graphic design, painting and object making. Describing herself at times as an “image maker”, she developed her own visual language and became a pioneer of Book Art through her Folded Storys and Imageries.

She spent her childhood in Moscow, Athens and Winterthur. In 1931 she began her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich and graduated as a graphic designer in 1935. Together with her husband Gottfried Honegger, she ran the studio Honegger-Lavater and, in 1958, created the ten large panels for the “Linie” of the Swiss Exhibition for Women’s Work (SAFFA) in Zurich.

After moving to New York, Warja Lavater realised that signs could function as an international language and developed her distinctive pictographic visual language from this insight. At the end of the 1960s she began collaborating with the Parisian publisher Adrien Maeght. At the same time, she realised several important public commissions, including the ceramic façade of the Strickhof water reservoir in Zurich and the interiors of the Gontenbach and Hardhof water towers.

The book Warja Lavater – Leidenschaft und Vernunft (everyedition, 2026) retraces the life and work of the artist.
 
176 pages I 23 x 32 cm I 238 images I hardcover I en. / germ. 
everyedition, 2026