Martin Peikert
Born in 1901.
Died in 1975.
The sources present Martin Peikert as a graphic artist and poster designer whose production combines posters—often close to the aesthetics of Art Deco—with advertising illustrations. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva in 1920, he worked in Geneva from 1923 as an advertising illustrator and decorator for a major magazine. In 1925, he began collaborating with Orell Füssli in Zurich: covers, illustrations, title pages and advertisements for the periodical Orell Füsslis illustrierte Wochenschau constituted an important part of his activity and marked the appearance there of his first posters.
He opened his own studio in Zug in 1927 and, according to a commercial notice, thereafter worked as an independent graphic artist and painter. From 1928 onwards, he received commissions from Zurich companies, including the firms Fritsch and Henkel. During the 1940s, he produced, among other things, tourism posters for Valais and the Bernese Oberland.
After years of working in French-speaking Switzerland, he returned to Zug in 1951, where he worked, among others, for the Chocolat Villars brand. The documents present him at times as a poster designer influenced by Art Deco—in particular in the posters of the 1920s—and at times as an illustrator and creator of advertising work for the press and publishing.
His career has been the subject of recent studies, including the monograph by Jean‑Charles Giroud (2014) and an article in Artpassions (2020), and he is referenced in SIKART under identifier 4026282. The sources indicate a significant contribution to the graphic scene of his time (points requiring further investigation), and contemporary commercial reproductions of posters attributed to Peikert appear on the market.
On the family level, the notice mentions a father, the architect Carl Peikert, originally from Grünberg (Silesia), and a mother originally from Cannstatt (Stuttgart). The biography states that he married Henriette Koopman in 1929 (two children), divorced in 1939, settled in Lonay, and remarried in 1945 to Suzy Borboën (one daughter), with stays in Lonay and Vevey.
