Nelly Rudin
Born in 1928.
Died in 2013.
Nelly Rudin occupies a documented position at the intersection of commercial graphic design and painting, having worked within the framework of the “Swiss Style” before devoting herself exclusively to painting.
Her first professional experiences took place at the advertising studio of JR Geigy AG in Basel, where she was employed from 1951 to 1954. Within the same commercial sphere, she continued to produce graphic work for Geigy, notably for the launch campaign for the drug Insidon in 1961–1962. Her work as a graphic designer was presented in 1959 in the second issue of the journal Neue Grafik, where she was included among the “Graphic Designers of the New Generation”.
In 1957, she established her own office in Zurich, marking an independent professional activity attested by the sources.
Alongside her professional practice, she taught for a period at the School of Applied Arts in Biel in 1962. Two years later, in 1964, she changed course and decided to devote herself exclusively to painting.
The first recorded solo exhibition of Nelly Rudin took place in 1968 at Galerie 58 in Rapperswil. This first presentation is described in a secondary account as a “great success”, a qualification mentioned in the sources consulted. Several decades later, a retrospective was devoted to her at Haus Konstruktiv (Zurich) in 2011–2012, attesting to renewed interest in her career.
To explore the graphic dimension of her oeuvre further, mention should be made of Sandra Bischler-Hartmann’s recent entry, “Nelly Rudin: A Concrete Graphic Designer”, included in the volume Women Graphic Designers (Bloomsbury, 2025).
