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Alexander Jusserand Kostellow (Persian: الکساندر کوستلو; c. 1897 – September 1, 1954) was an Iranian-born American industrial designer and educator. He is best known for his work developing the industrial design academic programs of Carnegie Institute of Technology and Pratt Institute. Kostellow also worked as a WPA-era muralist, painter, and in advertising.

Early life and career

Alexander Jusserand Kostellow was born around 1897, in Isfahan, Qajar Iran (now Iran). He left Persia in the early 1900s, to study art in Paris and Germany.

He graduated from the University of Berlin with degrees in philosophy and psychology. When World War II broke out, Kostellow refused to join the German Nazi army, and fled the country through Holland. He arrived in the United States in 1916, first landing in Boston, where he evaded immigration officials, before moving to New York City. Kostellow worked in construction upon arriving in New York, before taking a job as an inspector and chemist at a construction company in New Castle, Delaware. Although he attempted to join the U.S. Army, recruiters deemed his construction work too important for the war effort; in his spare time, he designed war posters. His colleagues noted his artistic talents and encouraged him to study art. Kostellow returned to New York, working for an advertising agency while he studied at the Art Students League of New York, the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design), and the National Academy of Design.

In the early 1920s, Kostellow studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he met Rowena Reed. They married on September 26, 1921.

Painting and mural career

In 1922, Kostellow taught briefly at the Kansas City Art Institute, before the couple returned to New York City, where he continued to study, teach, and create art. He became a noted painter and muralist, and in 1929 moved to Pittsburgh to teach painting at the Carnegie Technical Institute. While teaching at Carnegie, he continued to paint, exhibiting his work in the Museum of Modern Art and the 1934 Whitney Biennial. In 1933, his work was awarded a prize from the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.

He painted United States post office murals through the Treasury Section of Fine Arts (TSFA), including The Battle of Bushy Run (1938) with T. Frank Olson (1890–1935) and Robert Lepper, and Glass Industry (1938), both are oil on canvas in Jeannette, Pennsylvania; and the Somerset-Farm Scene (1941), oil on canvas in Somerset, Pennsylvania.

Industrial design career

Although Kostellow had been hired as a painting instructor at Carnegie, he had been heavily influenced by his time in construction and engineering, as well as Peter Behrens, who he had studied under in Europe. These influences led him to focus his energies on the emerging academic field of industrial design. Various institutions had begun developing curricula for engineers and designers, with pioneers such as Donald Dohner, Kem Weber, and Viktor Schreckengost teaching courses at Pratt Institute, the Chicago Art Institute, the University of Cincinnati, and the Art Center School. Dohner, a graphic artist and Carnegie administrator, enlisted Kostellow and together they designed and implemented the first degree-granting program in industrial design in the United States in 1934.

In 1938, both Kostellow and Reed followed Dohner to Pratt Institute, where he had been invited to organize a similar industrial design program. The trio developed a program that would be noted internationally for its influence and modernity; Arthur Pulos described their contributions as "Alexander Kostellow representing the philosophical, Rowena Reed Kostellow the aesthetic, and Dohner the practical–they laid the triangular foundation for Pratt's program in industrial design." The department, formally established in 1934, attracted designers such as Robert Kolli, Ivan Rigby, and Eva Zeisel. Kostellow also played an instrumental role in developing the Foundation Year curriculum at Pratt, which introduced first-year students to basic elements and principles of visual design. In 1939, he helped organize the First American Congress for Aesthetics alongside Felix Gatz and Max Schoen, where the American Society for Aesthetics was founded.

Along with John Vassos, Kostellow worked to formalize the industrial design program at Pratt and beyond in the early 1940s; he served on the education committee of the American Designers' Institute, which produced a template for four-year industrial design degrees in 1944. Upon Dohner's departure from Pratt in 1944, Kostellow became a full professor as well as the head of the Industrial Design Program. He taught courses in auto design, which were influenced by shape and color abstraction theory and the modernist Bauhaus movement, but ultimately prepared students for practical design careers.

In 1952, Kostellow established the Experimental Design Laboratory at Pratt, creating opportunities for students to work with major companies and corporations on various projects, including Monsanto Chemicals, Reynolds Metals, Sears and Roebuck, and Shell Oil. The lab helped to establish Pratt as a leading design school, as students were prepared for practical production work.

Death

In the summer of 1954, Kostellow and Reed traveled to Detroit to work on a kitchen design project with General Motors, to be exhibited at the annual Motorama. While there, Kostellow suffered a heart attack and passed away on September 1, 1954. Following the death of her husband, Reed took over the position of chair of Pratt's Industrial Design department, where she would remain until 1966.

References

1. ^ Donnelly, Jim (September 23, 2018). "Car Culture: Alexander Kostellow". Hemmings. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
2. ^ "Alexander Jusserand Kostellow". Industrial Design. 1 (5): 10. 1954 – via Internet Archive.
3. ^ Hannah, Gail Greet (2006). Elements of design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the structure of visual relationships. Design briefs (3rd pr ed.). New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 22–24. ISBN 978-1-56898-329-5.
4. ^ Gantz, Carroll (2014). Founders of American industrial design. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. pp. 70–72. ISBN 978-0-7864-7686-2.
5. ^ Ayers, Ruth (December 17, 1933). "Having Conquered Many of Life's Toughest Storms, Artist Paints the More Beautiful Side on Canvas". The Pittsburgh Press. p. 37. Retrieved December 29, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
6. ^ Pulos, Arthur J. (1988). The American design adventure: 1940-1975. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. pp. 166–168. ISBN 978-0-262-16106-0.
7. "Marriage of Reed / Kostellow". The Kansas City Star. September 27, 1921. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-10 – via Newspapers.com.
8. "Rowena Reed Kostellow, FIDSA". Industrial Designers Society of America. Retrieved December 29, 2023.
9. Gómez, Jaime Francisco (2010). "An Approach to the Figure and Aesthetic Ideas of Alexander J. Kostellow: Plastic Artist and Industrial Design Education Pioneer". Design Principles and Practices. 4 (1): 33–38. doi:10.18848/1833-1874/CGP/v04i01/37810. ISSN 1833-1874.
10. Jones, Barbara (2011). "Samuel Rosenberg: Portrait of a Painter". The Pittsburgh Reader. Internet Archive. pp. 196–199.
11. "Bulletin no.1-5,7-11,13-24". p. 266. Retrieved 2025-01-10 – via HathiTrust.
12. "The Battle of Bushy Run". Indians at the Post Office, Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Retrieved 2025-01-10.
13. "Post Office Mural – Somerset PA". Living New Deal.
14. Jaffee, Barbara (2005). "Before the New Bauhaus: From Industrial Drawing to Art and Design Education in Chicago". Design Issues. 21 (1): 41–62. doi:10.1162/0747936053103066. ISSN 0747-9360. JSTOR 25223979. S2CID 57571973.
15. ^ "Alexander Jusserand Kostellow, FIDSA". Industrial Designers Society of America. Retrieved December 29, 2023.
16. ^ Glueck, Grace (2004-07-09). "DESIGN REVIEW; The Art of Making Things That Look Good and Work". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
17. Akner Koler, Cheryl (2007). Form & formlessness: questioning aesthetic abstractions through art projects, cross-disciplinary studies and product design education. Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers Tekniska Högskola. Göteborg: Chalmers Univ. of Technology pp. 157–159. ISBN 978-91-976644-6-2.
18. Munro, Thomas; Balet, Leo (1941). "Communications". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1 (4): 73–81. doi:10.2307/426580. ISSN 0021-8529. JSTOR 426580.
19. Krukowski, Lucian (1992). "Aufbau and Bauhaus: A Cross-Realm Comparison". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 50 (3): 197–209. doi:10.2307/431228. ISSN 0021-8529. JSTOR 431228.
20. "Obituary for Alexander Kostellow". Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph. 1954-09-02. p. 11. Retrieved 2025-01-10 – via Newspapers.com.

• 1897 births
• 1954 deaths
• 20th-century American educators
• 20th-century American male artists
• 20th-century American painters
• 20th-century Iranian painters
• 20th-century Iranian male artists
• American industrial designers
• Artists from Isfahan
• Art Students League of New York alumni
• Emigrants from Allied-occupied Germany to the United States
• Iranian emigrants to the United States
• Iranian industrial designers
• Kansas City Art Institute alumni
• National Academy of Design alumni
• Pratt Institute faculty
• Painters from Pittsburgh