Typographic Tale of Two Cities: Lettering Legacy of Dušan Janković

Abstract

Dušan Janković (Niš, 1894 – Belgrade, 1950) was a Serbian-French designer and artist who worked in both Paris and Belgrade during the interwar period, whose practice encompassed a wide range of artistic disciplines, styles, techniques, and materials. This study focuses specifically on the lettering aspect of his work, through which the duality and coexistence of his two geographical and cultural identities can be critically examined. His legacy reveals a cultural reciprocal dynamic: French avant-garde currents offered a structural framework for experimentation and innovation, while Serbian folk, ethnological, and manuscript traditions contributed a distinctive aesthetic flavor. Although deeply formed by avant-garde movements, Janković remained firmly anchored in the expressive potential of the Serbian visual heritage and Cyrillic letterforms.

Through this lens, his work becomes a valuable niche in understanding the broader landscape of transnational artistic interchange between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and France in the early twentieth century, as well as the avant-garde commitment to collaboration across political and cultural boundaries. Drawing on archival materials, digitization, comparative analysis, contextual examination, and media coverage, this article demonstrates how Janković served as a medium through which Yugoslav and Serbian cultural imprints intersected with and morphed into French aesthetic criteria. Ultimately, it underlines that Janković’s typographic practice not only enriched the visual cultures of both countries but also embodied the cross-border dialogues that defined European avant-garde ideals. His significance as a cultural mediator becomes even more pronounced when one considers that, together with his wife Colette, he bequeathed legacies to museums in both Paris and Belgrade.