Javier Mariscal - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Javier Mariscal is a Valencian

Valencian Community

The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain located in central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia...

Spanish artist and designer whose work has spanned a wide range of mediums, ranging from painting and sculpture to interior design and landscaping. He was born in February 1950 in the city of Valencia, Spain, into a family of eleven brothers and sisters. Since 1970, he has been living and working in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

Career

Mariscal's language is synthetic, with few strokes and a great deal of expressiveness. He started studying design at the Elisava School in Barcelona which he soon left so that he could learn directly in his environment and follow his own creative impulses. His first steps were in the world of underground comic, a task that he soon combined with illustration, sculpture, graphic design and interior design.

In 1979, he designed the Bar Cel Ona logo, a work that would make him popular. The following year, he opened the first bar in Valencia designed by Mariscal, together with Fernando Salas

Fernando Salas

Noel Fernando Salas is a Major League Baseball pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.-Professional career:...

, the Duplex, for which he designed one of his most famous pieces, the Duplex stool, an authentic icon of the 1980s. In 1981, his work as a furniture designer led him to participate in the exhibition Memphis, an International Style, in Milan. In 1987, he gave an exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...

in Paris and participated in the Documenta de Kassel.

Throughout the 1980s, he designed several textile collections for Marieta and Tráfico de Modas and exhibited at the Vinçon salon in Barcelona. In 1989, Cobi

Cobi

Cobi was the official mascot of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. He is a Catalan Sheepdog in Cubist style inspired by the interpretations of Picasso of a masterpiece from Velázquez, Las Meninas. Cobi was designed by Javier Mariscal . The mascot was unveiled to the public in 1987...

was chosen as the mascot for the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

. The mascot was the centre of great controversy because of its vanguard image, although time has shown its creator to have been right and now Cobi

Cobi

is recognised as the most profitable mascot in the history of the modern games. He later created the cartoon series The Cobi Troupe.

He opened the Estudio Mariscal in 1989 and has collaborated in several projects with designers and architects such as Arata Isozaki

Arata Isozaki

Arata Isozaki is a Japanese architect from Ōita. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1954. Isozaki worked under Kenzo Tange before establishing his own firm in 1963. He was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1986.In 2005, Arata Isozaki founded the Italian branch of his office: Arata Isozaki &...

, Alfredo Arribas, Fernando Salas, Fernando Amat and Pepe Cortés. His most notable works include the visual identities for the Swedish socialist party, Socialdemokraterna; the Spanish radio station Onda Cero

Onda Cero

Onda Cero, a subsidiary of Antena 3, is Spain's number two radio station.Some of its programs are these:Herrera en la Onda,La Brújula,Julia en la Onda,Noticias Mediodía,Te doy mi palabra,Radioestadio,Gente Viajera,Noticias Fin de Semana....

; Barcelona Zoo; the University of Valencia; the Lighthouse

Lighthouse

A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....

Centre for Architecture and Design in Glasgow, the GranShip Cultural Centre in Japan and the London postproduction company, Framestore.

In 1995, Twipsy

Twipsy

Twipsy is a German television series....

was chosen as the mascot for the Hannover 2000 Expo. The success of this mascot led to the Twipsy series, in which the star is a virtual space messenger and the action is set in Internet. Twipsy was sold to over one hundred countries. In 1995, he also designed the Amorosos Furniture collection for the Italian manufacturer Moroso, which includes one of his most successful pieces of furniture, the Alexandra armchair, in which the organic shapes and the use he makes of colour communicate the vital, extroverted style that characterises Mariscal's objects.

In 1995, Mariscal, with lots of schoolchildren in the Land of Valencia created a collective mural sculpture during protest days for the use of the Valencian language in the education. The mural is now located in the Teacher's Faculty of the University of Valencia and open to the public free of charge.
In 2001, he designed the much sought after diary room chair used in Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

's second instalment of Big Brother

Big Brother (UK series 2)

Big Brother 2 was broadcast in 2001 in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the Big Brother reality television series, in which a number of contestants live in an isolated house trying to avoid being evicted by the public with the aim of winning a large cash prize at the end of the run. It...

.

In 2002, his multidisciplinary career culminated with the integral design of the Gran Hotel Domine Bilbao, nestling between the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the ria, the creative concept of which is based on reflecting the history of design of the 20th century. Mariscal designed things from the uniforms to the façade, including the graphic image and its website. He did the interior design of the GHDB with Fernando Salas

Fernando Salas

Noel Fernando Salas is a Major League Baseball pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.-Professional career:...

, who also collaborated in Calle 54 Club, a project in which Fernando Trueba also forms part and which provides Madrid with a live space where the most prestigious Latin jazz musicians perform, such as Bebo Valdés

Bebo Valdés

Bebo Valdés is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger. He was a central figure in the golden age of Cuban music, led two famous big bands, and was one of the 'house' arrangers for the Tropicana Club.Valdés started his career as a pianist in the night clubs of Havana during the 1940s...

and Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera is a Cuban alto saxophonist, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist. The winner of multiple Grammys and other awards, D'Rivera has lived in the United States since the early 1980s. He has worked in a variety of contexts, but is perhaps best known for playing Latin...

. Madrid is also the home of Hotel Puerta América, belonging to the Silken Group, a project in which the best architecture and design studios of the moment participated. Estudio Mariscal and Fernando Salas were responsible for the interior design of the eleventh floor.

Another sample of his interdisciplinary vocation is the audiovisual show Colors, which premiered in Barcelona in 1999 and starred the robot Dimitri, another of Mariscal's creatures. The script of Colors has been adapted for the frequent conferences on design he gives all over the world which, rather than conferences are entertaining pocket shows marked with humour and tenderness.

In 2005, he made several objects for the children's collection, Me Too, by Magis

Magis

For the Organization founded by Robert Spitzer, SJ go to Magis Institute.Magis is a Jesuit phrase that means "the more." It is taken from Ad majorem Dei gloriam, a Latin phrase meaning "for the greater glory of God." Magis refers to the philosophy of doing more, for Christ, and therefore for...

, a fruitful collaboration that is still under way. Some of his most recent works, which he continues to combine with his artistic task, are the image of the Spanish financial institution, Bancaja; that of the 32nd America's Cup, of the new brand of bags for Camper

Camper (company)

Camper is an international shoe company based in Spain. Lorenzo Fluxa founded the company in 1975 after inheriting a shoe factory from his father, Antonio Fluxa, a Spanish shoemaker. Camper operates 52 company-owned stores around North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, as well as distributing...

, Camper For Hands, as well as the interior design of the Ikea Restaurant in Vitoria. In 2006, he participated in ARCO

ARCO

Atlantic Richfield Company is an oil company with operations in the United States as well as in Indonesia, the North Sea, and the South China Sea. It has more than 1,300 gas stations in the western part of the United States. ARCO was originally formed by the merger of East Coast-based Atlantic...

with the sculpture, Crash!, a homage to the optimist design of the 1950s and a way of telling us that that confidence in the future has exploded because now we need to think about how to make a future possible.

In 2009, from 1 July until 1 November, a major UK retrospective of Mariscal's work is being shown at the London Design Museum

Design Museum

Design Museum is a museum by the River Thames near Tower Bridge in central London, England. The museum covers product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. It was founded in 1989 and claims to be the first museum of modern design...

, in which visitors enter through a tunnel showing 640 examples of the designer's style from 1970 to the present day, including his typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

s. He will also be creating a mural for the outside of the Design Museum itself.

Mariscal drew and co-directed, with Oscar-winning director Fernando Trueba

Fernando Trueba

Fernando Trueba is a Spanish book editor, screenwriter, film director and producer.Between 1974 and 1979 worked as a film critic for Spain's leading daily newspaper EL PAIS. In 1980, founded the monthly film magazine CASABLANCA, which he edited and directed during its first two years...

, the 2010 British/Spanish animated feature-length film Chico and Rita
Chico and Rita
Chico and Rita is an animated feature-length film directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal. The story of Chico and Rita is set against backdrops of Havana, New York City, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s.-Synopsis:...

. The film celebrates the music and culture of Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

and depicts a love story set against backdrops of Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Las Vegas

Las Vegas metropolitan area

The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...

, Hollywood and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

in the late 1940s

1940s

File:1940s decade montage.png|Above title bar: events which happened during World War II : From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching "Omaha" Beach on "D-Day"; Adolf Hitler visits Paris, soon after the Battle of France; The Holocaust occurred during the war as Nazi Germany...

and early '50s

1950s

The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...

Awards

In 1999, Mariscal received the National Design Prize of the Spanish Department of Industry and the BCD Foundation grants in recognition of achievements throughout a professional career.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.