Félix Beltrán was one the most well-liked graphic designers in his native Cuba following Castro’s revolution; he was additionally a powerhouse of Latin American company design after leaving Havana for Mexico Metropolis. Though his work bolstered sure beliefs and personalities of the revolution, it was not so ideologically dictated as to be slavish propaganda, but it surely did set up an empathetic model. “Not like the graphic arts launched to Cuba by the U.S. earlier than the revolution, the brand new poster [in Cuba] aimed to have interaction the viewer as a considering particular person, not as a passive client of commodities,” the web site Cuba50 states. “The posters of previous days with simply digested soundbites have been rejected—as an alternative, the objective was to ‘increase and complicate consciousness—the very best goal of the revolution itself.’”
Beltrán’s work (like many Cuban designers) was antithetical to Communist-Socialist realism (which additionally was receding within the ’60s). He studied in the USA in the course of the Midcentury Trendy period, between 1956 and 1962—graphic design on the College of Visible Arts, portray within the American Artwork College and lithography on the Pratt Graphic Artwork Heart in New York Metropolis. He additionally took lessons on the New College for Social Analysis, the place he met the theorists/philosophers Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, amongst others.
He died in December 2022 at his house in Mexico Metropolis. Had he stayed in the USA, his design considering would have been hand-in-glove with the Bauhaus-inspired, geometry-driven Moderns that influenced his personal grid-locked simplicity, and sometimes refined, witty work.
In 2022 Sonia Diaz and Gabriel Martinez wrote and revealed a two-volume compilation and evaluation of Beltrán’s life and work: Félix Beltran Inteligencia Visible and Siempre el Diseño. A career-inclusive exhibition, Félix Beltrán Visible Intelligence, has additionally been launched on the Complutense Artwork Centre in Madrid, now by March 16. I requested the duo to elucidate Beltrán’s legacy by the lens of this present.
When was the exhibition conceived?
In Might 2022, [Isabel García,] the vice chancellor of tradition of the Complutense College of Madrid, proposed that we current an exhibition undertaking as a result of the books Inteligencia Visible and Siempre el Diseño have been already revealed and had already been an amazing success, each within the worldwide version revealed by Optik Books and the Spanish version revealed by Ediciones Complutense. On this sense, it appeared logical that the publishing undertaking ought to evolve in direction of the exhibition, provided that we already had all of the graphic materials and a really elaborate and well-defined conceptual proposal after greater than 10 years of analysis. What could be very clear is that with out the assist and belief of García, the undertaking wouldn’t have gone forward, as a result of she values Félix Beltrán’s work very extremely and is aware of that the significance of his work as a designer and trainer is an instance to be adopted.
Was Félix concerned within the choice?
To inform the reality, like all inventive folks, Félix was very important of his work and all the time wished us to get rid of a lot of the fabric he thought of “imperfect.” However we all the time advised him that it was necessary to see the work as a complete as a result of it gave us many clues to grasp his influences, the instances he lived in and his philosophy of labor.
Félix and Teresa Camacho—his associate—have been very concerned in the entire course of we adopted to provide the publications, and so they have been concerned in the potential of placing on an exhibition with all the fabric. In actual fact, in September we visited Mexico Metropolis to current the books and we talked in regards to the undertaking, though Félix’s already deteriorated well being made us suppose that it will be sophisticated for him to journey for the opening.
What’s it about Félix’s life and work that’s so compelling?
The mental consistency and dedication he maintained all through his life in a political, social, conceptual and graphic sense. Félix’s life is exclusive as a result of he lived by necessary moments in historical past; the truth that he was in a position to examine on the College of Visible Arts in New York in a flourishing period of design and promoting; being the particular person in command of the company and institutional picture of the Cuban Revolution for 20 years; and, lastly, from Mexico, his contribution to the tradition of design by his college work.
Félix’s work is methodical and systematic, but it surely additionally stands out as a result of he’s able to combining with out complexes a colourful optimism coming from his Hispanic tradition and the rationality and Modernist intellectuality found in New York and in his travels round Europe. Because the designer and artist Raúl Martínez identified, “Félix Beltrán is essentially the most mental, universally mental designer in Cuba.” His intellectuality makes him worthy of a spot within the historical past of design, however he additionally had the standard of being shut and really human in his social relations. As Félix himself stated: “The one factor I can boast of is having human qualities.”
Earlier than he handed away did you will have the chance to point out him any of the plans or preparations?
We had phone conversations with him and Teresa till a number of days earlier than his dying on 28 December. Regardless of his sickness, he saved alive the phantasm of having the ability to be on the opening. We despatched him sketches of what the exhibition could be like and he was very pleased that his “design in a social sense” might attain the utmost variety of folks. The reality is that he all the time revered our proposals and there wasn’t a day that glided by that we didn’t obtain a brand new and shocking graphic doc that, motivated by the progress of the undertaking, he was discovering in his archives. This change has allowed us to rescue some 700 photos, a few of them of very poor high quality, however no much less necessary for that.
What has the response been?
The response to the exhibition has been shocking, as was the response to the publication of the books beforehand. It is because Félix is a really well-known character who seems in design historical past books. But a lot of his work is unknown even to specialists. For us it has been a journey into the previous, a priceless up to date analysis of “visible archaeology.” Because of this, it appears to us that to have the ability to current Félix’s work to all kinds of the general public is a chance to replace and revalue the work of a lifetime, and in addition to deliver to gentle a part of the historical past of Ibero-American design—one thing that for a lot of is a really unknown topic.
