Beyond the graphic design
THE PLASTIC CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FORNAS AND PEDRAGOSA OCCUPY THE SPACE VOLART
QuéFem / La Vanguardia
30-01-2015
Laia Antúnez
Jordi Fornas and Joan Pedragosa are considered pioneers of graphic design in Catalonia. Advertising graphic design - so knew the design in the '60s - represented to them an opportunity to express their creativity. Fornas created iconography that reflected the international artistic trends, from a combination of photography, collage, and typography. In spite of his career, this man from Barcelona always considered himself, above all, a painter. On the other side, Pedragosa was one of the founders in 1961 of the Graphic Association of the FAD after dedicating significantly to graphic design, working a language based on the balance from the game of volumes and the overcoming of the pictorial space, finished experimenting with the three-dimensionality and became an inventor of structures seeking the movementfully, embracing the practice of sculpture.
Both designers become artists and find in the visual arts the best way to develop their thinking with more freedom. This is the slope that explores the exhibition, commissioned by Glòria Bosch, art director of the Vila Casas Foundation, and the critic Julià Guillamon. “The initial idea we had was to establish a dialogue and search for the connection between the two authors. We were surprised, since we find that, beyond design, they share many aspects linked to the arts, such as the use of the volume and the collage, the importance of the movement, geometry, working with similar colors, etc. ”, explains Bosch.
Although we find at the exposition examples of his work in the field of graphic design, “only we have chosen parts that could have significance in explaining his plastic work”, says the Commissioner. For example, the covers of the books of editions 62 Fornas created in the '60s, parts used contrasting photographs, filling the pages until the edges or that excelled. A graphic strategy that Fornas then applied to his pictorial compositions, adding volume. Many of his works, instead of TVs use doors and windows. Parts go beyond the frame, flat surface is unfolded in shape layers, like a hand of cards or a game of constructions” exposes Guillamon in the catalogue of the exhibition.
Pedragosa, on the other hand, according to Guillamon continues: “looking for purity: essential forms, flat colors, delicate compositions, minimal movements caused by temperature fluctuations. Subtlety and balance.” Shots that you can see on their mobiles, travel sculptures and desktop sculptures, that arise from the study of geometry and space, and parts which have an important role in this show, “the first that relates the two facets of these artists, the graphics and the visual arts,” concludes Bosch.