Ángel Fernández Saura - Memoria del Diseño

Ángel Fernández Saura

Photographer, graphic designer and mountaineer

Murcia, May 28, 1953

Although on his Facebook Ángel Fernández Saura says that he was born in Macondo, like Colonel Aureliano Buendía, the truth is that, talking on the phone, he confessed to me that he is a Murcian born in Sociedad Street and a student of the Alfonso X El Sabio Institute.

When he finished high school, he got a job at CEBAS, the national agency for research in soil science and biology of the CSIC located in our region, where he spent two years and learned a lot about what he knows today, working with quality microscopes, lenses and cameras, until he went to military service. On his return, two years later, he shared hobbies and became friends with restless young people of his age, such as Paco Salinas and Saturnino Espín, who were also joined by Pepe Pina, who he knew from the mountains. Over time, they have all become renowned photographers.

In 1980, Ángel managed to publish in the professional magazine “Nikon News”, not easy in the analogue world of that time, and, a year later, his first solo exhibition, entitled “Gente”, at the prestigious Chys gallery on Calle Trapería in Murcia.

Another important milestone in her career was the Plastic Arts grant from the General Directorate of Culture of Murcia, which allowed her to develop a project from a stay in New York, where, she continues to tell me, “I went six months without sleep. I would go to bed for four hours and go back to the street, to see as many museums and photo galleries as there were.”

Part of this work was shown in the exhibition “N.Y. 651 9th Avenue” organized at the Sala San Esteban in Murcia in 1989 and, according to experts, the aesthetic and intellectual bases of the creative were already raised. The following year, a daring and brave innovator, he decided to dispense with cameras and enlargers for the work he showed in the exhibition “Neo-Nada”, in Los Molinos del Río.

1991 could be said to be the year of national recognition of his work as a photographer, when he was part of the book “Four Directions: Contemporary Photography in Spain 1970-1990”, directed by Manuel Santos, and was included in the “Encyclopedia of Spanish Art of the Twentieth Century, Artists”, directed by Francisco Calvo Serraller.

From these years to the present day, there are close to a hundred individual exhibitions, group shows and publications in which Ángel has participated showing his creations, which he adjectives as artistic, because, as he himself defends, “photography is art, modern and with increasingly accessible resources, but where the eye of the human who looks is what prevails: art”.

There are also numerous expeditions and trips that he has photographed: Zaire, Peru, Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, India, Nepal, Mexico, are some of the distant countries he has known. The Alps, the Caucasus, the Himalayas, the Atlas, Lenin Peak in Kyrgyzstan, are mountain ranges and mountains that have not resisted him.

Nor has it been difficult for him to photograph nudes or another specialty that we especially celebrate, portraiture, because for many years he has been in charge of photographing foreigners and locals of the regional culture, among them, many of the protagonists of design and advertising, those that we are looking forward to re-knowing, because, as Ángel says:

“If there are no people, there is no world.”

We have been chatting for a while when, finally, I shoot: and what about the designer Ángel Fernández Saura? The one that was part of the exhibition “Graphic Design in Murcia (1899-1999)” that took place at the Chamber of Commerce of Murcia just before the end of the twentieth century? How do we make it more visible?

And that’s how I receive a lot of images of posters and even billboards that had left me a memory at the time, but I didn’t know that they were designed by him. For the Pérez Díaz furniture store; the Spanish Film Week in Lorca; for “El Continental”, the emblematic café set up by his friend Emilio Morales, gallery owner and art collector…

Graphic and editorial design for many clients, private and public, including the Museum of Fuente Álamo, where he was responsible for the graphic identity, the organization and interior signage, the catalogs… She even designed a bandana for the gift shop. And also international, such as the works for Marktex in Frankfurt, in collaboration with the German designer Olaf Leu.

The project Memory of Design Region of Murcia has brought me closer to the professional career of Ángel the photographer and his way of thinking in relation to the image, a journey that we can complete by exploring in our favorite spider web, because, rarely, there is quite updated documentation on the Internet. It has also led me to collaborate to complete the visibility of other protagonists, but the story of Ángel Fernández Saura as a graphic designer is to be worked on as it deserves, compiling all his contributions and reflecting on the whole. Let us consider this record as a starting point.

………
Teresa Jular chatted with Ángel Fernández Saura, collaborator and protagonist of MDRM.
April 2024.