Ángel Haro Gómez - Memoria del Diseño

Angel
Haro Gómez

Valencia, 1958

Painter, sculptor, set designer, video creator and graphic designer

Ángel Haro was born in Valencia, in 1958. When he was one year old, he continued on his way to Paris, where his father worked as a boilermaker in the fuselage of the Concord. At the age of 19 the family arrived in Puerto Lumbreras and, just in 1980, appeared in Murcia, where we met.

Ángel is a one-man band, the hero of a thousand faces. Painter, sculptor, video-artist, forger, set designer… and also a designer. A real generator of content on the networks, in the streets and in the studios. A man of the Renaissance of the twenty-first century, with a Greek profile, hyperactive, but highly reflective, he always raises his arms when something new appears.

We had a coffee sitting on a terrace in the Flota neighborhood of Murcia. Although he is now based in Madrid, he comes precisely to collaborate in the preparations for the exhibition in tribute to Antonio Ballester: “Dear Antonio”, which will open in September.

My central activity is painting. From there I have expanded my work into other fields such as scenography, sculpture or video art. Also graphic design, and more specifically poster design. In the first instance because it was an activity where I could continue researching plastically, while at the same time giving me a certain economic solvency. A circumstance that painting did not provide me. But also the purely graphic field, the approach to printing systems and the specificities of advertising language opened up an unsuspected world for me from which my painting was nourished. Just as my posters drink from purely pictorial resources.

I’ve never really felt like a purely designer. I am an artist who makes posters or illustrates books. My tools, as I said before, are painter’s and the use I make of the image, even if it is based on a photograph, has a pictorial vocation. It is true that with experience and observation I have learned certain compositional or typographic resources typical of design, but I would not dare to call myself a designer.

Design is undoubtedly another artistic discipline, where you have to know how to handle the laws of perception, color, form, perspective, etc. Although it is true that it is a vehicle of communication even if it is not specifically expressive. I mean that it is a work motivated by a commission that is personalized in a “client” for a propaganda purpose. It is therefore an applied art where the creator puts his/her knowledge at the service of a previously defined objective and its success does not depend exclusively on its aesthetic characteristics but above all on its functionality. In a painting, an artist does not need to “communicate” but his value is in his expressive charge. They are different fields that use similar tools.

To contextualise the historical micro-times we are talking about, where were you as a creator in four key moments of these last two decades of the twentieth century: in the early 80s (with the arrival of democratic city councils, 1979, and Autonomy, 1982), at Expo 92, at the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) or at the turn of the century?

Early 80s. He had just arrived in the city of Murcia. My project was to be a painter, I survived on small jobs and I contacted the first youth institutions. There was a great lack of knowledge but a lot of desire to do things. They were the first incentive programs for young people. Murcia Joven, leisure schools, concerts and street theatre, jazz and film festivals. Murcia was boiling with creativity and was looking for an image homologated to the new democratic winds. Creative risk was highly appreciated.

Expo 92. The Expo was the end of absolute freedom in terms of creativity. The cultural institutions had already been finalized and the managers had taken over. For the first time there was an awareness that culture, and therefore its way of communicating it, could not be in the hands of independent artists. The first design studios and the first communication agencies were formed. Artist commissions are reduced. At the end of Expo 92, in response to the incipient “cultural officialism” we created MESTIZO with a group of friends (Paco Salinas, Joaquín Cánovas, Paco Martín and Vicenta Hellín). A group that sought to preserve the independence of culture through alternative programming. Against all odds it was a success. At the same time I come into contact with the scenic world and collaborate with the image of the companies by making the posters and scripts for the shows.

Fall of the wall. At that time I was living in Madrid and it caught me traveling frequently (United States, Europe, Central America). I distanced myself a bit from design to focus more on my career as a plastic artist. I got to know Berlin well before the fall of the wall and saw for the first time live the great pieces of the Bauhaus where art, crafts and graphics were a single field. When the wall fell, he was no longer closely linked to graphic design and began to work in art direction for film and stage space for theatre and opera.

Turn of the century. At the turn of the century, my graphic collaborations have been very punctual. However, I like to investigate, when I receive a commission, to maintain the spirit of freedom that the territory of painting gives me. In those cases I admit that I undertake the work more as a painter than as a designer.

“It is very common for artists to look for parallel works, especially at the beginning of our career. But I was soon fascinated by the possibilities and resources of graphic design and there came a time when the boundaries between the two fields were dissolving. ”

What references have you had as a designer?

Russian Constructivism, Political Iconography Between the Wars, Large Circus Posters, Art Brut, Malevich, Joseph Renau, Saul Bass, Daniel Gil, Ben Shahn, and the book Art and Visual Perception by Rudolf Arnheim,

And the first orders?

He had already collaborated in the late 70s and early 80s with illustrations in magazines of the time such as Ajoblanco, a Catalan magazine of anarchist style or La Luna de Madrid, standard of La Movida. But my first official commission was a poster to announce the first summer school of the Murcia city council in 1982.

In those 80s, the function of the poster was in line with Joseph Renau’s phrase “a poster is a scream on the wall”. That argument was vital in a world where communication was restricted to the printed image, and walls or shop windows were its only place of display. I used to say that a poster that does not stand next to a circus poster is not a poster, although perhaps that maximalism was an exaggeration. In that sense, the format was part of the code, since its reading had a relationship of proportion with the size of a person walking down the street or traveling in a car. With the arrival of digital information, that premise changed.

The relationship with the image emanates from an increasingly smaller, personalized screen with a high degree of definition and brightness. The format is already an ambiguous concept and the relationship of proportions is fluctuating. That which seems a minor matter, changes the entire graphic argument, the textures disappear and the image is more and more iconic. Of course, then people kept the posters, pricked them on the wall of their room and even framed them. Now we do not remember today the image that struck us yesterday.

List of the main posters of Ángel:

1982. MUNICIPAL SCHOOL OF FREE TIME. Murcia.

1984. YOUNG MURCIA. Murcia.

1985. Exhibition ART IN MURCIA 1862-1985. Murcia. 1ST CONFERENCE ON THE POLLUTION OF THE SEGURA RIVER. EUROPALIA FESTIVAL. Antwerp. Belgium. YOUNG MURCIA 85. Murcia.

1986. SEPTEMBER FAIR of Murcia. 33rd INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL. Murcia. YOUTH AND FREE TIME. Murcia.

1987. 7th THEATRE FESTIVAL. Cieza. CINEMATOGRAPHIC SPRING. Murcia.

1989. 8th JAZZ FESTIVAL. Murcia.

1992. THEATRE FESTIVAL. San Javier.

1994. FORUM OF NEW FILMMAKERS. Murcia.

1999. 4th CINEMATOGRAPHIC SPRING. Lorca. Opera THE HUMAN VOICE.

2000. Opera WOMEN’S SHOES.

2001. TUSITALA play.

2002. Poster for THE BURIAL OF THE SARDINE.

2003. Theatre play THE IMAGINARY PATIENT. MOORS AND CHRISTIANS. Murcia.

2009. Theatre play EL AVIATOR.

2010. Theatre play HIMMELWEG.

2012. Theatre play THE DREAM OF REASON.

2013. 44th THEATRE FESTIVAL. Molina de Segura.

2014. EQUUS play.

2015. LA MAR DE MÚSICAS FESTIVAL. Cartagena.

2016. THE NIGHT OF THE MUSEUMS. Murcia.

2020. 1ST ART DOCUMENTARY CONGRESS. Murcia.

2023. 11TH MOVING FESTIVAL. Cartagena.

2025. MACBETH play

2025. 25TH CONGRESS OF ART HISTORY. Murcia.

My first steps in the world of design were in the printers that were working in Murcia at the time. El Taller, Belmar, Surgraf and later Novograf and Jiménez Godoy. At that time the computer had not yet appeared, everything was very manual, “very organic”. The images were painted or drawn as well as the typography. At most, some used the airbrush. Then Letraset and adhesive backgrounds appeared. We started with painted originals or photographs that went through photomechanics to make the photolithographs with which to insolate the four-colour plates. The result was not seen until the first sheets of the press came out.
Then the color had to be refined and the registers of each ink had to be adjusted. It was laborious but very ritualistic.

Normally you were working on a light table with a pre-press technician and on the next one there was a colleague preparing another job or already on machines. It was a very cordial atmosphere with a lot of respect for the work of others. Actually, these printing presses were teaching centres since design schools hardly existed in Spain and design was not studied in fine arts faculties. There were printers that were stricter about letting a creative move freely between the lab and the engine room, but others were more permissive. I have a special memory of my long days at Novograf and the generosity of Paco Solano, Roberto Yelo and Manuel Saavedra. Manuel later pioneered digital printing systems with Saavedra Digital, which would be the great graphic revolution.

My generation has really experienced a great technological change after the invention of the printing press. At the end of the 70s, the tools we used were practically the same as those used in the Renaissance: pencils, ink, watercolors, brushes, pencils, rulers, letters, etc. Rotring, the airbrush, the lettering templates, the Letraset, the adhesive textures and then the computer, Photoshop, Illustrator, and all the image processing programs have passed through us until we reached AI. We have had no choice but to adapt to the changes in order to be up to date. It has been a journey as crazy as it has been fascinating.

I graduated in higher industrial drafting at the Lorca Vocational Training School, then I was awarded a scholarship to the Labor University of Córdoba where I started industrial engineering, but art crossed my path in the middle of the course and I left the “regulated” studies. Later I enrolled in drawing and painting at the School of Art and Crafts of Murcia. I don’t believe in the idea of the “self-taught” because I think that all the baggage that one can have when visiting exhibitions, artists’ studios and museums, reading books, watching movies, going to concerts, etc., is part of an unregulated training, but as valid as going to an art university.

As a plastic artist I have made about 60 individual exhibitions, but never one specific to my graphic work, although I have participated in some collective publications. I don’t know if that work is extensive enough for an exhibition, however I am very proud to have shared a generation with a series of creators that I admire and from whom I have learned a lot. Although it is true that I was always the youngest of them all.

In any case, I think that the natural exposure of any design is its popular use. That’s how I’ve felt when I’ve designed a poster, the cover of an album or a book and even a wine label. I believe that the collection, cataloguing and study of graphic memory is absolutely necessary. In the case of Murcia it is especially interesting since even though it is a small region, its graphic imprint is surprising with respect to its size.

Do you feel nostalgic for those 80s? What do you miss the most?

Not nostalgia, but very good memories of those years. Especially the atmosphere of freedom that was breathed. The healthy competition between us made us wait for the poster or the design of a catalog to analyze and discuss it for hours. We were a tribe of restless creatives where “printers” also intervened, as well as the rest of society. People cared about the image that was projected outwards and they immediately made it their own. As I said before, people kept and even framed the posters. Currently there is a lot of quality but I am saddened by the lack of trust in creators, everything is more regulated and standardized. Especially for large events, creativity and risk have been greatly diminished. Most of the images are pre-designed formulas from a “brainstorming”. Some are perfect but have gone through so many filters that they are born cold. In every great work, of whatever kind, there is always something that should not be foreseen even by its author. In that sense, I still believe in the creative power of intuition and its communicative power.

We ended with a hug. Paco Solano , who also lives in this neighborhood, has joined. We will also talk to Paco, who has a lot to say about design in Murcia.

Ángel immediately returned to Madrid and from there he left for Chicago where on May 16 he inaugurated an exhibition in a private gallery, ‘with a certain reference to the landscape’ under the title of “TREES AND BELS”. Good luck.

Javier Marín Ceballos and Ángel Haro Gómez shared this talk during the month of May 2025