Carlos Salamanca Gutiérrez - Memoria del Diseño

Carlos Salamanca Gutiérrez

Valladolid, 1951 – Murcia, 1991
Artist, painter and graphic designer

I begin this text about Carlos Salamanca marked by the last time we met. At night, at a party of the Department of Youth, where we were colleagues. Happy to see him, I approached him, who, cheerful, dancing and full of energy, instead of kissing me… He bit my nose. After that moment, I have no memory and it weighs on me.

I also don’t get anything from Google, so early was his death. Surrounded by his pop concert posters, aware that for many people Carlos Salamanca will be a discovery, I organize myself to have the support of two important people for him: his former wife, Águeda Carreño —with whom he shared life and creative experiences and with whom he had Carmen Mencía, in 1985, and Carlitos, a year later – and the socio-cultural activities technician Paco Manuel Reverte, his client and friend.

Carlos Salamanca was a self-taught painter who came to Murcia in the early 80s, along with other Valladolidians who left the cold behind to set up successful businesses, such as the nightclub “Metal Beat, La Metal”, and, later, the decoration and gift shop “Tokio y Cía”. His first work in the region was for another playful meeting place that became a reference in the Mediterranean and lasted well into the new century, the ZM 101, located in La Manga del Mar Menor, for which he designed the graphic identity – a boat next to a pole – and also painted a mural, that is not preserved. There he met Águeda, promoter of the initiative, and they soon began a life together, interacting with other young architects, photographers, painters, designers, musicians… and forming part of the freshest and most dynamic cultural activity in Murcia at that time.

Paco Manuel Reverte remembers him as follows: “He was introduced to me by my remembered friend Emilio Poveda, then a teammate in the team of the Young Yesqueros Spaces and La Nave. We needed a designer to help us launch the activities of these new projects promoted by the Department of Youth and Sports of the City of Murcia at the beginning of 1987, two centers that intended to combine young art, live music and youth participation… With a varied and flexible programme that it seemed like a combination of a nightclub, cultural centre and neighbourhood association, it was the designer’s job to launch an attractive image with agility. And Carlos succeeded, because his designs had the freshness and speed of the painter artist of sketches combined with the “craftsmanship of photocomposition”. As Lorenzo Díaz Vico, another creative who also played for Yesqueros and La Nave, recently reminded me, “Carlos had magic”.

“Carlos had magic”

And it was true. In his paintings, in his designs, in his way of telling stories… Like when he told how he fell in love with palm trees when he arrived in this land and that is why he liked to paint them so much.”

Águeda confirms that Carlos designed with his hands, “he drew, composed and went to the printing press – Joaquín Valls, Surgraf, sometimes, for the biggest, to Novograf – to finish the task. He enjoyed the work done for the City of Murcia, he felt supported, at ease”. And he finishes the brief interview by telling us that his daughter Carmen, “Boogie”, as her father called her, is a journalist and publicist.

Carlos Salamanca came to enjoy the first public exhibition of his “Paintings” at the Yesqueros youth center, at the end of 1988; the next, in the mid-90s at the bar “El Albero”, was already a tribute in memoriam. Today technology gives us the opportunity to invite us to review the legacy of this designer and painter who lived in Murcia for a decade, to enjoy his magic and find ourselves in it.

………
A memory of Águeda Carreño, Teresa Jular and Paco Manuel Reverte.