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If anything characterises this versatile artist – sculptor, graphic and industrial designer and also a sketcher – is his fresh view in his creation, bordering on the limits of the infantile world whilst capturing the most enjoyable aspects of life. His works are fruit of his own Mediterranean roots as well as pop culture influences, which transforms in to full creations of vitality and light.The city that saw Javier Errando Mariscal was Valencia on 9 February 1950. His father was, at this moment, the known doctor Errando and his mother a house wife with three children that later on would be converted in to nine. The Spain of the 50’s was a poor and dark territory. The lesson that he soon learnt is that he had to go against the current for a better life.
His early passion for comics and applied arts, more than a hobby, was a necessity to express himself, with Mariscal´s words: "how to grab the world that surrounds us and express it graphically". With that, at the age of 19 he published in Valencia, in where it was his first character, El Señor del Caballito (The Man of the Little Horse), a figure that becomes emotional while contemplating the sun and gets depressed to find a traffic sign that prohibits him to turn right. One year later, he abandons his hometown to arrive in Barcelona in 1970 and studies graphic design in the Elisava school.
After some out of control years, Javier Mariscal and his friend Nazario project the first underground comic edited in Spain, on October 1973. The masked El Rollo has been classified as a work of unpublished sensitivity, poetic and bittersweet at the same time anti-conventionalist and ferocious, which was the result of, two months later, being kidnapped by the governmental order.
In 1975 Mariscal finished his military service and looked for refuge in Ibiza that permitted him to let his imagination fly and created 14 pages of 'Nos vemos esta noche, nenas' (We'll see each other tonight, girls). He returned to Barcelona one year later with a great deal of ideas under his wing: drawings of couches,
butacones, chairs and tables inspired in cafés of when he was born. This period is fruit of 'Crash', the first short story that Mariscal contextualised in Barcelona.
His first individual exhibition was achieved in 1977, at the Gran Hotel, in which the Hotel was transformed in to multi-disciplinary space. Here they could count with painted glass, handmade jumpers, colourful canapés and cardboard stone objects.
The democratic change found a graphic feature writer in this original author of the city. From there the public administration betted for this ironic youngster and gave him the opportunity of the graphic renovation and most of all festive that represented the progressive character of the new City Council.
Between the signs of this era worthy of a mention is baroque and modern Barcelona like never before on 1978 for the Barcelona's official agency of consistory, the celebrated Bar, Cel, Ona (1979), the Correfoc and Carnaval destined for the Mercè Festivals de 1982/1984 and 1987. From that moment on Mariscal was never out of work, creating brochure covers, signs, catalogues, magazines, bags, books, logotypes and postcards. Yet he still had not demonstrated his capacity in the typography field.
In 1986 he jumped to the limelight in an alphabet of capitulatory forms that were used for the first time in the bells of the Mercè Festival.
In 1989 his character Cobi is selected as the mascot for the Olympics of Barcelona of 1992, in which he owes a great deal to the worldwide recognition of his signature and as a claim in different declarations by the media: "being able to mature at professional level and be able to be nearly in direct with the reaction of the public, who this mascot represented something very important".
Another of the mascots from the Mariscal brand that would mark his career would be Twispy in 1996 for the Hannover Universal Exposition 2000 from where he would develop the corporative project and the merchandising. Two years later this character would be the protagonist of the cartoons (52 chapters of 15 minutes duration); the audiovisual company in charge of production that their author founded in 1998, Muviscal.
In 1999 Mariscal Studios produce 'Colors'. A visual show in which mixes a retro-projection screen, a narrator-protagonist (a robot babtised as Dimitri), 7 actors that are gymnasts, stewards of shades, stage machinist, ballet dancers, 4 robots singers, a team of lights and a sound-track, to give life to a humorous story on the history of colours.
In the XXIth century, in 2002, an integral design can be seen of the Hotel Domine of Bilbao, a project in which makes a reflection of different existing styles through the XXth century connecting to the philosophy of dialogue of the very own Museum. Other cities whose urbanism also can be seen modified by these original hotels are Madrid and Valencia.
In the next summer they are going to open, once the works are finalised, an ambitious project which can be defined like a small theme park of an enigmatic civilisation that lived in Felisia. The Felici are the new ideation of Mariscal, Dany Freixas and Alfredo Arribas located in the south of Italy.
The projects that for now have marked 2004 have been a collection of stories for children and other of plastic furniture directed to the same public, that were presented in the fair of the Furniture of Milan. The next adventure is a movie of cartoon for adults that it will finish in October of this year.
And the fact is he has never left aside the most artistic aspect of his career and his work has been exhibited in numerous individual and collective exhibitions as the prestigious Center of Georges Pompidou in 1994 or Documents Her of Kassel in 1987. He is a good friend of
Miquel Barceló and his work has been seen across the Gallery Vinçon in 1978, 1981, 1982 and 1986 and of the gallery Trama in 1992.
The whole work of Javier Mariscal is the set of a fresh production and most of all, authentic in spite of the planning of the process of production. In his studio he has the capacity so much as an order of a modest logotype for a primary school and a complex cupboard and positions of the Paralympics personages. And it is how Ramón España defines: "the utility is a basic concept in Mariscal's things, almost everything he does serves for something. You can sit down on something of Mariscal, can wrap yourself up with something of Mariscal, and can eat in something of Mariscal. And as such he is, as a firm defender of defending applied arts, enjoys mixing the artistic with practicality".
Raquel Roselló.