"Fornas. The image of Catalonia in the 60's" at the Design Museum of Barcelona

The Barcelona Design Museum presents the Fornas exhibition from 8 April to 24 July. The image of Catalonia in the 1960s. In the 1960s, a cultural industry was set up in Catalonia that sought to regain its presence in Catalan society, which had been lost and silenced by the Franco regime since the end of the Civil War. Catalan culture has ceased to be defensive and has clearly adopted more creative and dynamic attitudes. This reaction was intended to be evident not only in the content but also in the image.

Critics of the time emphasize the order, balance and constructive will of his work, resources that in the 60's he developed in his main occupation: graphic design. In these amazing years infected by the impressive movement that from England, with the influence of creators like Alan Fletcher or Robert Brownjohn, reached the rest of the world, Jordi Fornas displayed the best of his graphic production.

Jordi Fornas i Martínez (Barcelona, 1927-2011), trained at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, devoted himself entirely to production. In the early 1960s, he began to hold personal assignments and set aside painting to devote himself fully to graphic design. In this field, he achieved considerable prestige and recognition and was the architect of the design of some of the most important modern pillars of the cultural renaissance of the second half of the twentieth century, giving graphic identity to the new mass culture in Catalan. develop in Catalonia. His graphic work draws on British pop aesthetics, Swiss school design and, especially, French graphics from the 1950s. The mixture of all these influences is reflected in the resources and uses that make up one of the mainstays of what we call the Fornas style.