Alberto Corazón

(Madrid, 1942 - 2021)

Author's artworks

20th-21st Century. Spanish

A painter, sculptor, photographer, essayist and iconic designer, Alberto Corazón was a towering figure in graphic design in Spain in the period following the country’s transition to democracy. He was behind many memorable projects that became part of the visual imagery of democratic Spain, creating logos for highly significant institutions, like Biblioteca Nacional, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Círculo de Bellas Artes, Casa de América, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE). He also worked on commissions from private companies, like Anaya publishers or the insurance company Mapfre.

After studying Economics, Corazón began to work as an editor for Editorial Ciencia Nueva (1965-1970), while also starting to design posters around the same time. This spurred an abiding interest in Graphic Design, an emerging discipline at the time, and allowed him to put his creativity at the service of practical ends, creating graphic designs for Teatro Español (1980), the Paradores hotel chain (1983) and the Regional Government of Andalusia (1984). In the following decades he would also make a name for himself in industrial design, with projects like the DOMO telephone for Telefónica, the public equipment for the commuting services of RENFE (Spanish national railway network) or the information and services modules he devised for the 1992 Seville Expo.

His artistic output embraces painting and sculpture, both defined by a symbolist-charged visual grammar. In his early stages as an artist in the 1970s he engaged with
, exhibiting his works at Galería Redor, the 1976 Venice Biennale or Alexander Iolas Gallery in New York in 1979. In recent decades, Galería Marlborough, in Madrid, devoted two solo exhibitions to the artist, while in 2015, Fundación Telefónica held the retrospective show Alberto Corazón. Diseño: la energía del pensamiento gráfico 1965-2015.

Widely recognised internationally, throughout his career Corazón was distinguished with the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York (1970); First Prize from British Design and Art Direction, London (1973); and the Montblanc Culture award (1988), among others. In Spain, Corazón won the National Design Award (1989) as well as the Descubrir el Arte Prize in 2011 for his life’s work. In 2006 he was appointed a member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Alberto Corazón has works in the collections of Museo Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid (Conde Duque), Madrid; and Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao.