The prolific designer, publicist, illustrator, cartoonist and writer Rafael Morante Boyerizo died this Sunday in Havana, at the age of 91, according to the Cuban Book Institute (ICL) on its social networks.
Morante, born in Madrid in 1931, arrived in Cuba in 1940 as part of the exiles who left Spain during the Civil War, and from then on developed a career that before 1959 was marked by his work in advertising agencies.
The Cuban Book Institute mourns the death of the National Design Award 2015 Rafael Morante Boyerizo pic.twitter.com/IND0ci6Ny3
— Cuban Book Institute (@cubano_libro) June 26, 2022
He collaborated intensely in numerous publications such as Bacardi Chart, posters, Bohemia, Revolution Monday, Cuban Cinema, Cuba, House of the Americas, The Cuban Gazette, Olive green, Revolution and Culture, the english rooster (Mexico) and Common (Bolivia), as well as in the publishing houses Extramuros, Arte y Literatura, Letras Cubanas and Gente Nueva.
For more than sixty years he designed collections, logos, numerous covers and a large number of illustrations that earned him multiple distinctions such as the National Design Award in 2015.
He was one of the founders of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic), the Higher Institute of Industrial Design (ISDI) and the Cuban Book Institute (ICL). As a poster artist he was recognized among the first, with a work considered essential for the study of graphic design. Together with designers such as Eduardo Muñoz Bachs and Eladio Rivadulla, he participated in the design and reproduction of Icaic’s first screen-printed movie posters.
One of them was the commemoration of the first anniversary of the Cinematheque of Cuba, in which, with a two-color synthesized formulation, it introduced for the first time the representation of Chaplin, who became the most recurrent symbolic figure of the Cuban cinema poster. He also designed the magazine Cine Cubano, recalls an obituary of Eph.
Morante was a professor at the Institute of Industrial Design, the Ministry of Internal Trade, the Institute of Commercial Design (Bolivia), the University College of Segovia and at the European Institute of Design, in Madrid, and also, consultant and thesis tutor in different universities, as well as lecturer and speaker at national and international events.
In addition to his work as a cartoonist and illustrator, he published the novels Love over here from the starsDavid Prize for Science Fiction (1984) and banished in time, published by Editorial Letras Cubanas, in 1990. His fantastic and science fiction stories are collected in various anthologies in Cuba and abroad. He also made comics, including “Alona” and “The Others.”
The ICL sent its heartfelt condolences to Teresa Blanco, his widow and National Edition Award 2004; also to the rest of her family and friends. The obituary does not offer the causes of her death.
Efe/OnCuba.
