JAVIER MARISCAL (Almazora, Castellón, 1950). Untitled. Barcelona, Palo Alto, May 2006. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated in the right margin; signed, located and dated on the back. Measurements: Javier Mariscal's mastery in composing animated scenes, crowds ignited by the magic of the night, has no competitors. With a carefree style, he arranges the characters in this canvas in an apparently random way, but beneath the apparent chaos of spotlights, toasts, smiles, bodies and tables lies a compositional rigor that is the fruit of genuine gifts. Mariscal drinks from comics, but transforms the cartoon into a sociological and plastic incursion. We recognize his signature in each of his characters, those synthetic faces and some of them slightly dog-like, reminiscent of one of the most famous mascots of the last decades. A renowned industrial designer, cartoonist and comic artist, Javier Mariscal has lived and worked in Barcelona since 1970. He studied design at the Elisava School in Barcelona, but soon abandoned his studies to learn directly from his surroundings and follow his own creative impulses. He began his career in the world of underground comics in publications such as "El Rrollo Enmascarado" or "Star", along with Farry, Nazario and Pepichek. After making his first own comics in the mid-seventies, in 1979 he designed the Bar Cel Ona logo, a work for which he began to be known by the general public. The following year the Dúplex opened in Valencia, the first bar signed by Mariscal, together with Fernando Salas, for which he designed one of his most famous pieces, the Dúplex stool, a true icon of design in the eighties both inside and outside our borders. In 1981 his work as a furniture designer led him to participate in the exhibition of the Memphis Group in Milan. In 1987 he exhibited at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and participated in the Documenta in Kassel. Two years later his design Cobi is chosen as the mascot for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, controversial at first but now recognized as the most profitable mascot in the history of the modern Games. In 1989 he created Estudio Mariscal and collaborated on various projects with designers and architects such as Arata Isozaki, Alfredo Arribas, Fernando Salas, Fernando Amat and Pepe Cortés. Among his most outstanding works are the visual identities for the Swedish Socialist Party, the Onda Cero radio station, the Barcelona Zoo, the University of Valencia, the Lighthouse design and architecture center in Glasgow, the GranShip cultural center in Japan, and the London post-production company Framestore. In 1999 he received the National Design Prize, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry and the BCD Foundation in recognition of his entire professional career.