Mario Eskenazi: "To Colau I say Colei because she is like Milei, but left-wing"

BarcelonaOn WhatsApp, he has a portrait of his friend Javi Royo, who represents the ultimate refinement he himself aspires to as a designer: a circle and a cigar. And yes, the bald and shining head – in every sense – of Mario Eskenazi is usually accentuated by a cigarette he's puffing on in his studio in the Gothic Quarter while reviewing – Banc Sabadell, TMB, Mossos d’Esquadra... – some of his omnipresent projects.

80 years old. But we don't meet at the pétanque court, but at the studio where he comes every day.

— It's just that the only thing I like is to work. Facing a problem that needs a graphic solution and going through the whole process to solve it is like an orgasm.

He worked a lot on designs for Barcelona. Where does this obsession come from?

— I arrived in Barcelona in 1974 and worked for a while with a very good designer, also from Argentina, who was here and was called Carlos Rolando. I devoured the American magazines I received and thought: how good are those Yankees! But he told me: what you see in the magazine is only found in very special shops. On the street, New York is as ugly as here.

Was it an epiphany?

— I was 26 years old and it became my obsession: why can't there be good design on the street? And over time, I got commissions: BCNeta, TMB, the Tragaluz group, Banc Sabadell, Barça... I would go for a walk and I liked knowing that good design could be on the street.

Barcelona, in the 80s, was considered the Mecca of design. Is it still a beautiful city, in this sense?

— Barcelona is the best city. But in design... very regular. The best in Spain still, that's for sure.

What happened for this to be like this?

— Populism. The networks. Before, one had to study a lot. The internet has democratized knowledge, but in Spain there is very little culture. Fix it a little for me, because I'm sorry, but it's just that since Charles V, except for some specific moment of improvement, education has not been good like in the north. And the progressive spirit comes out of me: the right messes up. Rajoy, Aznar... everything has been a setback.

Are there no good designers left?

— I'm not saying there aren't some good designers here, but massively, a lot of work is done for social media, and what you see is the same as anywhere else. Large studios do very commercial work, following the trend and what Instagram dictates.

He came here fleeing a military dictatorship.

— Yes, I was lucky with my education. Mind you, I'm not a nationalist of any kind. A citizen of the world. Or as my mother used to say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. At home, education was atheism. My father was Turkish and poor, but since education was free and compulsory, he completed two degrees, one of which was architecture. My mother was a professor of mathematics and physics. My parents were of Jewish origin and we lived in a small city. To Catholics we were Jews – and in Argentina, after "Jew" always comes "of shit" – and to Jews we were renegades, which is the worst thing there is.

Perhaps your view of contemporary Barcelona is influenced by nostalgia for when you were young.

— It was certainly a party. Once, when you could still walk along Las Ramblas, I ran into a group of students who had been my students in the Canary Islands. And chatting with them, they told me: Ligoncete, yes, I had a few girlfriends.

I would like to review logos you have created. Banca Catalana, for example.

— Bank made me think of a percentage symbol. If I combined it with the idea of the four bars for Catalonia, the result was those four unequal, symmetrical, and inclined orange bars, which could make one think. Orange, of course, because we were still under Franco's regime and they would not have allowed us to put the red bars on a yellow background in any way.

Here in the study are two miniature Mossos cars, with the line of little squares that identify them, which are also theirs.

— The police costumes were made by Toni Miró. Well, the uniforms, but I can't stand the police because I'm an anarchist. I understand they have to be there, but it doesn't excite me. In any case, the idea was to make them a little friendly, with some squares that could again recall the Catalan flag and simple letters, that could be read well and that weren't too tortured a typography.

Banc Sabadell. Another bank, ahem!

— By chance, again! I knew Pep Oliu through his wife, because she had worked at the Summa studio, like me. The entity wanted to start expanding into the south of Spain and planned to use the SolBank brand, the Bank of the Sun. I told them: why don't we keep the Sabadell name? But they told me that the surveys advised against it. That they had a lot of respect for Catalans and admitted that they worked very well... but that they were not loved in the south.

What logo did you propose?

— A red circle, for the Sun, and the B for Bank. But when I was presenting it to the competition jury, they told me: “We could use it for the Sabadell Group.” And I told them yes, we just needed to give it their blue color. And that's how it stayed.

AND ALSO?

— Oh, that makes me angry. I am a political anarchist and I hate extremism. Things happen when you've grown up under Perón and his fascination with Mussolini. I hate populism and, secondly, nationalism. I was working on TMB's identity for twelve years and I enjoyed it very much. Until 2012...

The year of Colau.

— I call him Colei, because he is like Milei, but from the left. And I call him that because my daughters don't let me say what I really feel like calling him. I know they are different, but populism, whether from the left or the right, is ignorance in power. And Colei appointed an environmentalist cyclist to run TMB. Everything that was beginning to be implemented was interrupted.

It speaks of typography as a template, with the lines crossing the letters vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.

— Exactly, they are the Barcelona grid and they recall the markings painted on the ground. In Seoul they liked it so much that they wanted it for their buses. Politicians are suckers. PP, Convergence, Comuns or Socialist... they all sweep for themselves. And I've learned it now, at 80 years old. About the new mayor, I don't even have an opinion. What can you do? That's what I like about private enterprise: that at least they take care of it.

Is she considered an artist?

— Clearly, no. I admire artists and envy them. My best friend is Mariscal and wherever he goes he carries his notebook and draws: he doesn't need any commission. I freak out. What I do has to be in the street, otherwise, it's no use to me.