Mauricio Amster, tipógrafo antifascista

Mauricio Amster Cats is a leading Polish editorial designer who worked for 40 years in Chile as a publisher, potter, lettering artist and teacher. He published two books on graphic standards to support his classes at the school of journalism and design hundreds of books. Son of Jewish parents persecuted by the Nazi regime, as a young man he studied graphic arts in Germany. Together with his friend Mariano Rawicz he travelled to Spain to take part in the civil war. In Madrid he designed newspapers, pamphlets, posters and books, the best known being the Cartilla Escolar Antifascista, a study book for militiamen. As a refugee he travelled to Chile on the Winnipeg, a ship prepared by Pablo Neruda (Chilean poet, diplomat, winner of the Nobel Prize) where he arrived with his wife Adina, a Spanish bookbinder with whom he shared his life. In Chile he started out as an anarchist, but as time went by he became part of Chilean culture until he became probably the most important designer of the last century. This talk is biographic and graphic, with a lot of images, books and editorial context.