Vicente Rojo Almazán
1932–2021 · Spanish-born Mexican visual artist, designer and editor
Vicente Rojo Almazán (Barcelona, 1932-Mexico City, 2021), known as Vicente Rojo, was a Spanish-born Mexican visual artist, designer and editor who spent most of his career in Mexico. He belonged to the so-called Generación de la Ruptura and is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Mexican culture in the second half of the twentieth century.
Born in Barcelona, he reached Mexico in 1949 as a political refugee together with his mother, after his father, a Republican engineer, had gone into exile. His uncle, General Vicente Rojo Lluch, was a prominent military commander of the Spanish Second Republic. In Mexico he trained in typography and design at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and studied painting at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", though he soon left to learn from the exiled Spanish painter Arturo Souto.
His editorial work was wide-ranging: he contributed to Artes de México, to the supplement México en la Cultura and to numerous book covers, among them many for Era, the publishing house he helped found in 1960. As a painter, he moved away from figuration towards abstraction, through series such as Señales and Negaciones. His public works include the fountain País de Volcanes in Plaza Juárez and the mural Jardín Urbano outside the Museo Kaluz.
His legacy joins painting with graphic design and publishing. He received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in 1991 and an honorary doctorate from the UNAM in 1998.