Will Faber

Saarbrücken (Germany), 1901 — Barcelona, 1987

Painter and graphic designer, when he arrived in Barcelona in 1932 he settled there, with the exception of occasional stays in Ibiza and Germany during the Civil War. He developed an interesting task both in the field of painting and design. At that time he worked in the graphic world, of which several covers for the magazines ‘D’Ací i d’allà’ and ‘AC’, published by GATCPAC, the Liceu catalogs for the 1952-53 season and some stand out advertisements for Casa Myrurgia, as well as the illustration of The book of tea, by Kakuzo Okakura, apart from collaborations for the publishing houses Caralt, Apolo, Mateu, Yunque, Herder, Marte, Joventut, Noguer and Janés From this contact with the publishers was born the commission for the poster for Dia del Llibre (Book day) in 1962. Trained in the direct sources of German expressionism and with a knowledge of the French avant-garde – especially Cubism and Fauvism -, his work is incorporated into the artistic life of the city, being part of various exhibitions and activities. From 1948 he moved away from figuration to create his abstract works, which will gradually evolve into compositions that connect with a sideral and cosmic world. In 1950, together with Josep Maria de Sucre, he was one of the organizers of the Barcelona artists’ tribute to Klee on the tenth anniversary of his death. Around 1957 he changed direction and delved deeper into the language of the subject to fully immerse himself in the informalist realizations and inaugurate the decade of the sixties with a lyrical spatialism. Without abandoning the informal practice – which he will continue to exercise throughout his career -, from 1963 he introduces referential elements – signs, symbols, letters -, as well as certain morphologies of other communicative systems related to the first computer languages.