The initial activities related to illustration, as part of the programme of activities at EINA, arrived thanks to Javier Mariscal. The first of the courses, printed art and illustration, also advertised as Printed Art, Commercial Art, the Graphic Book, Illustrated Alphabet, was run in the second term of the 1978-79 year. It should be remembered that in 1978, Mariscal had published the Abcdari il·lustrat of Barcelona, in which each letter of the alphabet introduced a word and an illustration related to the city and its idiosyncrasies. In part, the course followed that idea, producing material that was published the following year as a book entitled Tres Lletres Trelles. This was the first, and last, issue of a collection directed by Mariscal himself that was announced under the name Caldo de lletres.
Two years after that initial experience, in spring 1981, Mariscal taught the Lively Course in Drawing and Illustration. Whereas the first had focused more on creating the illustrated alphabet, the second would work on the technique of painting on glass. This resource, which Mariscal used in some of his work, rescued the style of sign-painters on bars and shops. Mariscal recalled the educational value of that idea, which consisted of inverting conventional processes: having to paint back to front and remembering that the first layers were visually superimposed on the later ones. In the following spring, the new course by Mariscal went under the name of 6 Days Drawing with Mariscal. As in the previous ones, this time the teacher would insist on drawing as a personal means of expression. Because of this, he urged the students to get spontaneous results, with notation exercises live in the street and even watching television. “I was more interested in the sketches and scribbles of the shy, retiring students than the honed representations of the ones who drew well,” Mariscal tells us.
Later, illustration once again featured in new activities in the school. In 1980, EINA celebrated the 13th anniversary of its founding, making the most of the possibility of a series of events and exhibitions at Galeria 13. These events included a live comic session where Mariscal, Hortelano, Gallardo, Martí, Peret and Roger drew on a sort of mural on continuous rolls of paper. A similar experience would be repeated in 1987 as part of the events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the school in the EINA 1967-1987, Twenty Years of Avant-Garde exhibition that was held in Barcelona’s Palau Robert.
Close-up of the “Live Comic” activity at Galeria 13.
In the 1987-1988 academic year, Manuel Outumuro coordinated the short course on “Applied Illustration”, in which various professionals, such as Carmelo Hernando, Flavio Morais, Roser Capdevila, Lluís Díaz, Maite Lafuente, Montesol and Eduardo Wach, showed their work methods in applying illustration to such fields as photomontage, advertising, fashion, comic and architecture.
These initial EINA illustration courses stood in an interregnum between underground and vocational.
Programme for the “Applied Illustration” course, coordinated by Manuel Outumuro.
The workshops, short courses and experiences of the 1980s were followed by what is EINA’s oldest postgraduate teaching programme, the Postgraduate Diploma in Creative Illustration and Visual Communication Techniques, started in the 2000-2001 academic year. In its first intake, it included the teachers D. Cid, I. Ferrer, M. Gallardo, E. Jardí, A. Rocarols, A. Rom, G. Rubert, M. Rubiales, and the participation of other professionals, such as N. Cutler, B. Keller, J. Labanda, J. Mariscal, F. Moraïs, R. Mundet, Peret, M. Rigó, under the coordination of Philip Stanton.
A few years later, in 2005, the range of postgraduate programmes was increased with the Specialisation Course in Illustration for Children's and Teenagers' Publications, the first intake of which featured the teachers S. Balzola, Gustí, Joma, S. Serra, C. Silva-Diaz, J. Zentner, under the coordination of Gabriela Rubio.
These last two courses are still taught at EINA as part of the Master’s Degree and Postgraduate range of courses.
Update and expansion by Rubén Alcaraz of the article originally published in: Pibernat, Oriol. “Tres cursos d’il·lustració amb Mariscal 1979-83”. Plec: informatiu d’EINA. No. 11 (March 2002), p. 6.
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