Asociación Mestre Mateo
Retrato / imaxe local · Imaxe local na carpeta do proxecto / revisar dereitos se procede
Person · séculos XX–XXI

Isaac Díaz Pardo

Artist, designer and cultural promoter · 1920–2012

Born
22 August 1920 · Santiago de Compostela
Died
5 January 2012 · A Coruña
Period
séculos XX–XXI

Díaz Pardo showed that cultural memory could be transformed into design, industry, publishing and institutions capable of acting in the present.

Isaac Díaz Pardo was born in Santiago de Compostela in 1920 and grew up in the workshop of his father, painter and stage designer Camilo Díaz Baliño. The studio was also a meeting place for Galicianist artists and intellectuals. Camilo’s murder in 1936 profoundly marked Isaac’s life and made the memory of the Republic and repression a permanent concern.

After an early period as a painter, he shifted his activity towards ceramics and industrial production. Between 1946 and 1949 he carried out experiments at O Castro de Samoedo, and commercial production at Cerámicas do Castro began in 1950. The underlying idea was fundamental: to reconcile artistic creation, design, serial industry and products for everyday life.

Collaboration with Luís Seoane expanded that ambition. The Laboratorio de Formas, Ediciós do Castro, the revival of Sargadelos, the Museo Carlos Maside and the Instituto Galego de Información formed a network in which industry and culture were meant to reinforce one another. Díaz Pardo thus became a key figure in reconstructing Galician cultural memory after 1936.