Maite Mutuberria was born in Eltzaburu, Navarre, in 1985. She is an illustrator and has illustrated several books for children and young people, and has won a number of awards for her work, including among others the Lazarillo Award in 2014 and the Rikardo Arregi Special Award in 2017. Mutuberria created the image of Humanity at Music and has illustrated the project.

 

What does the Humanity at Music project mean to you?

For me, it was a pleasant surprise in every sense. On the one hand, it gave me the opportunity to get to know this particular experience that was so close to me, and on the other hand, I got to work with other local artists.

 

You were in charge of designing the book and illustrating the text. How did the illustrations come about?

I chose a collage style for the illustrations. I dug up old photos of MONDRAGON and I turned them into new compositions. In this way, I managed to bring together memories of these 75 years with the fresh air of the present.

It’s a technique I use a lot, but in this case I’ve used more geometric forms. One of my references was Russian Constructivism, because it seems to me that the flat, geometric shapes it uses inspire industry and music. Beside those energetic illustrations, the design will be subtle.

 

What will the printing be like?

The printing will be very high-quality to give the book the feeling of being a treasure. It will be a large format, to read slowly, and with lots of white space, to allow it to breathe.

 

Cooperative culture, inter-cooperation — those are big concepts. How do you fuse them with the artistic disciplines involved in the project?

The project brings together the work of many artists working deeply in the spirit of those concepts.

The musicians, dancers, bertsolaris, writers, the illustrator… we need to all work together, each taking into account the work of all the others, to make a team project work.

 

What’s the importance of illustration to the project?

Illustration is very prominent in the book. A large number of diverse texts by many authors are used. So the aim of the illustration is to weave it all together into a coherent whole.

And, as this is a coffee table book, the illustrations really serve to enhance and beautify.

 

What have you tried to communicate?

History, humanity, modernity, the similarity between work and the rhythms of music, the spirit of living in community, the future, the presence of people of different ages, the way of life a people have chosen…