Antonio Fernández Mariño (Ñico), DISAPPEARANCE OF BEN BARKA - October 29, 1971

Poster depicting Mehdi Ben Barka. Lettered in Spanish, French, English and Arabic with the date of his disappearance.

DISAPPEARANCE OF BEN BARKA - October 29

Creator: Antonio Fernández Mariño (Ñico)
Commissioned by: OSPAAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America)
Date: 1971

Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America). Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South.

Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka led the preparation of the Tricontinental conference, but was assassinated before it began. Antonio Fernández Mariño represented his mysterious disappearance using photomontage to create a fading, ghostlike portrait.