07/12/2020
ARTURO VEGA, THE FIFTH RAMONE.
1947-2013
About this artist, originally from Chihuahua, there are countless things to say. Creator of the most plagiarized logo in rock history, artistic director of the seminal punk band, loving and faithful friend of that tumult that were the Ramones.
Graphic designer, actor, dancer... the Mexican was an artist who impresses the extent of his talent, from those days when he lodged Joey and Dee Dee in his New York loft, living with his complex characters, screening the first shirts ( Johnny doubted someone wanted)
His passion for rock was that led Arturo Vega to be the artistic director of the punk group, from 1974 to 1996; for whom he designed his first backdrop and legendary logo, this due to the performing a concert with The Heartbreakers.
Arturo remembered that they used that curtain for 18 years and that every two or three years did something to him to make it look different. The Ramones leader Johnny Ramone didn't want to spend money and Vega said it was very practical. So he managed to change it.
During and after the twenty-five years he lived with Los Ramones, Arturo Vega dedicated himself to making the projection of the music that the band made even bigger; hence his interest in holding exhibitions and giving masterclasses in which he talked about the road traveled along with them.
There is also a stage in which Arturo Vega also appeared as an actor, being a student of the drama school of the National Institute of Fine Arts. It should be mentioned that director Eduardo Ruiz Savi ñn incorporated him into his montage of the musical Tommy, a free version of the rock opera of the British group The Who, in which Arturo Vega also used his great imagination to do choreography and costumes.
After that experience, he made the decision to leave for New York, where he evolved as an artist to become an icon of the cultural life of the lower East town and the loft where he lived forty years, near CBGB
Of the band's more than 2.000 recitals, Arturo was only absent in two, according to his words, one for one arrest, the other for sickness.
All the iconography that identified every RAMONES recital around the world was branded, to this day.
A small, tiny tribute to a man of discretion grandeza: ARTURO/ARTY VEGA
