About

Venezuelan born artist, Carlos Almenar Diaz is a French-Australian citizen who has won multiple awards as an established banknote designer and contemporary artist.

Besides his artistic work, Carlos is the founder of Banknote Art Concept an organisation which values and celebrates the promotion, education, and curation of the artistic and cultural dimension of banknotes and coins. Banknote Art Concept™ supports the holistic research involved in money creation, to their artistic reuse and revalue in the context of “Money Art and Art Fiduciaire”.

Carlos has a Bachelor in Graphic Design and majored in Creative Design, he also has a Bachelor in Journalism. In 1997, he moved to Lausanne, Switzerland where he became an accredited banknote designer, at the renowned Swiss Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions Company.

Carlos has worked as a banknote designer at the Central Bank of Venezuela in 1997, before joining Oberthur Fiduciaire in 2008 in France. In 2014, he joined CCL Secure Australia as a senior banknote designer. Carlos has been designing and developing banknotes on paper and polymer substrate for many countries around the world. 

Carlos has studied colour theory in particular geometric patterns, extrapolating these concepts into designs seen in banknotes. He created and used chromatic perceptions and patterns across multiple cultures, whilst encompassing communities’ unique representation across the world.  

Carlos believes that the dynamism between the design concepts, chromatic theories, and the printing process, makes a perfect synergy between visual design and art. Carlos is the first Venezuelan artist to design an artistic Op-art Swatch® watch on behalf of Venezuela for the Dubai World Expo 2020 in the “Swatch® X You” project. Op-art is one artistic technique where chromatic phenomenon in space has been deeply investigated. 

“Colour is a property of our universe. It is a luminous phenomenon, an optical sensation that generates a psychological reaction.”

Carlos Almenar

In August 2023, following his artistic residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Carlos was commissioned by Swatch to create an artwork the “Love Is Love, The Colors Of Pride” multidisciplinary exhibition at the Locarno Film Festival. 

Carlos’s artwork continues to explore and investigates the optical experiments between the phenomenon of colour, visual rhythm, and ourselves.