José Mugnos (1904-1982).

Chess composer and writer of chess books

Important chess study composer

Life:

He was born in Buenos Aires into a modest home, and was unable to complete his primary education because his father died when he was nine years old and he had to contribute to the family's upkeep as a newspaper seller and shoeshine boy. At the age of thirteen he went to the countryside, and when he returned, five years later, he joined the flour mill where he worked all his life.

Chess composition:

A true example of constancy and faith, Mugnos was self-taught in everything. As soon as he became acquainted with chess he became interested in composed works, and with the moral support of friends of the Buenos Aires Chess Circle and his incredible capacity for work he soon composed some original chess studies, with ideas that were new and sometimes so profound that they were bound to attract the attention of doubters and connoisseurs alike.

When he was almost 40 years old, two of these works were submitted to a competition of the London magazine "Chess", where he won the two first prizes, and thus began his exceptional career on the international scene.

In 1957 Mugnos summarised his fruitful work of several years in his first book, "My best chess endgames", published by Editorial Sopena Argentina. With sincere modesty and great generosity, he exhibited alongside his own works some of the works of other Argentine composers, who, under the influence of his successes, were beginning to excel in the difficult art of chess composition. His second book, "Finales Artísticos Razonados", which came out ten years later in Spain, closes a decade of withdrawal from all chess activity due to serious health problems.

José Mugnos always alternated his activity as a composer with a permanent journalistic work of dissemination and teaching of the chess study, which began in 1946 in the disappeared magazine "Enroque!!", of Necochea, and ended in the magazine "Ajedrez de Estilo", where, even after his death, the last articles that the indefatigable creator had left written appeared.

Successes as study composer:

It can be estimated that Mugnos's complete production exceeds 200 endgame studies; and the prizes and distinctions he obtained in the scarce twenty years he devoted to composition can be summarised as follows:

Prizes:  7 First Prizes (one in collaboration). 10 Second Prizes (five in collaboration). 4 Third Prizes (one in collaboration). Fourth prizes. I Seventh. Honourable Mentions: 7 (two in collaboration). Commended: 6 (two in collaboration). The collaborative works were composed with Eng. Oscar J. Carlsson.

Source: UNION ARGENTINA DE PROBLEMISTAS DE AJEDREZ

              Website ARVES

Others: On the Website of ARVES 36 chess studies by Mugnos are selected by Mario G. García