Gaudí and Barcelona

Antoni Gaudí
Seen as the genius of the Modernista movement, Antoni Gaudí was really a one-off, an unclassifiable figure. His work was a product of the social and cultural context of the time, but also of his own unique perception of the world, as well as a typically Catalan indulgence of anything specifically Catalan. Whereas his two great colleagues in Modernism, Domènech and Puig, were both public figures who took an active part in politics and many other fields, Gaudí, after being fairly sociable as a youth, became increasingly eccentric, leading a semi-monastic existence and enclosed in his own obsessions.
Born in Reus in 1852, he qualified as an architect in 1878. His first architectural work was as assistant to Josep Fontseré on the building of the Parc de la Ciutadella during the 1870s. The gates and fountain of the park are attributed to him, and around the same time he also designed the lampposts in the Plaça Reial. His first major commission was for the Casa Vicens in 1883-8. An orientalist fantasy, it is structurally fairly conventional, but his control of the use of surface material already stands out in its exuberant neo-Moorish decoration and the superbly elaborate decorative ironwork on the gates.
An event of crucial importance in Gaudí's life came in 1878, when he met Eusebi Güell, heir to one of the largest industrial fortunes in Catalonia. Güell had been impressed by some of Gaudí's early furniture, and they also discovered they shared many religious ideas, on the socially redemptive role of architecture and (for Güell) philanthropy. Güell placed such utter confidence in his architect that he was able to work with complete liberty. He produced several buildings for his patron, beginning with the Palau Güell (1886-8), a darkly impressive, still-historicist building that established Gaudí's reputation, and including the crypt at Colònia Güell, one of his most original, structurally experimental and surprising buildings.
In 1883 Gaudí first became involved in the design of the temple of the Sagrada Família, begun the previous year. He would eventually devote himself entirely to this work. Gaudí was profoundly religious, and an extreme Catholic conservative; part of his obsession with the building was a belief that its completion would help redeem Barcelona from the sins of secularism and the modern era. From 1908 until his death he worked on no other projects, often sleeping on site, a shabby, white-haired hermit, producing visionary ideas that his assistants had to 'interpret' into drawings (on show in the museum alongside). If most of his modern admirers were to meet him they would probably say he was mad, but this strange figure would have an immense effect on Barcelona.

The Sagrada Família became the testing ground for his ideas on structure and form. However, he would see built only the crypt, apse and nativity façade, with its representation of 30 different species of plants. As Gaudí's work matured, he abandoned historicism and developed free-flowing, sinuous expressionist forms. His boyhood interest in nature began taking over from more architectural references, and what had previously provided external decorative motifs became the inspiration for the actual structure of his buildings.
In his greatest years, he combined other commissions with his cathedral. La Pedrera or Casa Milà begun in 1905 was his most complete project. Occupying a prominent position on a corner of Passeig de Gràcia, it has an aquatic feel about it: the balconies resemble seaweed, and the undulating façade the sea, or rocks washed by it. Interior patios are painted in blues and greens, and the roofscape is like an imaginary landscape inhabited by mysterious figures. The Casa Batlló Passeig de Gràcia, was an existing building remodel-led by Gaudí in 1905-7, with a roof resembling a reptilian creature perched high above the street. An essential contribution was made by Gaudí's assistant Josep Maria Jujol, himself a very original Modernista architect, and more skilled than his master as a mosaicist.
Gaudí's later work has a dreamlike quality, which makes it unique and personal. His fascination with natural forms found full expression in the Parc Güell, of 1900-14. Here he blurs the distinction between natural and built form in a series of colonnades winding up the hill. These seemingly informal paths lead to the surprisingly large central terrace projecting over the hall below, a forest of distorted Doric columns planned as the marketplace for Güell's proposed 'garden city'. The benches of the terrace are covered in some of the finest examples of trencadís or broken mosaic work, again mostly by Jujol.
In June 1926, Antoni Gaudí was run over by a tram on the Gran Via. Nobody recognised the down-at-heel old man, and he was taken to a public ward in the old Hospital de Santa Creu in the Raval. When it was discovered who he was, however, Barcelona gave its most famous architect an almost state funeral.

www.gaudi2002.bcn
www.sagradafamilia.org
www.gaudiclub.com