Antoni Gaudi

 

It is difficult to believe that the most famous modern Spanish architect met his death when, at age 73, he was run over by a tram.  Because he had stopped worrying about his appearance and health, he was poorly dressed and appeared quite gaunt, it was assumed that he was homeless and was ignored as he lay there, injured. After eventually being taken to a hospital, he reportedly only received basic care until the Chaplain of the Sagrada Familia discovered him. He died of his wounds on 10 June, 1926. 

Antoni Gaudi's pious Catholicism and devotion to a spartan regimen had come to define his character almost completely by the last decade of his life, which he devoted almost exclusively to the construction of his most famous work, the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona.

A Catalan architect and designer, widely known as the greatest exponent of Catalan Modernism, his works have a unique style and most are located in Barcelona. His work was influenced by his passions in life: architecture, nature and religion. He considered every detail of his creations and combined crafts such as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork, forging and carpentry. He introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencadis which used waste ceramic pieces.

Over Gaudi's nearly fifty years of independent practice, he created some of the most imaginative, distinctive, idiosyncratic and recognisable architectural forms in history. Influenced by neo-Gothic art and Oriental techniques, Gaudi became part of the Modernista (Art Nouveau) movement, which peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Essential features of Modernisme included: an anticlassical language inherited from Romanticism with a tendency to lyricism and subjectivity; the determined connection of architecture with the applied arts and artistic work, yielding an overtly ornamental style; the use of new materials, rich in contrasts, that sought a plastic effect for the whole; a strong sense of optimism and faith in progress that reflected the atmospherity of prosperity of the time, a bourgeois aesthetic.

Gaudi's work eventually transcended mainstream Modernisme, developing into a unique style inspired by natural forms. He rarely drew detailed plans, preferring to create three-dimensional scale models and mold the details as he conceived them.

Gaudi was a fervent proponent of Catalan culture but was not politically active. On 11 September 1924, National Day of Catalonia however, he was beaten at a demonstration against the Catalan language ban. He refused to speak Spanish and kept responding in Catalan, stating that 'my profession obliges me to pay my taxes, and I pay them,  but not to stop speaking my own language'. He was taken to prison and was eventually released after paying bail.

Gaudi was buried on 12 June 1926 in the crypt of the Sagrada Familia, after a multitudinous final farewell from residents of Barcelona, who filled the streets of the city in recognition of his work.

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Our trip to Barcelona was in a lot of ways a homage to Gaudi and his work, as were the other four times I had visited the city. This time, we managed to see some of his most important works, but not as many as in some other visits and certainly not during the first time we visited the city when we went with friends who were ardent admirers of Gaudi's work and who introduced us to it.

This time we visited:

Guell Palace

Casa Battlo

Casa Vincens

La Pedrera

La Sagrada Familia

Guell Park.

There will be posts on all of them.