A Look at Barcelona’s Famous Architect Gaudi

On a late spring day in 1926, a bedraggled elderly man was hit by a streetcar on a busy Barcelona street. Thinking he was a beggar, taxi drivers refused to take him to a hospital. Finally, sympathetic passers-by helped him. Only later did they all learn that the dying man was one of Barcelona’s most famous sons, that enduring architect of bizarre genius, Antonio Gaudi.

With such an ironic end, it is hard to believe that this man who was so well known and controversial and whose works stand as symbols of his city and draw visitors from all over the world, could have been unrecognized and uncared for in his final moments.

Today, Gaudi’s reputation far exceeds the borders of his homeland. He is popular in North America, and in Japan he is nearly a cult figure. In January, in fact, Mido Development, a Japanese conglomerate, paid $9 million for the Gaudi-designed El Capricho, a small country home that houses a luxury restaurant in the town of Oyambre on Spain’s northern coast, near Santander.

For many, Gaudi’s structures, with their glittering haphazard array of tiles, sinuous walls and twisted metalwork, are the strangest buildings ever seen. It is natural, then, to wonder if this “Van Gogh of architecture” was mentally unbalanced or just trying to impress a lover. Who was he and how was he able to indulge his imagination in some of Barcelona’s most public spaces?

To be sure, Gaudi was not an ordinary man or architect. Yet he prospered more because of his time than due to his talent.

His life began in 1852, in Reus, an industrial town near the ancient Roman city of Tarragona in southern Catalonia, a region in Spain’s northeast corner. At 17, he moved to Barcelona to study architecture. Although he was an average student, architecture soon became his passion.

According to the Catalan poet Josep Pla, Gaudi believed that architecture “constituted the point of union of all the arts and all the techniques.” Indeed, Gaudi was the consummate architect. He sketched plans, supervised construction, created whimsical metal sculptures and street lights and designed ceramic mosaics and wooden furniture. His obsession with his work would eventually lead him down the path of the eccentric: He shunned publicity and photographers, became celibate (a daring decision in the family-oriented society of his time), completely disregarded his appearance and, finally, moved into a shed on one of his construction sites.

Yet Gaudi also lived in an exciting, dynamic era. Toward the end of the century, Madrid began to relax its strong centrist leash. As a result, Catalonia experienced an era of good feeling and Catalan nationalism resurfaced. Gaudi, like many prominent citizens, was an ardent catalanista-- one who feels a great deal of pride in the Catalan language (a Romance language similar to French), history and culture of Catalonia, which, during the Middle Ages, was an independent Mediterranean power.

This rebirth of nationalism coincided with an artistic movement occurring throughout Europe. Called Art Nouveau in France, in Catalonia it was known as the Modernista school , and the Catalans eagerly incorporated it while adding native motifs, such as their coat of arms and patron saint, St. George, and drawing on elements from nature and their medieval and Moorish past.

Like its sister movement, modernism was characterized by flowing, curving lines, ornate decoration and imaginative use of materials. Catalonia had an abundance of modernist architects, and from this generation came Antonio Gaudi.

In such a fertile environment, the modernists needed only one thing more to prosper: money. In Spain, Barcelona was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, and by the 1860s, the city was bursting at its medieval seams and needing to expand. Its ancient city walls came down, and the city’s wealthiest industrialists--riding the new wave of nationalism--commissioned modernist architects to design their showplaces. One such baron was Eusebio Guell Bacigalupi.

Only six years older that Gaudi, he was to meet the architect at an exhibition in Paris and later become his greatest patron. Guell was a man with an eye on the future who was interested in the artistic and social reform movements in Europe. Inspired by gardens he had seen in Great Britain, Guell envisioned a futuristic garden-city on the outskirts of Barcelona and in Gaudi, found a way to materialize his dreams. Of the six jobs he gave the architect, this one, the Parc Guell, was the most significant.

The project, a forested suburb of 60 single-family homes begun in 1910, was never completed. However, the park is a delightful wonderland of winding stone bridges, fanciful pavilions and fountains and 84 stodgy columns that support an extensive platform overlooking the city and the Mediterranean Sea and bordered by an unbroken, undulating bench covered with colorful ceramic shards. In 1984, UNESCO declared the park a place of World Heritage.

More internationally known, however, are Gaudi’s landmark monuments on the Passeig de Gracia, Barcelona’s classiest boulevard.

The Casa Batllo sits on a strange block called the “block of discord” due to its unharmonious styles of architecture. The facade of the building is covered with a blue, green and beige mosaic, and with the tiles and pointed chimneys on the roof, the building creates the illusion of a dragon.

A few blocks up is the architect’s most famous and controversial house, the Casa Mila, or La Pedrera (the quarry) as it is known locally. Built between 1906 and 1910 for the Mila y Camps family, the heavy stone structure, looking more geological than man-made, literally undulates around the corner of Passeig de Gracia and Provenca Street. The windows and doors seem to be dug out of the side of a quarry and then covered with twisted metal sculptures.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the building, the roof, is unfortunately the least accessible. From there, the rooftops of Barcelona can be viewed from a surrealistic world of arches and bizarre monster-like chimneys. The building, also designated a World Heritage site, is no longer a private home, but part of a savings bank that is restoring it for use as a cultural foundation.

Despite the wonders of the two casas, Gaudi’s place in history will be secured by his unfinished symphony, the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) church, which, much as the Statue of Liberty symbolizes New York, has become the logo of Barcelona.

In 1883, as a young unknown architect, Gaudi accepted a commission to continue the work on a neo-Gothic temple dedicated to the holy family. He worked intermittently (and in his later years exclusively) on the church for the rest of his life.

Nevertheless, when Gaudi died, the bizarre mud-colored church, which has often been described as a “sandcastle cathedral” and by George Orwell as “one of the most hideous buildings in the world,” was not even near completion, and the architect who drew only vague cryptic sketches left no clear plan for the structure’s design.

Since then, the decision whether to complete the work or not has been nothing short of polemic. Some Catalans thought it should have been left untouched as a monument to Gaudi, while others have argued that Gaudi would have wanted the project carried out. Though fitful and financed by donations and ticket sales, construction continues. Two facades are complete and the last is still under wraps.

A more recent controversy involves two artists--one Japanese and one Catalan-hired--to provide statues for the arched doorways of the two completed facades. The Japanese sculptor’s figures emulate Gaudi’s and were well-received; however, the other sculptor has shocked Barcelona with his striking avant-garde versions. Moreover, the two men reportedly did not get along.

Like many artists, Gaudi always believed his creations would be the first in a new wave of the future. However, for many, he went beyond the acceptable norms of even the already extravagant movement that was modernism. His eccentricities and the garishness of his work (the word gaudy , though fitting, is erroneously attributed to his surname) caused embarrassment as the modernist movement waned, and interest in his work greatly declined after his death.

To the generations that experienced the wars, deprivations and dictatorship of the 2Oth Century, Gaudi’s manifestations undoubtedly seemed incongruent with the times. Even today, Catalans are quick to point out that Gaudi was only one of an exceptional group of architects working in Barcelona at the turn of the century.

Yet back on another late spring day in 1926, enormous grieving crowds lined the streets of Barcelona to watch Gaudi’s funeral procession pass by and bid farewell to their odd but beloved hero, the same man who had lain dying unrecognized in a hospital a few days before.

He remains today a mysterious man whose wild imagination was allowed to adorn the streets of Barcelona, but who avoided publicity and left no written documents. He is a man who is alternately remembered and forgotten, a rebel who broke away from fellow modernists, an architect whose importance is downplayed by his compatriots. But he is also a man whose works gave Barcelona a unique place in the world, and who attracts millions of visitors who gaze mouth agape at his creations. He is a man who continues to mystify as well as astonish us.

GUIDEBOOK

Gaudi Architecture

Getting there: El Capricho, three miles from the town of Oyambre, near Santander (local tourist office phone 42-72-07-68). The Parc Guell, on Carrer de Larrad, is about a 30-minute drive northwest of the center of Barcelona. Casa Batllo (number 43) sits about three blocks northwest of the Placa de Catalunya (main square) on Passeig de Gracia. La Pedrera (number 92) is about three blocks northwest of Casa Batllo. Sagrada Familia is on the corner of Mallorca and Sardenya, about a 15-minute drive from Placa de Catalunya.

Other works: Casa Vicens (Gaudi’s first work), Carrer de Carolinas, 24-26. Placa Reial (near Las Ramblas), an old square for which Gaudi designed the street lamps.