Newly returned from a trip to Spain, I am excited to share some photos of my travels. My boyfriend and I spent a week in the Catalonia region, staying in Barcelona and Girona with jaunts into Montserrat and the city of Figueres to check out the Dalí Museum there. Which, I must say, is as bizarre as expected and definitely worth the trip up from Barcelona. But we’ll save Dalí for some other time. Our focus for this piece is on another distinctly Catalan treasure, architect Antoni Gaudí, as well as the Modernisme style more broadly. Because if there’s one thing Barcelona has in abundance (aside from tapas and tourists), it’s fantastic architecture.
My fascination with Gaudí has slowly verged on obsession over the years since learning about the Sagrada Familia in Art History 101 of my Sophomore year of college. As such, this pilgrimage to Barcelona has been a long time coming, and in meticulously planning our trip itinerary, I made sure to include as many Gaudí sites as time and my boyfriend would allow. As there is, of course, much more to Barcelona than Gaudí, we’ll branch out a bit to look at some buildings by several other Modernistes architects as well.
Here be dragons
But first, some background. Modernisme, or Catalan Modernism, is an artistic and intellectual movement belonging to the fin de siècle, which was itself a movement or historical moment at the end of the 19th century defined by modernity and characterized by a turning away from materialism and rationalism towards subjectivism, vitalism, and symbolism. Regional interpretations of Art Nouveau flourished in art, architecture, and decorative arts across Europe at this time. Catalonia’s particular brand was Modernisme, and it extended beyond the artistic and aesthetic realm to influence the political and intellectual forces of the time, helping to shape the very identity of Catalonia. The style is characterized by a strong aesthetic and symbolic quality and draws heavily on organic and natural elements. It incorporates sinuous, curved forms and dynamic shapes, as well as ornate, decorative elements and the extensive use of plant and animal motifs.
Such nature-inspired motifs can be found all around Barcelona, but there is one beast in particular that seems to be nearly ubiquitous – the dragon. The dragon iconography is so prevalent here that the city has been given the nickname of Drakcelona. Should you desire to go on a dragon scavenger hunt, the book Drakcelona, City of Dragons (which I sadly discovered only after the fact) details the whereabouts of five hundred specimens to be discovered hidden among the edifices of the city.
Though this might at first seem curious, there is a historical and symbolic reason for it. The legend of Saint George and the Dragon has long been a part of the local lore of the region. Saint George, or Sant Jordi, is the Patron Saint of Catalonia and is celebrated by a somewhat unusual tradition every year on April 23rd in which revelers exchange a rose for a book, and vice versa. Perhaps in an homage to Jordi and his dragon, the scaled beast has been adopted as a sort of unofficial mascot of Barcelona’s cityscape. It is said that Gaudí designed Casa Batlló (more on that later) around this mythology, with the entry staircase representing the dragon’s tail, the roof his spine, and the balconies the skulls and bones of his victims.
At the Barcelona Museum of Modernism we got up close and personal to our first dragon of the trip, a highly stylized piece of hardware on a cabinet. The museum houses a small collection of pieces that provides an excellent introduction to Modernisme. The upper level contains furniture from three of the most prestigious Modernista artisanal workshops – Casa Busquets, Gaspar Homar, and of course Antoni Gaudí – many of which came from prominent homes like Casa Batlló and Casa Lleó Morera. Downstairs, an assortment of paintings, sculpture, and glasswork exemplify the Modernisme style in their respective categories.
Works by Ramón Casas i Carbó provide a good idea of the type of artwork coming out the Modernisme period, as Casas enjoyed portraying the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona and Europe through painting and portraiture. Casas, along with two friends and fellow Modernistes painters, was also joint owner of the popular Els Quatre Gats. The cafe, housed in the Josep Puig i Cadafalch-designed Casa Martí, was modeled after the French cafe Le Chat Noir, and it too played host to the intellectual and artistic power houses of the day, including the likes of Gaudí and Pablo Picasso.
With the opening of Els Quatre Gats, Casas began designing Art Nouveau-style posters and artwork to promote the cafe. His painting of himself and friend/Quatre Gats bartender Pere Romeu riding tandem hangs in the cafe today (the original is currently on exhibition at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya). His resulting posters and postcards came to help define the Modernisme movement and are now considered a precursor to modern graphic design and advertising.
O Discordia!
To get a sense of what the buildings that house these pieces of art and furniture look like, we’ll start with Casa Lleó Morera, located on a section of the glamorous Passeig de Gràcia rather ominously called Manzana de la Discordia, or Block of Discord. The block is so named because it locates together homes built by the three most important Modernistes architects – Antoni Gaudí, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Casa Lleó Morera, built by Domènech i Montaner from 1902-1905, is the only building on the block to receive Barcelona’s town council’s Arts Building Annual Award (1906). It is a fine example of the collaboration that was typical of Modernista architecture, as prominent artists worked alongside the architect to create the mosaics, sculptures, and the decoration and furniture, which were designed by Gaspar Homar. You can make out small stone dragons in the balconies and the window arches in the pictures below – scratch those off the scavenger hunt list.
Domènech i Montaner also designed the UNESCO World Heritage music hall, Palau de la Música Catalana. Unfortunately, time did not afford us the opportunity to tour either this or Domènech i Montaner’s other notable building, the former hospital and largest Art Nouveau complex in the world, Sant Pau Recinte Modernista. But they are both said to be stunning and are definitely on the must-visit list for tour two of Barcelona.
We continue our tour back on the Manzana de la Discordia with the Casa Amatller, built by Josep Puig i Cadafalch between 1898 and 1900. Designed for chocolatier and photographer Antoni Amatller, the house is an eclectic mashup of Modersim and Neo-Gothic, with a stepped gable inspired by Flemish and Dutch architecture. The ochre and cream sgraffito pattern seems printed onto the flat façade from which three-dimensional sculptural forms act out allegories. Pro-independence yellow ribbons fastened to the wrought-iron balcony flutter in the breeze and add a patriotic flair. We can see in the following pictures how the façade of Casa Amatller contrasts with that of the building flanking it, Gaudí’s fantastical Casa Batlló.
Before we turn, finally, to Casa Batlló and Gaudí’, let us take a quick detour to another Puig i Cadafalch-designed building, Casa de les Punxes, also known as Casa Terradas. A turreted medieval castle floating on its own wedge of city block, Casa de les Punxes blends Noe-Gothic elements with Modernisme-style ornamentation in wrought-iron balconies and floral stained glass. Large ceramic panels on the roof line depict patriotic symbols of Catalonia, including– you guessed it – Sant Jordi and the Dragon. In fact, there are several rooms in Casa de les Punxes devoted to exploring the legend and the iconography used throughout the house.
Son of a boilermaker
And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for… The skeletal façade of Casa Batlló, aside from being likened to a dragon, evokes images that have earned it the nicknames of the House of Bones and the House of Yawns. Various elements of the house also call to mind some marine animal – the aqua and lime mosaics of the façade are the scales of a mermaid’s tale, the slatted windows of the atrium are the gills of a great fish. While this imagery carries on throughout the interior of the house, the pictures that I have to share here, unfortunately, really do not do the space justice, as they were taken at night with a many a tourist milling about. We had opted to do a special night tour with a concert on the rooftop terrace, which, while theoretically cool, was not particularly conducive to photography.
Just down the road from the Manzana de la Discordia is another Gaudí masterpiece, Casa Mila, also known as the La Pedrera, or the stone quarry. From the street it might not have the color or flamboyance of Casa Batlló, but for what it lacks in showmanship, La Pedrera more than makes up for in ingenuity of design and engineering. The building consists of two blocks of apartments that are structured around two large interconnected courtyards and sheathed in a wavy stone façade that serves no load-bearing function. This curtain wall makes possible the large frontage windows and balconies, which are ornamented with wrought-iron grilles of scrap iron twisted into abstract shapes that resemble seaweed. The rounded surface of the smooth limestone and waving balconies are meant to simulate the undulating sea, a theme which is carried inside to the rippling ceilings of the apartments.
Leading up from the ribbed attic, six stairwells open onto a rooftop terrace, but in true Gaudí fashion, the roof is not just a roof, but a work of art and world unto itself. A system of sculptural chimneys, ventilation towers, and water towers encrusted with pieces of recycled stone, marble, or ceramic masquerade as “warriors.” The helmeted, vaguely alien forms watch as silent guardians of La Pedrera. Openings through the spiraling snail shell stairwells offer views of some of the city’s most iconic landmarks, including the Sagrada Familia and the Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor atop nearby Mount Tibidabo.
Moving backwards in time, we find ourselves at Casa Vicens, the slightly lesser well-known of the major Gaudí-designed houses in Barcelona. Built between 1883 and 1885, Casa Vicens was Gaudí’s first major commission and the first house he designed. While the construction is visibly Moorish, with its geometric patterns and minaret-inspired gables, Modernista elements can also be seen at work throughout the house. This is most evident in how Gaudí uses natural light and plant motifs to bring the outside in, integrating the interior and exterior into one continuous, fluid space.
On the ground floor, an enclosed porch brings in the sights and sounds from the garden, with palm fronds painted onto the ceiling and the sound of running water gurgling through a marble fountain. Pressed papier-mâché vine motifs spill over wooden beams in the master bedroom, while sgraffito ivy creeps along the walls in contrasting polychromatic marbles. Jewel-toned plaster in the form of palm leaves and dates cover the honeycombed ceiling of the smoking room, while birds soar overhead in a sitting room painted to look as though it opens up to the sky from the turreted gable.
Nature, the ultimate muse
Of course, there’s nowhere better to enjoy (highly-manicured) nature than in the Gaudí-designed Park Güell. This immensely popular spot on a hill overlooking Barcelona provides 40-odd acres of whimsy, from the gingerbread gatehouses to the large mosaic dragon-lizard. A long, tiled bench snakes around the main terrace from under which a colonnaded footpath curves out, its twisting, tilting columns forming a stony cloister overhead. Through the lush Mediterranean vegetation, the pink-stuccoed Torre Rosa is visible. This, the house where Gaudí lived for the last 20 years of his life, is now a museum that features Gaudí-designed furniture and personal affects – ooh la la.
And the grand prize goes to…
In logical progression, we finish now with Gaudí’s bizarre and beautiful masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia. Too large, confounding, and wonderful to contemplate in one visit, the basilica is a study in contrasting light and textures. The Nativity façade, every inch covered in symbolic iconography and natural motifs, rises up from the street like the knobby face of a cave wall. From afar, there is something vaguely dreadful about it, like the gnarled, tumor-riddled trunk of a tree struck by some blight. It is only from a close distance that you can begin to discern the individual shapes that make up the scenes of the nativity.
To the west, the dark, textured stone of the Nativity gives way to the lighter, smoother surface of the Passion façade. Construction of the Passion began in 1954, nearly 30 years after Gaudí’s death, but follows the drawings and instructions left by Gaudí for future architects. In stark contrast to the Nativity façade, the Passion is austere, composed of hard angles and straight lines like the bones of a skeleton, meant to evoke the severity and brutality of the crucifixion of Christ.
The Glory façade to the South, under construction until 2026, is intended to be the largest and most striking of the three. For now, the scaffolding and unadorned stone only hint at the glory that is to come. Here, the unfinished edifice stands as a backdrop to a long column of pro-independence protesters threading through the city streets, waving Catalan flags and singing chants in unison.
The most surprising transition, however, is not from one façade to another, but from the exterior to the interior. For it is inside the Sagrada Familia, standing amidst a great forest of stalks and sunbursts, that you are moved to slack-jawed, watery-eyed wonderment. Composed of five naves laid out in the shape of a Latin cross, the structure is supported by a vault and pillar system – an architectural innovation that holds the great weight of the roof and towers without the use of exterior buttresses. The result is astonishing – branching columns varying in width and hue converge overhead to form a golden canopy of stony trees. Rainbow shafts of light streaming in from the lower Gothic windows mingle with soft illumination emanating from the skylights in the vaulted ceiling above. The whole effect is truly indescribable and quite unlike anything else in either the built or the natural world.
From the tiniest dragon detail to the grandiose Sagrada Familia, we’ve seen a great variety of works from some of the preeminent Catalan artists and architects on this whirlwind tour of Barcelona. While there might at times seem to be little of an outward unifying character or style among these, the common thread that runs through all these works is the spirit in which they were conceived. The rich symbolism that Modernistes artisans weaved into their works embodies the growing Catalan nationalism and the burgeoning cultural and intellectual movement that was born at the turn of the century. This sense of national pride and identity are very much alive and well in the streets of Barcelona today. One only has to look to the yellow ribbons that festoon Modernista buildings throughout the city to see that these very monuments that helped to shape the new national conscience continue to stand as hallmarks of an emblematic and exuberant character that is distinctly, fiercely Catalan.
