Antoni Gaudí (1852 - 1926) was a Catalan architect and the leading figure of Catalan Modernisme. [1] Working almost entirely in and around Barcelona, he developed a highly personal architecture that drew on natural forms, Gothic and Mudéjar precedent, and a rigorous study of structure, producing Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, Park Güell and the Sagrada Família. [2] Seven of his works are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. [3]
Early life and education
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was born on 25 June 1852 in Reus, in the Catalan province of Tarragona, into a family of coppersmiths; he later credited the craft with giving him an instinctive grasp of three-dimensional form. Chronic rheumatism in childhood kept him from ordinary play and encouraged long observation of plants, rocks and animals in the countryside. [1]
He moved to Barcelona in 1868, studying at the Escola de la Llotja and then at the city's Provincial School of Architecture, from which he graduated in 1878. His academic record was uneven, and the director is said to have remarked at his graduation that the school had given the title either to a madman or to a genius.
Early commissions and the Güell patronage
Gaudí's first significant building, Casa Vicens in Barcelona (1883-85), combined brick, rubble and glazed tile in a richly patterned facade drawing on Islamic decoration. Around the same period he designed El Capricho in Comillas and began work on the Sagrada Família, taking over the project in 1883 from an earlier architect. [2]
A decisive relationship was formed with the industrialist Eusebi Güell, who commissioned the Palau Güell (1886-88), the crypt of the Colònia Güell, and the hillside development that became Park Güell (1900-14). The park's serpentine bench, sloping colonnades and broken-tile surfaces made extensive use of trencadís, a mosaic technique assembled from ceramic fragments.
Mature style
In the first decade of the twentieth century Gaudí produced two of his best-known apartment buildings on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia. Casa Batlló (1904-06) reworked an existing block with a bone-like facade, coloured glass and a scaled roof, while Casa Milà, known as La Pedrera (1906-12), presented an undulating stone front with no straight lines and an attic of parabolic brick arches. [1]
His structural method was equally inventive. Rather than relying on drawing alone, he built inverted hanging models weighted with small sacks to determine the line of pure compression, then inverted the result to generate catenary arches and leaning columns that needed no flying buttresses. Hyperboloids, helicoids and ruled surfaces recur throughout his later work. [3]
The Sagrada Família and death
From about 1914 Gaudí devoted himself almost exclusively to the Sagrada Família, living for a time in a workshop on the site. Only the crypt, the apse and the Nativity facade were substantially complete at his death, and construction has continued ever since, guided by surviving models and drawings, many of them damaged during the Spanish Civil War. [4]
On 7 June 1926 Gaudí was struck by a tram in central Barcelona. Shabbily dressed and carrying no identification, he was initially taken for a beggar and received delayed treatment; he died three days later, on 10 June 1926, and was buried in the crypt of the Sagrada Família.
Legacy
Gaudí's reputation declined for a period after his death, when his work was dismissed as eccentric, but it was revived from the mid-twentieth century and he is now regarded as one of the most original architects of the modern era. [2] UNESCO inscribed Park Güell, Palau Güell and Casa Milà on the World Heritage List in 1984, extending the designation in 2005 to four further works. [3] A cause for his beatification was opened by the Catholic Church in 2000.
