Gawking at Gaudi

I love Gaudi. Before Barcelona, I knew next to nothing, but this trip has enlightened me about him and other prominent Spanish artists ie Picasso, Goya, Velazquez, Zurbaran, El Greco. Antoni Gaudi was a great Catalan architect during the Modernist period, at the turn of the 20th century. Even though I’ve never been impressed by the art of that era eg Cezanne, Matisse etc, Gaudi’s work strikes a chord with me. I'm able to see, through his work, his life philosophy – naturalistic designs, and a deep spiritual belief (Gaudi was a devout Catholic). His obsession with natural light, and preference of natural spherical shapes over conventional geometric models, is evident in all his structures. I adore his technical ability to convert outlandish concepts into reality, esp the twisted ironwork, brick arches and weird sculptures.

My fascinations will transfer to the pictures below. Gaudi was influenced in his formative years by the ideas of Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist who believed that the biological conception of the universe in which matter was integrated, not in life, but in thought. Some excerpts from Haeckel’s General Morphology of Organisms (1887):


Casa Vicens (1883-1888) - coloured tiles with lined bricks make a formidable structure.




El Capricho (1883-1885) - just love those hand-made sunflower tiles to death.

Park Guell (1900-1914) - brilliant serpentine bench & plaza, beautiful rock arches, fairytale pavilions, four-armed crosses, doric collonades w/ colourful biomorphic designs. All in all, creativity overload.

Casa Battlo (1904-1907) - The house of bones. Creepy but brilliant, and my fave chimney.


La Pedrera, Casa Milla (1906-1912) - hollowed out in the middle to provide natural lighting to all apartment units, this revolutionary design is absolutely magnificent. 4.50eu for a luscious tour of an exemplary apartment of that era, a Gaudi museum in its vaulted attic, and of course the weird shapes atop its rooftop. Also love the eyelid windows.



La Sagrada Familia (1883-) - Finally, the masterpiece of them all. 3 facades, 7 towers, eery bible story sculptures, symbolism everywhere, plants and animals, spiral staircases, blahblah, there's too many good things to say about Gaudi's vision in this structure of epic proportions. Except maybe: why are they taking so freakin' long to finish it?!!
















To top it all off, there's a cute 'support the world' tortoise (La Sagrada Familia); and if I can build a house in the future, I'll definitely include this cute mushroom doorway in my house (it's actually a chimney place in Casa Battlo). Woohoo!!