Houses for Dragons: Modernista Architecture in Barcelona Part 1
La Renaixança
In 1910, former French president Georges Clemenceau stopped in Barcelona when returning from a trip to Latin America. He was due to give a lecture but before doing so, he took a carriage ride along the Passeig de Gràcia. By the time he reached Casa Milà, he was so upset by the architecture that he ordered the coach driver to return to his hotel. He refused to give the lecture and immediately returned to Paris, telling the French press that in Barcelona they were building houses for dragons.
How and why did Barcelona develop such startling architecture? And why such an extreme reaction from a resident of Paris which had its own fin-de-siècle Art Nouveau movement? A confluence of artistic, economic, and political trends brought forth a renaissance in Barcelona and the flowering of the architectural movement known as modernista. It was eclectic, eccentric, exuberant, historicist, nationalist, and global all rolled into one Catalan ball.
Castell dels Tres Dragons, 1887-88, Lluis Domènech i Montaner
At the end of the 19th century, just as it lost its remaining colonies and global power, much of Spain was descending into depression and despair. It remained a largely agriculture economy. By contrast Barcelona was rising on a tide of revived Catalan nationalism and an embrace of the industrial revolution. International trade thrived at its port and connected the city to the rest of the world. Industrialists built factories and employed thousands of workers, increasing prosperity across the classes. A 1901 election brought young Catalan nationalists to power who wanted to make Barcelona the “Paris of the South.”
Physically, Barcelona had been changing since the middle of the 19th century. After a cholera outbreak in the 1850s, the city council decided to tear down the city’s walls which encircled the cramped, crowded, and dirty old city. An engineer, Ildefons Cerdà, produced an urban plan extending north that was based on a strict grid bisected by diagonal boulevards. The new neighborhood, Eixample, became the trendy location for Barcelona’s wealthy merchants and industrials to build their city homes and invest in real estate. A young cadre of architects were ready to meet the demand for new buildings. The wide boulevards of Eixample were the perfect canvas for their fanciful façades.
1859 Plan for Eixample, Ildefons Cerdà ©Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat, Barcelona
The architects of Barcelona’s Art Nouveau, or modernista, were ready to break free from past academic and classical conventions and apply an aesthetic based in Catalan history and nationalism. They split into two groups. The first, the nationalists, were attuned to the material and social progress in Catalonia. They embraced new building techniques and employed exuberant decoration that was appropriate for new social institutions, technology, and leaders.
For the second group, the utopians, were unsettled by the rapid changes of modern society, changes that some observers, particularly the Catholic Church, viewed as decadent. Like the nationalist architects, they also took advantage of advances in building techniques but applied them with a different focus. Influenced by the philosophies of William Morris, John Ruskin, and the English Arts & Crafts movement, they attempted to reconcile progress and life in the modern city by looking to historical and nationalist inspiration and covering it with a heavy layer of decoration inspired by the Mediterranean’s flora, fauna, and sunlight.
In addition to Catalan patriotism, both groups had another common bond: close connection to Barcelona’s highly skilled craftsmen who were essential to realizing their respective visions. The execution of these highly imaginative buildings required sculptors, stone and wood carvers, carpenters, plasterers, decorative painters, mosaic artists, ceramicists, and many more. In some instances, the architects provided mere sketches and left the ultimate interpretation and execution of certain elements to the artists and craftsmen. Their names are not as famous as the architects but without them Barcelona would not look as it does.
The Apple of Discord
Who were these nationalist and utopian thinkers and architects? Buildings on one block of the Passeig de Gràcia in Eixample provide a visual summary of three principal modernista architects, two nationalists and one utopian. After completion of the neighboring buildings, Barcelona residents soon referred to the block as the “mançana de la discòrdia”, the word mançana meaning both block and apple in Catalan. The three residences display the wide-ranging influences and originality each architect employed. Casa Albert Lleó i Morera (1905) by Lluís Domènech is highly influenced by the Gothic with a Moorish flair. Casa Amatller (1900) by Joseph Puig is much more restrained and colorful, incorporating Catalan Gothic Revival with a roofline that appears to belong in Amsterdam. Casa Batlló (1907) by Antoni Gaudí is the most striking and, to some viewers, strange with its asymmetry, organic bone-like forms, and polychromatic ceramic façade.
Casa Amatller, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, 1900
For Lluís Domènech i Montaner the characteristics and promulgation of a Catalan style were central to his philosophy and practice. A polymath who was also a publisher, book designer, politician, and educator, he published a seminal essay in 1878 entitled “In Search of a National Architecture.” Ten years later, after the Barcelona World’s Exposition, he gathered key modernistas in the café-restaurant that he designed for the fair (a 6-minute walk from Hotel Catalonia Born). The group discussed architecture, politics, craftsmanship, and culture as they attempted to discern the inspiration and sources of the national style they intended to create. They decided to anchor their aesthetic in a medieval past when Barcelona and Catalonia were great powers. Thus, they preserved Catalan Gothic as well as the Romanesque as primary influences but frequently drawing on Moorish aesthetics as well.
While Domènech borrowed from the past, he never copied it. His most celebrated building, the Palau de la Música Catalana (1908) was a modern tour-de-force in its day. Known for its exuberant decoration, the building uses glass extensively in an early version of curtain walls that produce an almost greenhouse-like effect. Ceramic mosaics sparkle throughout under electric light. Mirroring modern art movements, Domènech designed the sculpted proscenium arch as an eclectic, asymmetrical assemblage of Valkyries, classical elements, flora, and fauna. Keeping with his nationalism, he interspersed Catalan flags in the mosaics, which during Franco’s government were covered because he had ordered them destroyed. Fortunately, the disguise worked and they survived. Among other city projects, Domènech was also responsible for a major hospital complex, Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau, and multiple houses in Eixample.
Palau de la Música Catalan, 1908, Lluis Domènech i Montaner
Like Domènech, Antoni Gaudí proudly borrowed from Catalonia’s past but rather as defensive response to modernity than acceptance. In fact, he despised the term modernista and never used it. Gaudí was the spiritual, original, eccentric genius whose work literally looms over Barcelona and has become its most recognizable symbol. We will deal with his life and work in Part Two.