Travel notes

Antoni Gaudi - the architect and decorator

He was called "the visionary"... Antoni Gaudi y Cornet was without doubt the most original architect and decorator of the early 20th century, in the revolutionary era that the French call Art Nouveau, the Germans Jugendstil and the Spanish "modernist". Born in 1852, Gaudí linked his name and work to a city, Barcelona. There, his works - the Mila, Batllo and Vicentz houses, the Parc Guell and above all the breathtaking Sagrada Familia cathedral - still amaze millions of tourists from all over the world.

Gaudí began work amid the general euphoria around the opening of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, when the city began to expand with an elegant, checkered streetscape that was considered a true marvel of the age. It was at a time when the neo-Gothic style of Viollet le Duc still dominated in neighboring France, but the Catalan architect was profoundly disappointed. No creator of the late 19th century, however much he wished to shake off the yoke of styles inspired by the past, completely escaped the historicist influence of the time. Gaudí himself was influenced by Hispano-Moorish architecture, the so-called "mudejar" style, Gothic, and eventually even Baroque. All these styles melt and merge almost literally in his work, creating a completely original and unmistakable synthesis. Gaudi arouses admiration, arouses curiosity, often shocks, but remains unique. And if he continues to shock us, the people of the 21st century, today, it is easy to imagine how surprised his contemporaries were at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Gaudí's art has been mockingly compared to that of confectioners and pastry chefs. But he was not only an innovator and original of the style generically known as Art Nouveau, he was also a forerunner of the supra-realism that was to reach unimaginable limits here in Catalonia, through the genius of Salvador Dali. Moreover, in 1933, seven years after Gaudí's death, Dali published his famous text in the magazine Minotaur, in which he wrote

"On the Terrifying and Edible Beauty of Modern Style Architecture", in which he defended Gaudí's work. But the brilliant painter did not hesitate to consider that the accusations of architecture by a chef or a confectioner, which had been leveled at him by his contemporaries, were perfectly justified. The idea is perfectly clear from the title of the article: Gaudí had created "edible architecture".