The Catalan architect, known throughout the world for his Sagrada Familia cathedral, inseparable from Barcelona, remains an atypical and little-known artist.
The Musée d’Orsay shines its spotlight from Tuesday on the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, known throughout the world for his Sagrada Familia cathedral, inseparable from Barcelona, and looks at the working methods of this atypical artist and… poorly known.
Unable to move the buildings with lines, pillars, mosaics, often very colorful, the museum, associated with the Museu Nacional d’art de Catalunya, made the bet to scenograph the “artistic journey” of the architect (1852-1926) .
Unclassifiable although historically placed in the current of Catalan modernism and in that, broader, of Art Nouveau, Antoni Gaudi Cornet remains fully associated with the history of Catalonia which he has almost never left, according to the curators. of the exhibition.
Just over 200 objects and pieces of furniture, plans, drawings, photographs, stained glass windows and models are on display.
Unprecedented working methods
The exhibition opens with a vestibule made up of sculpted oak paneling from Casa Milà, a private mansion in Barcelona, reconstructed for the occasion.
A film immerses the visitor in the heart of what was the artist’s best-known studio, near the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family), and his working methods such as his device with mirrors, designed to create the characters of one of the first facades of the cathedral, or a stereostatic model (or polyfunicular), which allowed him, by a game of inverted gravity, to make 3D models of his future achievements.
Several surviving casts from his studio which burned down during the Spanish Civil War are also exhibited alongside his “library” talking about the architects who inspired him, including Viollet-le-Duc, who restored Notre-Dame de Paris and built the spire of the cathedral.
An artist “embodying paradoxes”
Another part of the exhibition is devoted to the training of the artist, of modest origins, and to the expansion of Barcelona from 1859. It also evokes his friendship with Eusebi Guëll, a textile industrialist, with whom he will form an artistic duo.
We discover an artist “embodiing paradoxes”, says Elise Dubreuil, one of the curators: “very loved and popular in Barcelona during his lifetime then forgotten, refined and austere, proud and humble”.
Died in 1926, knocked down by a tram, Gaudi was forgotten for several years before being brought back to light by the surrealists, including Salvador Dali, his compatriot.