The fin de siècle era coincided with a revival of Catalan culture, which mixed into the Modernisme style. It was specifically a rejection of the upper-class ideals and an embracing of using art to change society, along with setting out to define Catalan culture vs Spanish culture. One of the most well-known Modernisme architects … in the broadest sense of the style, Antoni Gaudí was responsible for several buildings, a park, and a still-in-progress church — all in Barcelona, the main location of Modernisme art.
Gaudí’s style drew inspiration from many sources, including Doric, Baroque, Indian, Persian, Japanese, Arts-and-Crafts, but generally considered to be the primary are Moorish and Neo-Gothic, especially Viollet-du-Luc’s work. Gaudi disagreed with the Gothic style structurally though, “Gothic art is imperfect, only half resolved; it is a style created by the compasses, a formulaic industrial repetition. Its stability depends on constant propping up by the buttresses: it is a defective body held up on crutches.”
Gaudi got his chance to enhance upon Gothic design with the Sagrada Familia. The church had been under construction for a year as a Neo-Gothic building when he joined the project (after the previous architect resigned). He altered the design into the Modernisme building it is becoming today, using ruled geometrical forms that he pulled from natural shapes like reeds or bones as the structural support rather than the pointed arches & buttresses of Gothic. The Sagrada has never been funded by a church or government, only donations and ticket sales, which is why — combined with halts in construction caused by war — the construction has taken so long. At Gaudi’s death the construction was below 25% complete, in 2015 it reached 70% completion. Currently, the goal is to have the structure done by 2026, the centennial of Gaudi’s death, with decorations completed by 2032.
While managing the Sagrada project, Gaudi took on other projects as well and these are where we see a truly unique style emerge. In 1900, ground was broken in the development of Park Güell, intended as a residential park of 60 houses. However, only two of the 60 plots were ever purchases — one by a friend of the owner and one by Gaudi himself — so it became, and remains, a city park. Casa Batlló was a remodel job in the fashionable center of Passeig de Gracia, a major Barcelona avenue. Joseph Batlló gave Gaudi full artistic license to create a house unlike any other; today it is locally known as Casa dels ossos, The House of Bones as homage to its skeletally organic style.
