Product Description

The work of Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) defines the city of Barcelona like no other. Its art-nouveau-style spires and visionary eccentricities bestow their unique character on the skyline and make the city a point of pilgrimage for fans of Gaudí's inimitable, playful style. Gaudí of Barcelona presents the architect's work in Barcelona as it has never been seen before. Vibrant, specially commissioned photographs present the wonders of the Sagrada Família, Casa Milà, and 10 other fantastic creations in Gaudí's home city in unprecedented detail.

Tiled landscape architecture in brilliant colors, organic, plantlike pinnacles and towers, undulating tiled roofs with chimneys and ventilators looming like alien creatuers atop seething buildings--these are the features that distinguish the work of Gaudí and speak of his curious relationship with his city. The text investigates this aspect of Gaudí's work, discussing the architect's life and influences, his status as an outsider ahead of his time, and his leading place in Catalan modernism.

With its 178 brilliant photographs of Gaudí's most compelling works, and 13 maps showing their location--as well as an insightful text introducing Gaudí's architectural genius--this is an essential book for anyone who knows and loves Gaudí's work, or for those planning to discover it firsthand in Barcelona.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #592192 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-15
• Released on: 1997-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 191 pages

Amazon.com Review
Since the late 1800s, Spanish architect Antonio Gaudí's (1852-1926) fanciful buildings have defined Barcelona's cityscape. His playful spires and towers, undulating tiled roofs, and writhing chimneys loom like Dr. Suess creatures atop commercial and apartment buildings alike, and his sculptures are an integral component of many of the city's parks and public spaces. As respected for his technical innovations as for his aesthetic boldness, Gaudí was able to achieve unique, organic, fluid--at times even bizarre--architectural forms that paralleled the stylistic development of art nouveau. The artist's greatest works are brought into dramatic relief against the background of the modern metropolis with 178 specially commissioned color photographs and 13 maps of Barcelona locating Gaudí's works and offering explanatory descriptions of the buildings.

Language Notes
Text: English
Original Language: Spanish

About the Author
Journalist and writer Lluís Permanyer was born in Barcelona in 1939, and has specialized in chronicling his native city. He has been a full-time reporter of the main daily newspaper La Vanguardia since 1966, and has published more than thirty books, including monographs on Miró, Tàpies, and Clavé, and historic studies on aspects of Barcelona. He is also author of the opera libretto for Spleen (composed by Xavier Benguerel) which debuted in Barcelona and Frankfurt.

Photographer Melba Levick has had exhibitions of her work in America and Europe, and her pictures have appeared in magazines worldwide. She has published over twenty books, including Rizzoli's Beach Houses from Malibu to Laguna (1994), Casa California (1996), and Reflections on the Pool (1997). She divides her time betwen Paris, Los Angeles, and Spain's Balearic Islands.

Customer Reviews

A true original, with a vengeance.
Antoni Gaudi stayed out of pigeonholes in a big way. His work defies analogy, let alone description. Let's see: Ice cream castles? No. Victorian/Edwardian psychedelia? Maybe, kinda sorta. A Beaux-Arts H. R. Giger? His work does have that certain sinuosity to it, though it contains nothing of the macabre. It's like he was plunked down in 19th century Barcelona from some future era. One can only imagine what he could have done with modern building materials.

This book is a photodocumentary of his most notable work in Barcelona, although one building out in the countryside is included. The pictures are well composed and shot, and the text, an adaptation of a Spanish text, is interesting and clear.

Architectural surprises and oxymorons abound in these pictures. A classical caryatid is made out of small gray stones. The frame of a stained glass window turns out to be made out of knitting needles. The double doors of a courtyard open into a room, the entrance to which is obstructed by twin pink and yellow columns. Chimneys and ventilators are turned into colorful cones that wouldn't be out of place in the Hall of the Elves in Rock City, Tennessee. And the gateway to a park looks like nothing so much as a taffy-puller in action. And to think that all this expressiveness was built just one generation before the plague of Glass Boxes spread from northern Europe.

The appearance of Gaudi's buildings and decorative designs is striking enough for the casual viewer. But the details of how he came up with some of these designs is just as amazing. For one crypt, he dispensed with mathematical calculation altogether, instead working out the stress loads with a primitive, time-consuming system of ropes and sacks of buckshot. He was in fact so ferociously individualistic that it is amazing that he found enough patronage to keep him in work. Thanks to his open-minded patrons, most importantly Eusebi Guell, he was free to let his talents and imagination rip. Thanks also to his nationality--the English would have pegged him as an eccentric and consigned him to country houses. The French would have gone into ecstasies of theorizing, but would have been mindful of how little his work promoted "La Gloire". And as for Germany, who could imagine Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm living in ice cream palaces? But the Barcelona authorities were tractable enough to let him get away with flouting not only criticism but the very building codes. Perhaps they sensed that Gaudi was a manifestation of the revival the city was then enjoying.

This is an attractive book about a lone genius who put his stamp on his city; who followed his own drummer, sometimes right over the cliff, but always without hesitation.

Very interesting and informative book
A well presented book about one of the worlds most interesting architects. Great photos of his work - almost as good as seeing the real thing!!

a disappointment
This book has some very nice photos, but on the whole it wasn't what I wanted. I intended this to be my first and only book on Gaudi, but it won't serve that purpose. The photos don't include any of the usual angles -- for example, there are far too few shots of the wonderful roof of Casa Battlo, and none that adequately show the sinuous serpent-back tiles. The text explains the symbolism of the roof features, but the photos fail to show the features described in the text. Some of the wide angle shots looking up at ceilings are hard to interpret. The book is best as a complement if one already has a book with shots taken from the standard angles. In that respect, it would be excellent. I won't buy a book like this again without looking at it first.