La Pedrera (Casa Milá)

Barcelona is the capital city of the Modernist architecture. One of its incentives, from the architectural point of view, is the quality and the quantity of its modernist buildings and Antonio Gaudí´ s sign, the most emblematic architect.

At the same time, the Catalonian Modernism is an art linked to a political target: the Catalonian Nationalism. It was born in a period of time of a socioeconomic boom, when the Catalonian bourgeoisie comes into a situation of great prosperity thanks to the industrial capitalism. During this period, factories are built, the railway is developed, the wine exploitations are created, and the cities experience an important growing. As a result of this economic boom, the Modernism starts in the domestic field and advances to churches, hospitals, music palaces and also to industrial architecture.

The Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudí was admired because of the audacity and originality of his innovative solutions. He suffers a change in his style, leaving the references from other times, and becoming the creator of new and complex forms and volumes. His first projects El Capricho, the Casa Vicens, and the works for the Mataró´ s cooperative, gave him success. He gave free rein to his imagination when the count Güell became his patron, and the Güell palace made him famous.

In the second half of the XIX Century, the Modernist Architecture appears. Its characteristics are not only reflected in architecture but also in other plastic arts such as mosaics, stained glass windows, pieces of ceramics, forged iron, painting and jewels. Decorative motifs based on curved forms, asymmetric lines, multicultural floral ornamentation and pieces of fragmented coloured ceramics that cover the curved geometrical surfaces are used in this time. The parallel movements to the Catalonian Modernism are known as Art Nouveau in France and Belgium, Sezession in Austria, Modern Style in England and the United States, Bohemia Jugendsil in Germany and Liberty in Italy.