Parque Güell

The Modernism is an artistic movement developed at the end of the XIX Century and the first quarter of the XX Century. It is an urban phenomenon and specially a Bourgeois one. Spain receives this cultural movement with great interest after the lost of the American colonies.

All the artistic manifestations such as architecture, painting and sculpture, decorative arts, literature and music were influenced by this cultural movement which became the expression of a spirit, but specially, it became an attitude faced with life. It supposed freedom regarding to the creation of new forms previously rejected and the separation of the art from the academic limits. The art returns to the natural and curved forms in which birds, flowers, dragons and insects are usually represented.

The Catalonian Modernism has its own personality. It mixes typical symbols of the Catalonian nationalism with symbols of the Nordic and Medieval architecture, using more advanced materials such as forged iron, bricks or glass, and in this way reforming the traditional techniques. Barcelona, the city where Gaudí built most of his works, was a city in expansion thanks to the demolition of the wall that surrounded the city in 1894 and the new design of the city created by Ildefons Cerdá.