The Art Lover's Guide to Barcelona

By Ruby Boukabou

Unlock the secrets behind Barcelona’s artistic allure with this handy visual guidebook.

Delve into the history of the Catalan capital’s most famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and Antoni Tàpies, and discover today’s exciting creators working across many styles from figurative to abstract art; sculpture to urban art. Whether you’re a Barcelona regular or visiting for the first time, this guide will help you understand how the city acquired its unique and thriving art scene, as well as recommend ways to experience it more fully with a self-guided public art walking tour, museum and gallery listings and tips and suggestions of tapas bars, churches, arty day trips, art events and much more.

Featuring exclusive interviews from some of Barcelona’s best artists, museum directors and curators, this book offers invaluable insider information that will lead to an authentic and unforgettable trip. You can also find out where to take an art class, a street art tour, see the best of Gaudí’s architecture and taste succulent local cuisine. Written by travel and culture reporter Ruby Boukabou (author of The Art Lover’s Guide to Paris, The Architecture Lover’s Guide to Paris & Sense in the City), this book is the perfect companion for anybody intrigued by Barcelona’s artistic pulse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: May 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781526794512

Ruby Boukabou

Ruby Boukabou is a reporter specializing in culture and travel. For over a decade Ruby has written cultural stories about Paris for dozens of magazines, papers and sites with clients including the French Travel Board, Qantas in-flight magazine and the ABC. She is co-author of 48 Paris, a National Geographic guide to Paris. www.rubytv.net & www.rubyboukabou.com

Book preview

PART 1

1

BARCELONA ART IN CONTEXT — A SPLASH OF HISTORY

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION IN CATALONIA has thrived for over 115,000 years, as hundreds of rock art sites have revealed.¹ From Palaeolithic times to the present day, Catalonian art depicts people and animals, body adornment, playfulness, surviving and thriving, ritual and ceremony. Barcelona is the beating heart of Catalonia. The capital has witnessed a passing parade and an amalgam of civilisations, has experienced wars, plague, epidemics, pandemics, trauma and peace, harmony and division. Artists have not only captured it all but have used their art to respond.

Spanish and Catalan flags flying side by side in the Gothic Quarter. © Ruby Boukabou

Neanderthals produced symbolic objects not far from Barcelona; complex rock art dating from 115,000 years ago has been found at L’Espluga de Francolí (Tarragona). Rock art was created in the Neolithic period, between 12,000 and 4,500 years ago in caves at Ulldecona, Montblanc and Os de Balaguer (Tarragona) and at Roca dels Moros del Cogul (Lleida). The people in these artworks are portrayed unlike any other in Western prehistory; not stilted or solid, but rather lively and energetic. Pigments were applied on numerous occasions over several thousand years, allowing its longevity.

El Cogul is one of the oldest sacred places in Catalonia. Making women’s role in history visible, the rock art confirms the role women have had throughout the ages is more important than might previously have been thought, and it corrects previous mainstream conceptions, challenging the portrayal of the submissive role women played before there were any (male) chroniclers.²

There are fifty rock art sites in Catalonia alone, and the language of art celebrated by our ancestors continues to thrive in the streets, museums and galleries of Barcelona. Maybe it’s something to do with the terroir (the unique chemistry of the soil in a particular location) between mountain and sea, opening outward across to cultures across the Mediterranean.

The Indigenous people of the region, one of the Iberian tribes known as the Laietani, lived in stone settlements, hunting, herding, and using kilns to mint their own coins in what is now the city of Barcelona. After the Romans arrived in 14 BCE, the Laietani managed to live independently at first, until partially integrating before leaving the area to the Romans in the second century.

The Romans established settlements to distribute land for retired soldiers. The area they named ‘Barcino’ was strategically placed on the Via Augusta, ensuring that it developed economically and commercially, sealing its status right into the twenty-first century.

Remnants of Roman occupation are scattered through the city, especially in the Gothic quarter. Mosaics and sculptures adorn the museums. Romans were tolerant of Jews but less so of Christians, until Christian communities were established during the third century.

Visigoths from the north, who arrived in 415 CE with their king, Athaulf, claimed Barcelona as their capital, converted to Roman Catholicism and stayed for 300 years. The little artwork they left includes mosaics and jewellery made of precious stones, bronze and glass.

The Moors (the name used by Europeans to describe Muslim settlers from North Africa), invaded Spain in 711 CE, introducing a new religion, language and culture. Although wars would continue in the north between Christians and Moors, Granada and Cordoba, in southern Spain, would see a refinement of Roman irrigation and advanced agricultural practices, including introduction of oranges, cotton, silk and rice, as well as advanced city planning, even streetlights and gutters. Religions and artisans enjoyed a certain degree of conviviality. The Moors reached Barcelona in 717 CE, where they established a garrison and respected the institutions and religions already present. However, they only stayed for eighty years so left little visual impact on the city we see today.

Leaping forward to c.880 CE, Count Wilfred the Hairy (Guifré el Pilós) (878–897) and his son Count Ramon Borrrell (711–1035) established Barcelona and its surrounding counties as an unprecedented autonomous and hereditary region.³ This act is regarded as the foundation of the nation of Catalonia, whose roots and language are tied closely to France yet remain unique. The city flourished under its new autonomy.

Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the rapid expansion of monasteries in the Middle Ages meant Romanesque art proliferated throughout Europe. Monks, traders and pilgrims frequently travelled from France into the Pyrenean area and along the increasingly popular Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, introducing this art in mostly mural form in the ninth century.

Artists and sculptors travelling from Italy and Eastern Byzantium introduced motifs and techniques to Roman forms, using bright colours made with locally sourced pigment. Images depicted scenes from the (Latin) Bible and the lives of the saints, demonstrating the authority of the church and providing a visual memory to the illiterate masses. Catalan identity was nurtured in these magnificent Romanesque paintings, architecture, sculpture, wood and stone, as well as the applied arts which enjoyed equal status. As populations shifted, churches were neglected and abandoned.

With Constantinople conquered by the Crusaders, a Gothic style emerged in Europe and in Catalonia by 1260, replacing Romanesque. The Crown of Aragon expanded into the Mediterranean, the Kingdom of Valencia and the Balearic Islands. Further influences entered from Italy and France, transforming into a Catalan style. Linear Gothic produced murals and thematic altarpieces with depictions of saints. Figures were more expressive and realistic, with undulating rhythms and more refined colours.

Italianised Gothic was introduced by Jaume Ferrer Bassa (c.1285–1348) in the early fourteenth century. He brought techniques from Florence and Siena featuring balanced, more stylised and oriental forms, with monochrome or gold backgrounds.

An International Gothic style emerged later in the fourteenth century, believed to have been introduced into Catalonia by Luis Borrasà (c.1360–1426). Rich with continued cultural exchange, influences flowed from Italy and France and the art of the Mudéjar (Muslims who had remained in Spain). Catalonian Gothic was refined and elegant in one of the most prolific periods in Catalan art, with a plethora of chronicled panel painting, frescoes, oil paintings, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, silversmithing and embroidery.

Jews and Muslims were personally protected by monarchs and somewhat tolerated by the Christian populace, providing cheap labour (and taxed) while enabling some engagement in these artistic and scientific pursuits. For instance, some Hebrew biblical manuscripts were illuminated with Islamic stylistic motifs.

Another ground-breaking influence arrived in the early fifteenth century from Flanders, where Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) was substituting tempera (pigment mixed with egg yolk) with faster drying and stronger coloured oils, paying particular attention to light and detailed landscapes. King Alfonso’s (1432–1481) cultural policy enabled further interchange, particularly influencing Lluís Dalmau (1400–1460) and Jaume Huguet (1412–1492).

The Renaissance movement began in Florence with two scholars of ancient Greece and Rome, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), fostering a thirst for knowledge and reason that quickly spread throughout Europe, aided by the invention of the printing press, which reached Barcelona in 1473. Artists experimented with perspective and added depth and space, using oils and turpentine to create light and textures. Renaissance artists strove for harmony and beauty in nature, with expressive figures in perfect proportion.

Artists from other parts of Europe were very productive in Barcelona, with Italians leading the way, adapting to the Catalan way of blending styles. The Italian Dominican monk Fra Angelico (c.1395–1455) and German artist Ayne Bru (c.1470–1520) left a big impression with their symbolic religious interpretations. Born in the Barcelona province of Osona, Pere Mates (1490–1558) became an outstanding Renaissance artist, painting in tempera before moving to oils.

In 1469 King Ferdinand II of Aragon (1479–1516) married Queen Isabella I of Castile (1451–1504) and ruled jointly as Catholic monarchs, with power being centralised in Madrid. In 1478 they set up the Spanish Inquisition, towards the end of the Reconquista, (the re-conquest by Christian powers of the Moors). The Inquisition sought not only to insist on Catholic orthodoxy by expelling Jews and Muslims who didn’t convert, but to spy, set traps and to persecute those who professed to convert. (The Inquisition would not be ‘officially’ disbanded until 1834.) "Meanwhile, Christopher Columbus reached ‘The New World’, bringing power and riches to Spain, setting in train extensive use of enslaved Africans in the Americas."⁴

Depictions of Jews were increasingly debased in appearance and manner, the diverse range of artisans and merchants reduced to depictions of money handling and cloth merchants.⁵ The Jews were expelled in 1492, closing eight centuries of (relative) ‘convivencia’ (‘getting along together’) of Christians, Moors and Jews.

Following the Reformation, which began in Wittenberg, Saxony, in 1517, the Renaissance in Spain gave way to Baroque with the Counter Reformation. The Roman Catholic church commissioned works supporting its teachings with expressive religious, dramatic emotion, exaggeration and grandeur.

The growing, well-travelled wealthy classes favoured foreign artists, as had Queen Isabella. As the Roman Catholic church owned the country’s wealthiest institutions, it commissioned a large number of European artists to supply the monasteries, churches, convents and abbeys with new pieces of art.

Spanish artists such as El Greco (Domēńikos Theotokópoulos) (1577–1579), who settled to live and work in Toledo; Diego Velásquez (1599–1660), who worked in Seville and Madrid; and Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) (Valencia, Rome, Naples) dominated as Barcelona waned in importance and as a result, little Catalonian art emerged during this period. A standout, however, was Barcelona-born Antoni Viladomat i Manalt (1678–1755). A prolific painter of Baroque mixed with naturalism, he was influenced by Italian and French artists and exerted a certain independence.

King Felipe IV (1605–1665), although remembered for his patronage of the arts, placed feudalistic burdens on the Catalonian farmers and reapers, such as conscription to an unpopular war with Morocco, leading to ‘The Reapers’ War’ in 1640. The Reapers proclaimed a Catalan Republic in 1641 and formed a political-military alliance with France. (Centuries later, Catalan artist and writer Carles Fontserè (1916–2007) produced his famous poster ‘Libertat!’, referencing the Reapers’ War during the 1936 Spanish Civil War.) However, gaining the protection of France led to a sense of occupation, so no resistance was offered when Castilian forces attacked in 1652.

Felipe’s son, Carlos ll (1661–1700), had multiple disabilities and became king at the age of 3. With no royal heir, he nominated his sister’s grandson, French Philippe, duc d’Anjou, to be his successor, Felipe V. Barcelona weakened under the French king, who ruled during the eighteenth century. Barcelona sided with the French and ended up losing its political power.

In 1778 Carlos III of Spain (1716–1788) issued the decree by which the ban was lifted on Catalonia’s trading with the Americas, paving the way for power and wealth to return to the region. Industrialists, including the new wealthy who, benefitting from the proceeds of slavery, built richly decorated mansions. The Baroque ‘iIllusionist’ and Rococo artist Francesc Pla Durán ‘El Vigatà’ (1743–1805) was much sought after.

Napoleon invaded Barcelona in 1808 by trickery and was fiercely resisted. Following the severe destruction of the city, he was defeated by both the army and the newly formed people’s guerrilla movement. Although his brief presence in Catalonia did not directly introduce Neoclassicism, he was a powerful influence of the movement that arose in Italy and spread to France and around Europe. Later, Neoclassical buildings did start to appear in Barcelona, such as the City Hall (1830–1847), with its neoclassical façade, designed by Josep Mas i Vila (1779–1855).

The Industrial Revolution began in Barcelona in 1832 with the introduction of the steam engine, when the Bonaplata brothers used the power of steam to move the large textile machines made of cast iron instead of wood. This revolutionary step dramatically increased production and efficiency, and thus reduced costs and modernised production methods. The technology soon spread to other factories, heralding the beginning of modern industrialisation in Catalonia as peasants came in their hundreds to work in the factories. Barcelona was strategically placed, and with the prolific wealth came growth, education and creativity. The city walls, which had been built both to protect and control, created squalid conditions.

When the military governor finally agreed to allow the confining walls to be taken down in 1854, a Catalan civil engineer named Ildefonso Cerdà (1815–1876) submitted a plan to expand and transform the city. Although an incoming conservative government council severely compromised the plan, it still created open, green spaces that can be enjoyed today.

Romanticism was a reaction to the events surrounding the Industrial Revolution. Artists were driven by emotion, imagination and spirituality. Later on, certain modernist painters such as Santiago Rusinol i Prats (1861–1931) continued to produce Romantic artworks. Barcelona-born Claudi Lorenzale i Sugrañes (1814–1889) founded a ‘Nazarene’ academy, aimed at reviving spirituality in art, which was influenced by medieval art. His works can be found in the Can Llopis Romanticism Museum, Sitges.

Realism painters portrayed ordinary people going about their lives. They revealed the worthiness and the dignity they deserved. Barcelona-born Dionís Baixeras i Verdaguer (1862–1943) paid meticulous attention to both his subjects and the landscapes, combining Realism with Naturalism amid the modernist trend. His greatest legacy is a series of fifty drawings showing the streets that were removed for the construction of Via Laietana, which are on display in the Museu d’Història de la Ciutat (MUHBA). His portrait by Ramon Casas is in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC).

As the twentieth century approached, Barcelona began undergoing seismic cultural and political change.

The Catalan Renaissance (La Renaixança), a movement to reclaim and celebrate Catalonia’s unique linguistic and cultural heritage, was ushered in by a new art movement, Art Nouveau, also known as Catalan Modernism. Artists and architects no longer needed to appease the wealthy nobility and the Church but could express their ideas and styles to a growing clientele. The movement was spearheaded by the politician, physician, artist, writer and architect Lluís Domenèch i Montaner (1850–1923), who in 1878 designed a uniquely Catalan architecture, displaying Moorish, Gothic and Renaissance influences. Other architects and artists followed, applying colourful glass, ceramics, steel and decorative ironwork, symmetrical organic shapes, themes from nature, curved lines, encompassed painting, sculptures, furniture and decorative arts.

In preparation for the 1888 Universal Exhibition, these Catalan artists and architects, including Josep Puig i Cadafalch (1857–1956) and, most famously, Antoni Gaudí I Cornet (1852–1926), created the astonishing buildings that have defined Barcelona ever since.

The Catalan Renaissance also had a great influence on the following artists well into the twentieth century: Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (1861–1931), Ramon Casas i Carbó (1866–1932), Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa (1871–1959), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Joan Miró (1893–1983), Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) and Albert Ràfols-Casamada (1923–2009).

Sculptors included Eusebi Arnau i Mascort (1863–1933) and Josep Llimona i Bruguera (1864–1934). Then there were others like the cabinetmaker Gaspar Homar (1870–1955) and the glassmaker Lluís Rigalt (1814–1894).

However, the behaviour of the bourgeoisie and some of the architects linked with the Catalan Renaissance came to be seen as exhibitionist and the buildings gaudy, so by 1910, more sombre, simpler forms were sought.

Foreign artists escaped the First World War to neutral Spain, flocking to Barcelona and influencing the arts. Josep Dalmau i Rafel (1867–1937), the Symbolist painter and avant-garde promoter, opened his first gallery in 1911. He oversaw an explosion of art in Barcelona, featuring little known and famous local and international artists until 1936.

Avant-garde art challenged the norms and created a new aesthetic style. Although many artists and movements did this, the term has been popular since the turn of the century, and the concept can be applied to the flurry of subsequent art movements: Noucentisme, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism and Expressionism.

Noucentisme (new century) was a conservative political Catholic ideology, intent on renewing Catalan culture and language, rejecting Modernism and reflecting Greco-Latin classicism in a Mediterranean setting. Painter Joaquim Sunyer (1874–1956) portrayed pastoral scenes with families and nudes, while Xavier Nogués (1873–1941) produced satirical caricatures, which particularly provoked the bourgeoisies and spurred critical engagement.

Surrealism was characterised by the artist and sculptor Joan Miró, who created memories, dreams and fantasies using brightly coloured innovative objects and space. Salvador Dalí, perhaps the most famous example of the movement, created figurative, absurd surrealist art.

Cubism acquired its name