God's architect

Spanish pride

Antoni Gaudi, the celebrated Catalan architect, was hardly more than a name to us before our departure to Spain on a recent three-week-long visit. What little we knew of him was what we had managed to gather from the Lonely Planet. Even so the information provided on his principal work in Barcelona, La Sagrada Familia, the church meant for the Holy Family of Jesus, was enough to whet our interest and curiosity in this monumental work.

What aroused our inquisitiveness even more was the remarkably unusual circumstances in which its construction began, continued, stopped and resumed with the objective of completing it by 2026, as it marks the death centenary of Gaudi and would therefore be an apt tribute to the man who gave the church his all when he was alive, yet could not unfortunately complete it in his own lifetime. It is said that Gaudi spent the last 14 years of his life in the basement of the church without even going home so as to expedite its completion. But this grand project is only half-finished as the great architect’s career was cut short in a tragic accident in 1926, when he was hit by a tram.

Ambitious projects

Ever since we read about Gaudi’s unfinished project that first began in 1882 and saw its picture with its eight-feet-tall, massive towers, all over 100 metres high, with 10 more to come as per Gaudi’s original plan, we realised there was a certain mystique about this undertaking. Our wish to visit it some day came true when on a cold dull, gray morning in July we found ourselves standing at its portals, waiting to be let in, even as strong winds blew and heavy rains pounded mercilessly.

we were ushered in, we were at once overawed by the sheer physical dimensions of the monument — its height, breadth, vastness, to say nothing of its most unusual sculpture, its unconventional stained glass windows depicting modern abstract art and the incredibly huge crowds constantly milling in and milling out! Gaudi’s fascination for palm trees is most eloquently reflected in the way the massive columns rise and spread out on to the ceiling, giving one the feeling of virtually being in a palm grove! A Cross and a figure of Christ make up for the altar right now.

The adjoining exhibition with its pictures, sketches, scale models, notes and descriptions shed invaluable light on Gaudi’s plan of work, his motifs, his techniques, his innovativeness, his originality, and in short, “the roots of his organic architecture” that sets him way apart from other architects. A poignant detail about his personal life we learn is that in his younger days he was a sick child, stricken by continual bouts of rheumatism that delayed his start at school. So his mother would take him out for walks in the countryside and spend several hours in the presence of plants, flowers, trees, birds and bees which deeply inspired him, and later got reflected in his works. This observation of Nature led him to study “cosmic movements”, which generated “spiral movements” on the Earth with its power of gravity, the reason why curves figure prominently in his work.

Struck as we were by all that we saw, heard and read, what deeply moved us was the sight of Gaudi’s room in the basement of the church. A chair and a work table strewn with papers, documents, books, maps, models, sketches and plans greeted us even as we entered it. This was where he pored over his plans for the church day and night. If some personal belongings like his jacket lent a touch of intimacy to an otherwise sparse and bare room, there was another little article, a cloth bag hanging underneath a lamp against the backdrop of some rolled up maps on the stand that made the whole scene homely and touching.

It was his lunch-bag, we gathered, in which he usually packed two slices of bread, some honey and a handful of raisins! The utter simplicity of the man struck our chords, making it even more poignant that this old, lonely man without a family himself should still have had the urge to build an abode for the Sacred Family. Not for nothing was he described as “God’s Architect”!

Unmatched legacy

Modest and humble, Gaudi was also known to be religious, which explains why he personally considered the Sagrada to be his most important work. We left the place in a meditative mood, but not before peeping into the adjoining classrooms where architecture students come to study Gaudi and his incredibly new style of architecture. It was heartening to hear that he is taught in universities as well. It is said that though Gaudi was not understood properly in his own lifetime and even became controversial (a fate that many geniuses are condemned to), today he is worshipped as a God by his countrymen! 

No account would however be complete without a reference to yet another remarkable creation of Gaudi’s, namely Park Guell in the north of the city. Commissioned by Count Eusebi Guell, an entrepreneur-cum-patron who donated his own private land to create an urban Public Park, Gaudi has indeed worked wonders with his imagination.

Declared a National Monument in 1969 and a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1984, it attracts millions of visitors from all over the world to savour its artistic delights amidst natural surroundings. The star attraction is the esplanade or ‘nature theatre’ as it was known initially, for it was meant for open air shows. An incredibly long, undulated bench built with pieces of pottery and fragments of glazed tiles of myriad colours in asymmetrical shapes and sizes runs like a meandering snake all around this square, holding the visitors absolutely enthralled.

Figures of reptiles, animals, birds, flowers, geometrical designs, all made with ceramics, broken pieces of cups and saucers, glasses and plates embellish the walls, pillars and ceilings of halls and flights of steps alongside waterfalls. Gaudi’s own house in the premises (gifted by Guell), where he lived for 20 years, now turned into a museum, adds an extra dimension to the place. 

The park, which in a sense recalls the Rock Garden of Chandigarh by our own legendary Nek Chand, is a splendid demonstration of what a genius can do even with discarded material. In a way all Barcelona is a garden where Gaudi’s “naturalistic” architecture has struck deep roots and forever strives to rise high like a palm tree as though “to unite Heaven and Earth”!