History

Antoni Gaudí was born in Reus, near Tarragona, on 25 June 1852. His architectural training in Barcelona coincided with the city’s great urban expansion — the Eixample project — and with the cultural and political awakening known as the Renaixença. Gaudí’s early work absorbed Gothic revivalism, Moorish ornament and the engineering logic of natural forms; by the time he received the Sagrada Família commission in 1883, at 31, he had developed a fully original structural vocabulary based on parabolic arches and hyperbolic vaults that required no buttresses.

The five-year period between 1900 and 1914 is Gaudí’s apogee: Casa Calvet (completed 1900), Park Güell (1900–1914), Casa Batlló (renovated 1904–1906), Casa Milà (1906–1912). The Batlló renovation — in which Gaudí clad a conventional apartment block in polychromatic ceramic scales and reshaped every floor as a continuous organic surface — remains the most audacious transformation in the history of Art Nouveau.

Gaudí was struck by a tram on 7 June 1926, three days before his 74th birthday, and died two days later in the paupers’ ward of the Hospital de la Santa Creu. He was identified only after his initial transfer as an unknown. He is buried in the crypt of the Sagrada Família, which he had supervised for 43 years and which remains under construction today, funded by entrance fees and private donations.