WORKSHOP: APRIL 2015

The Spain Photography Workshop this year takes places in Barcelona and nearby locations in the Costa Brava. 

The workshop theme is The Modernism of Gaudi and the Surrealism of Dali.

It will take place from the 17th  to the 22nd of April

Antoni Gaudí helped the Catalan architecture to worldwide fame and reputation. Gaudí was also an architect and designer with a special ability to synthesise their own tradition and the courage to new technical solutions. He understood to integrate creative and plastic elements in his buildings.

Antoni Gaudí was born in 1852 in the Catalan town of Reus as the son of a craftsmen. In Barcelona, he studied architecture; he concluded his studies in 1878. During this time Catalonia experienced a period of cultural and political rebirth, the Renaixença, at a time of economic and urban growth. A big bourgeoisie patronage wanted not to mix with European currents.

The 1888 World's Fair awarded the generation of the modernisme the main impulses. Gaudí overcame the prevailing historical styles of the eclecticism of the 19th century and developed his own aesthetic with its own distinctive, but difficult to classify style.

Gaudí creation is closely linked to his patron, the industrialist and financier Güell. He has not only a considerable number of orders, but he stocked it with a high prestige. Even at a young age Gaudí was instructed with the construction of the Sagrada Familia, he later devoted exclusively his power to the church.

Gaudí is also a great craftsperson. In collaboration with artists of his time, he designed all the architectural space filled elements: works from forged iron, furniture, ceramics, sculptures, mosaics and stained glass windows. His forms were always organic, curved and into the building.

During the visit, we will visit privately some of the most representatives buildings of Gaudi and we will take amazing pictures.

Watch the amazing video of Casa Batlló 

Batlló house

Batlló house

Batlló house

La Pedrera
Tour virtual La Pedrera

La Pedrera

The Güell park 

Salvador Dali is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the twentieth century. Though chiefly remembered for his painterly output, in the course of his long career he successfully turned to sculpture, printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing, and, perhaps most famously, filmmaking in his collaborations with Luis Bunuel and Alfred Hitchcock. Dali was renowned for his flamboyant personality as much as for his undeniable technical virtuosity. In his early use of organic morphology, his work bears the stamp of fellow Spaniards Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. His paintings also evince a fascination for Classical and Renaissance art, clearly visible through his hyper-realistic style and religious symbolism of his later work. Dali is most often associated with the Surrealist movement.

We will spend a day in Figueres and a day in Cadaques, the small towns outside Barcelona where Dali was born and lived with his family. Throughout his life, Dali retained his love for Catalan culture, and he depicted the landscape surroundings of the Costa Brava in several key paintings throughout his career. 

VIRTUAL VISIT TO DALI'S HOUSE

We will visit his Theatre-Museum and this will be the main inspiration for our photographs. The amazing place that Dalí wish it to be “… a single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist object. It will be totally theatrical museum. The people who come to see it will leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream.”

The heart of the museum is the building that housed the town's theater when Dalí was a child, where one of the first public exhibitions of young Dalí's art was shown. The old theater was burned during the Spanish Civil War and remained in a state of ruin for decades. In 1960, Dalí and the mayor of Figueres decided to rebuild it as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous son. In 1968, the city council approved the plan, and construction began the following year.[1]:4 The architects were Joaquim de Ros i Ramis and Alexandre Bonaterra. The museum opened on September 28, 1974, with continuing expansion through the mid-1980s. The museum now includes buildings and courtyards adjacent to the old theater building.

The museum displays the single largest and most diverse collection of works by Salvador Dalí, the core of which was from the artist's personal collection. In addition to Dalí paintings from all decades of his career, there are Dalí sculptures, 3-dimensional collages, mechanical devices, and other curiosities from Dalí's imagination. A highlight is a 3-dimensional anamorphic living-room installation with custom furniture that looks like the face of Mae West when viewed from a certain spot.