About Barcelona

Columbus Monument - Monument a Colom

The Columbus Monument (Monument a Colom) is a 60 m (197 ft) tall monument for Christopher Columbus at the lower end of the Barcelona Las Ramblas in front of the Old Port that was finished in 1888 in time for the Exposición Universal de Barcelona and immediately became one of the most characteristic icons of the city.  It is located on the site where Columbus returned to Spain and reported to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand  after his first trip to the Americas.
The statue on top of the column represents Columbus with his back to the city, his right arm extended and the index finger pointing towards the sea. Initially it was mentioned that was pointing America, but this statement created controversy because America is located in the opposite direction to where the finger points. So three different currents of opinion were developed; the first is that the statue must be understood as a metaphor and that the public would not understand that a finger pointing towards the Ramblas could mean that he is pointing towards America. The second is that the statue is not pointing to America, but to India that was what he wanted to find as an alternative route that did not need to cross the Turkish Empire that not let European traders move to Asia; and the third mentions that the statue does not point to America but to Genoa (alleged birthplace) although it actually points directly towards Mallorca island.
Inside the monument going through the column there is an elevator that carries up to the hemisphere beneath the socle of the statue, to a viewing platform which overlooks the city.
The monument was designed by the authors divided into different parts with a chronological significance, the basement is a circular base, six meters wide, with four group of stairs, eight statues of lions and bas-reliefs of eight coats of the Spanish provinces and around different bas-reliefs  that explain  moments of Columbus life, organizing the trip and asking for help, explaining his project to the Church and the Catholic Kings, boarding on Port de Palos, discovering America and back in Barcelona with the Kings. Next step is a polygon of eight sides, four of them arranged as buttresses, cross-shaped, with allegorical statues of Catalonia, Aragon, Castilla y León, as well as the figures of Boyl Bernardo, Pedro de Margarit, Jaume Ferrer de Blanes and Luis St. Angelo (Columbus collaborators), then the Corinthian column (40 m (131 ft) tall), with a base with figures of ships, cranes and Fames winged and a capital with representations from Europe, Africa, Asia and America (the capital intends to represent the discovery and the consequences of it); and on top of all stands the Columbus bronze statue (7.2 m (24 ft) tall) in a majestic posture by sculptor Rafael Atché.
A contest was held exclusively for Spanish artists to submit the design of the Monument and it was won by Catalan Gaietà Buigas i Monravà. Different other sculptors participated on the Monument. Pere Carbonell I Huguet, Josep Gamot, Rafael Atché and Josep Carcassó worked on the allegories of the kingdoms; Manel Fuxà, Josep Gamot, Eduard Batista Alentorn and Francesc Pagès i Serratosa on the eight stone statues of Columbus collaborators; while the bronze four lions at the base were designed by Agapit Vallmitjana and the eight bas-reliefs with scenes of Columbus, were designed by  Antoni Vilanova and Josep Llimona, that disappeared shortly after, and in 1929 they were replaced by new ones by Fuxà and Carbonell i Torres.

Homenatge a Picasso (Tribute to Picasso)

In 1981, catalan artist Antoni Tàpies was commissioned by the Barcelona City Council to create a monument to Picasso, which was unveiled in 1983 at the Passeig de Picasso in the pedestrian area that links with Ciutadella Park.
This Homenatge a Picasso (Tribute to Picasso) is a sculpture inside a glass cube measuring 4 meters along each side that covers the sculpture and protect it from the elements, surrounded by a square pool measuring 11 meters along each edge that acts as a base. The water emerges from the top of the cube and runs down its sides partially distorting the image of the inside.
For the inside of the glass cube the artist designed an assemblage of pieces of Modernist furniture; a sofa, mirror and cupboard combined, cut through iron beams painted white. It was the intention to remind the period that Picasso spent living in Barcelona and suggests the industrial Barcelona of the time, and the fight between the conformist nature of a well-to-do society and the rebellion of another society in the throes of change, thereby alluding in a symbolic way to Picasso’s non-conformism. Everything tied together with ropes and white blankets with a quotation by Picasso at the bottom with the phrase that reads “a painting is not intended to decorate a drawing room but is instead a weapon of attack and defense against the enemy”, a declaration of principles that Tàpies adopts as his own in this monument and in his entire work.
It is the poetry of the artist, but the result keeps being difficult to appreciate as the water flowing from the walls distorts the vision and creates a mystery on what it is inside. Even more a restoration was needed in 2006 as the high concentration of calcium in the water falling from the glass walls made practically impossible to see the inside.

Joan Miro - Pla de l’Ós pavement

Joan Miró (1893-1983) was approached In 1968 with a project to design a mural for the new terminal at Barcelona Airport. He not only accepted the commission but agreed to deliver three works that would serve to welcome visitors to the city on their arrival by air, land and sea. 6 years after the Mural for the terminal, in 1976, Miró designed the Pla de l’Ós pavement, located in the middle of the Ramblas, close to the Liceu Opera House and the Boqueria market. Following the artist’s request, the pavement has not been protected as a museum piece but is treated as any other pavement, being trod on and needing also repairs every now and then due to the same wear and tear and accumulation of dirt, including the chewing-gum, so difficult to remove. The pavement also periodically disappears from view when street-market stalls are temporarily erected on the Rambla.
Conceived as the landmark of a toponym, the Pla de l’Ós, the Miró pavement is closed upon itself as a means of centring the attention of the passer-by on this precise point. This effect is determined by the circular line enclosing the different elements of which the paving is composed, the most prominent of which is an arrow indicating movement or displacement,

Antoni Tapies - Nuvol i Cadira

Antoni Tapies designed this surprising sculpture called Nuvol i Cadira (Cloud and chair) to crown the old modernist building from architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, former Editorial Montaner i Simon (publishing house) and current headquarters of the Antoni Tapies Foundation. It was also the intention of the artist to mark the place as a space for reflection, sitting down from the height of infinite space to watch the little things of no importance that happen on earth.
The big winding sculpture made of anodized aluminum tubes and stainless steel mesh, 12.7 x 24.0 x 6.8 m, occupies completely the void left in between the two flanking buildings. The Old M odernist Building was in a way oppresed by the two modern buildings on the sides and Tapies felt it needed something to gain a new proportion in the block and to underscore its new identity. The Sculpture was installed over the building before the opening of the Foundation in June 1990.
The Sculpture "Cloud and Chair" is suspended on eight long metallic supports and continue the structural order of the front the building. Due to the large size of the sculpture, the first time you look at it in place, it is not so clear the vision of the chair on top of the cloud.
The Fundació Antoni Tàpies was created in 1984 by the artist Antoni Tàpies, Catalan painter, as a cultural center and museum, to promote the study and knowledge of modern and contemporary art with an important library specialized in modern art
The headquarters of the Fundacio Antoni Tapies was declared a historical monument in 1997.

Juan Munoz - A Room Where It Always Rains

During the Olympic Games of 1992 one of the most attractive projects of the time was a permanent exhibition of eight Sculptures and Installations through the old and renewed neighbourhoods of Barceloneta, Borne and Rivera called as a whole “Urban Configurations”. This brought to Barcelona a work from the sculptor from Madrid, Juan Muñoz. The installation was located at the Joan de Borbó stroll in the square plaza del Mar.
This work full of melancholy with the tumbler figures, so common in the work of Muñoz, inside of a room or cage without cover was inspired by the shade house in the Ciutadella Park. The idea of the artist, in agreement with the title that of the work - a room where always rains -, was that in that space it should always rain. Technical difficulties to develop a system of recirculation of the water and filters to avoid that the leaves of the trees that normally fill that space damage the system, caused that this part of the installation was postponed. In later conversations other alternatives were studied, because the author thought that the work was incomplete. His sudden dead in 2001 put the end on the development of the idea.

Jorge Oteiza - La Ola

Jorge Oteiza Enbil, born at Orio, Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country, worked as painter, designer and writer, and became one of the main theorists on Basque modern art.
He started his career at the end of the twenties, with primitive works. Between 1935 and 1947 he takes up a great trip abroad to South America. Upon his return to Spain, he becomes the talk at all innovation-trend exhibitions and in public projects (Basilica de Aranzazu, 1950-1969) evidently featuring international projection: in fact, he was one of the winners in the IV Biennale exhibition of Sao Paulo, 1957. During that time he turned into geometry and many of his best works referred to such forms as cylinder, sphere and especially to cube, in his series of metaphysical boxes and crystals. It was at the end of that decade when it left the expressionism and the figuration to begin by the footpath of the abstraction, which took to him to the emptiness in the sculpture. Oteiza decided to leave the sculpture in 1959, convinced that no longer he was going to contribute with nothing new.
In 1962 he published Quosque tandem!, an essay about the aesthetics inherent to basque soul, based on Basque prehistoric art and Basque people's anthropological roots.
The sculpture La Ola, made in aluminum, is based on a small 1957 bronze work. It has an approximated weight of 3,500 kilos and was made in the factory of Pere Casanova in Mataró. Oteiza donated to the Macba Foundation the sculpture, but he could not be present on the unveiling because of his broken health.
He died in Donostia, Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country at the age of 94 years in 2003.

Joan Miro - Dona I Ocell

The Dona I Ocell (Woman with Bird) sculpture is the third work that Miro gave to the city of Barcelona, the three of them of very different characteristics. The other two are in el Pla de la Boqueria at the Ramblas on the floor and a mural at Terminal B of Barcelona International Airport.
This more than 20 meters high, artificial stone partially covered with shattered ceramics, as modernist artists used in their works, reflected over an ornamental square lake, located in one corner of what was going to be a new park over what had been the slaughterhouse from 1892 till 1979 was unveiled in 1983, some months before the artist died, and became the last public piece made by Miro. He took the inspiration for this monumental sculpture from a ceramic work that had made been in 1954. The park was first named Parc de l’Escorxador (Slaughterhouse) but time after was changed to Parc Joan Miró. 

Jaume Plensa - Born - Urban Configurations

Jaume Plensa when the Olympic Games of 1992 in Barcelona was a promising artist with only 37 years and he was invited to participate, as the Catalan contribution, in one of the most attractive projects of the time, a permanent exhibition of eight Sculptures and Installations of different European artists through the old and renewed neighbourhoods of Barceloneta, Borne and Rivera called as a whole “Urban Configurations”.
The installation made by Jaume Plensa conformed by balls, letters and a trunk called “Born”, came to remember the activity developed in old days on the Borne as a commercial area which heart was the Mercat del Born, at the end of the Passeig del Born, beautiful steel structure that functioned as the city's wholesale market. The pieces of the installation are spread through the area: the trunk is over a stone bench and the cast iron balls and letters look like if they had been thrown on the stroll and left with no clear order under the benches, the back stairs of the church of Santa Maria del Mar and on the nearby street Volta d'en Dusai.
With the time this work has melt so well into the scenery of the place that sometimes looks difficult to visualize.

One of Jaume Plensa most interesting recent outdoor projects is the interactive Crown Fountain in Chicago's Millenium Park.

George Kolbe - The Morning - Dawn

The Barcelona Pavilion is known as one of Mies van der Rohe‘s main works. However few observations have been made regarding Georg Kolbe’s sculpture Morning, which plays an important role as an integral component of architecture inside the building.
It is surprising also that the statue was not created for the Barcelona Pavilion, into which it was so successfully adapted. Together with the female figure Evening, Kolbe had made it for Ceciliengärten,“ the residential estate of Heinrich Lassen in Berlin-Schöneberg, where both works stood opposite one another on the central lawn. In 1927 the tinted plaster model of Morning stood in the center of a Kolbe room in the Munich Glass Palace, which the architect Wilhelm Kreis had designed. This plaster model was then shown in Barcelona in 1929. After the end of the exhibition and deconstruction of the Pavilion, the model was presumably destroyed. In the 1986 reconstruction of the Pavilion stands a bronze copy.
Shortly after the end of World War II, the bronzes Morning and Evening were separated and placed in different locations in Schöneberg, but were then reunited near the Schöneberg city hall. Since 1996 they have been back in the restored Ceciliengärten“.

Frederic Amat - Mural de le Olles

The Mural de le Olles from Frederic Amat was inaugurated in 2001. It is a link of union among the new glass building of the Institut del Teatre and the back wall of the Mercat de les Flors. The Mural is formed by an endless amount of flattened pots, cracked open, before being cooked, and pierced like bodily organs, that cover completely the back wall of the Mercat de les Flors Theatre and two doors of forged iron. It is difficult to be seeing as there is no big perspective; a different view is from the inside of the Institute, through the glass windows.
The Ciutat del Teatre (Theatre City) of Barcelona, is a large complex of facilities for the formation of students in the Institut del Teatre, and two Theatres, The Mercat de le Flors Theatre and the Lluire Theatre in the ancient Palau de l'Agricultura (from the Universal exhibition of 1929) that accommodates a main room (Room Fabià Puigserver) and one more reduced the Lluire Space, on one of the side of the Montjuïc Park.
The dedication of Frederic Amat to his painting has not prevented him from exploring other artistic expression. Amat has been working simultaneously with different disciplines: theatre, cinema, photography and set design.
 

Frank Gehry - Fish - Peix

The Olympic games of 92 served Barcelona to develop many abandoned areas of the city. One of the most important areas included The Olympic Village, the Olympic Port with the two towers (Mapfre Tower & Hotel Arts) and the big fish sculpture from Frank Gehry on the Gardens of the hotel and all the water front with the new beaches of Nova Icària, Bogatell, Mar Bella, Nova Mar Bella.
The giant copper "Peix" sculpture (35 meters x 54 meters) in the Olympic Port was a landmark in the history of Frank O. Gehry & Associates, inaugurating the firm's use of computer-aided design and manufacturing.

The shape of a fish has been a recurring motif in Frank Gehry’s work and as it appears repeated over and over in his designs. In 1981, Gehry designed a giant sculpture of a fish standing on its tail to occupy an atrium. The following year he put giant illuminated fish in a restaurant in Venice, Calif. He made fish lamps and sculpted the model for a kettle with fish for spout and handles. The first exhibition of Gehry's work, which took place in Minneapolis in 1986, was entered through the body of a giant fishlike structure.

Fernando Botero - CAT

There are some times that it looks difficult for a sculpture to find a place in a city. It is what it has happen to this big bronze sculpture of the Cat (seven metres long and two tons of weight) from Fernando Botero. First installed in the Ciutadella Park in 1989, was moved because of the Olympic Games in 1992 to the Montjuich Mountain close to the Olympic Stadium, but it did not stay long in this second emplacement; and only some months after the Olympics, by express wish of the sculptor, was moved to a small square on the rear wall of Drassanes building that did not made happy to anybody, and in 2003 was moved again to the new Rambla del Raval with the intention of adding a new icon to this recently developed part of the city that had suffered this big transformation two years before. Columbian Fernando Botero has another public sculpture in Barcelona in the Terminal B of the Airport.

Eduardo Chillida - TOPOS V

Topos V was placed on the location chosen by the sculptor himself, on the only open corner of this medieval square (Plaça del Rei, where the story says that the kings of Spain Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragon received Christopher Columbus when he came back after discovering America), acting like another medieval building closing this open corner. The architectural character of the sculpture with the semicircular arches like windows, gets even clearer with the name given that comes from the Greek word topos, meaning space or place.
These seven tons of cast iron was unveiled in March of 1986 counting with the presence of the sculptor in the city. Eduardo Chillida Juantegui was born in January of 1924 in the Basque city of San Sebastian, and died at the age of 78 in his house of Monte Igueldo leaving an impressive work behind. He has two other public sculptures in Barcelona, Elogi de l’aigua (In Praise of Water) at the Creuta del Coll Park and a huge mural, Barcelona 1998, first mural done by the sculptor, on one of the sides of the square Placa dels Angels (where the Macba Museum is located).

Carme Pinos y Enric Miralles - Pergolas

Few works done fort he Olympic games have become so controversial as these Pergolas in the Icaria Avenue done by the architects Carme Pinós and Enric Miralles. The fact that the underground of the Avenue was an immense sewer did not allowed to plant trees on it. So in July of 1992 the Pergolas were installed but on a size much more reduced than the original project designed by Pinós and Miralles as a procession of gigantic metallic trees of four meters height and that should had approach to the buildings covering the whole avenue. The poor result created much more contrary opinions than in favour to the project being called even "horrible and discouraging" but as happens always after time passes it has received also some Awards.
 

Adria Ferran i Celdoni Guixa - Font de Neptu

This sculpture of Neptune seated on a rock was made by sculptor Adrià Ferran and inaugurated in 1826 on the area of the old port of Barcelona at the Pla de Palau, to oversee all those who arrive or depart from the port. Some years later the sphinxes located at the statue’s feet where added by sculptor Celdoni Guixà to the monument. Changes on the functioning of the port in 1919 obliged to dismantle the monument and was moved to a new emplacement in one of the parks at the Montjüic hillside that was being converted to gardens at the time. But in 1975 because of the construction of the Joan Miro Foundation on that area the statue was disassembled and kept on storage for some years. In 1983 after that a complete block in front of the façade of the Mercé Church was emptied to convert it into the new Mercé Square (Plaça de la Mercé) the statue was restored and placed in a new pond on the opposite side of the square on relation to the church with a tablet recording its previous locations. The new pond and restoration of the monument was work of the architects Rosa Maria Clotet, Ramon Sanabria and Pere Casajoana.

Our Barcelona Apartments Ramblas Mansion A and Ramblas Mansion B are located in the Carrer Avinyo near the Plaça de la Mercé.

Leandre Cristofol - Monument

This big public sculpture, titled Monument, more than 8 meters tall, is a large-scale version from the original in wood, 80 centimeters high, executed in 1935 by the Catalan surrealist sculptor born in Lleida on 1908 Leandre Cristòfol. It is his first work to appear in Barcelona and was chosen by him when the City Hall offered a place on the new public square that had been created after cleaning up from old buildings the space in between the streets of Escudellers, Arenes and Arai. It was unveiled in September of 1991, eight years before the death of the sculptor. The original work can be found at the Catalan National Art Museum.
The Ramblas Clock Apartment  is located in  a protected building  that forms part of an architectural heritage residential compound just in front of this big Sculpture on the George Orwell Square.

Roy Lichtenstein - Cap de Barcelona

Cap de Barcelona (Barcelona Head) is a sculpture made by Roy Lichtenstein. At the first moment when the agreement between the artists and the Ajuntament (City Hall) de Barcelona was settled it was the Creuta del Coll Park the place chosen as location for the sculpture, but on seeing the prototype made by the artist in 1991 in New york both parts decided to move Lichtenstein’s work from the mountains to the sea and in 1992 just before the Olympic Games it was set into place at the water's edge in the old port. The sculpture was placed to serve as one icon for the visitors of Barcelona through the Olympics at the end of the Moll de la Fusta in front of Plaza Antonio Lopez.
Best known his work as painter, Roy Lichtenstein was also a prolific sculptor with a clear sense of three dimensions. In Barcelona Head is also important to see how the artist melted the Catalan Technique of the “Trencadis” (used frequently in the begin of the 20th Century by architects and craftsmen from the Modernisme - technique of smashing up ceramics and piecing them back together in patterns to create their work - very well known is Gaudi’s curved bench at the Park Güell) into his work keeping all the force of Lichtenstein’s Pop Art and his interest for the brushstrokes and Ben-day dots.
These eight pieces of prefab concrete and ceramic tiling finish with base of dyed concrete, twenty meters high and five meters wide, represents a woman’s head with her hair blowing in all directions.
Our Barcelona apartments Harbour Palace 1, Harbour Palace 2 and Harbour Palace 3 are just two minutes walking  from Lichtenstein's sculpture, crossing the street from the Moll de la Fusta  direction Plaça de Pau Vila.

Rossend Nobas, Josep Llimona - A Rafael Casanova

The inscription on the monument says: “The Counsellor in chief Rafael de Casanova fell wounded here defending the freedom of Catalunya …… Casanovas was forced to accept the Capitulation of the City on 11 September 1714. The victory of Philip V brought the suppression of the “Consell de Cent” and of the Catalan Constitution.” 
Its first emplacement was at the Saló de Sant Joan (actually Passeig de Lluis Companys) as it was made for the 1888 Universal Exhibition to be placed, together with seven other sculptures of famous figures from Catalan history, in the pass way between the entrance at the Arc de Triomf and the exhibition enclosure in the Parc de la Ciutadella. In 1914, on the two-hundredth anniversary of the fall of Barcelona after the siege, the Barcelona City Hall decided to remove the statue from its emplacement and moved it to the spot where Rafael de Casanova had fallen wounded as the visit to the monument every September 11th had already acquired the characteristics of a national feast, even the date meant a clear defeat of Catalan liberties. The monument was removed in 1939 by the Franco’s regime and was placed back on September of 1977, for the biggest massive Catalan demonstration before the return from exile of the President of the Generalitat.
The monument itself is a clear expression of the wounded romantic hero mixed with modernist symbols of pain and affliction of Catalans for the lost of their rights and freedom.

Monument al Doctor Robert

Plaça de Tetuan, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, Passeig de Sant Joan

The monument projected by the architect Domènech i Montaner, was ultimately carried out by the sculptor Josep Llimona, according to the draft of Domenech. Built between 1904 and 1910 and stood originally in Plaça de la Universitat. The materials used were stone and bronze and it was an allegory to the Catalan people, to nationalism, to poetry, to farmers and industrial workers, with the spiritual advice of poet Verdaguer, and also remembered the medical profession of Dr. Robert. The sculptures were made also by Llimona.Erected by popular subscription the Monument was dedicated to Bartomeu Robert who for a very short period of time was Mayor of the city. Dr. Robert is appointed mayor of Barcelona in March of 1899. In October 20, 1899 he led as mayor of the city, the shopkeepers' protest against the law of the government of Spain which consisted of an abusive tax increase to cover the losses of the war in Cuba.The central government's response was decisive authorizing the immediate arrest of defaulters, declaring a state of war and imprisoning some traders.The Mayor resigned voluntarily in solidarity with the people and to avoid having to deal with the businessmen and traders of Barcelona. After this act Dr. Robert became a political symbol of Catalan nationalism and was elected first president of the Lliga Regionalista (the first modern political party). He died in April 1902.
The monument from the beginning became a place of patriotic Catalan exaltation and was well understood by the Spanish government born after the Civil War, a fact for which the monument was removed from its location in the year 1940, disassembled and kept, thanks to the mayor of the moment. This enabled the reconstruction of mostly all the monument, in its new location on the centre of the Plaça Tetuan, where it was unveiled for the second time in May 11, 1985.
Josep Llimona is considered the largest Catalan modernist sculptor, born in Barcelona in the year 1864 and died at the age of 70 leaving a large amount works behind.
Our Barcelona apartment Gran Via-Plaza de Tetuan is in Gran Via de le Corts Catalanes just two minutes walking  from Plaça Tetuan and the Monument al Doctor Robert.