Antonio Gaudí y Cornet
(Reus, June 25, 1852 – Barcelona, June 10, 1926)
Spanish architect and leading exponent of Modernism in Spain. Son of a coppersmith Francisco Gaudí y Serra and Antonia Cornet y Bertán.
He was an architect with an innate sense of geometry and volume and a great imaginative capacity that allowed him to mentally project most of his works before turning them into plans.
Gaudí conceived his buildings in a global way, attending to structural solutions as well as functional and decorative ones. He introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as his famous trencadís, with waste ceramic pieces.
His first architectural stage was strongly influenced by neo-Gothic art, as well as by certain orientalist tendencies, until Gaudí finally disembarked in Modernism in its period of greatest effervescence, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. His architecture stands out for its strong personal stamp, based on nature and the search for new structural solutions. His work is marked by what were his four great passions: architecture, nature, religion y love for Catalonia.