A Gaudi-like Spanish Architect Who Spent All His Life Building a Labyrinthine Edifice (2)
In Spain, however, there was an artist who spent most of his life building a real ‘illusionary’ mansion.
Our first impression about the house: mystical, simple, dreamlike and romantic. It seems to be a space that does not belong to reality or a pristine cave full of sensory stimulation.
This house was built by Xavier Corbero, a Catalonian artist and Spain national-level sculptor who died in 2017, and the most spectacular work he left to the world is this 3,000 square meter private mansion.
The buildings are also interiorly niched with queer and fanciful ideas, from furniture to furnishings, from green plants to his own sculptures, filled with his own personal touch and tastes.
To decorate his house, Corbero liked to fish out some unique items from antiques or flea markets to gentrify it into a land of idyllic beauty for creations and unwinding.
He would never condescend to display his works via styles, regions and times. Even in his room, you will find an insouciant combination of things like carpets from the Middle East, old-fashioned Chinese screens, Louis Vuitton's suitcases, his favorite Biedermeier furniture and a reclining chair designed by Le Corbusier.
Biedermeier is a transitional style between neoclassicism and Romanticism. In term of home design, it was elegantly simplified in structure but somehow dyed with rustic warmth during wartime.
Being the most important French architects in the 20th century, Le Corbusier, also a writer, painter and urban planner, subverted the tradition by a fusion of many avant-garde architectural ideas into his works. He is an outstanding architect representative of post-modernism and expressionism.
Corbero's own sculptures, mostly made of marble and basalt, are also placed in there. You will feel as if you were somewhere in a contemporary art gallery in London or New York when you start appreciating his works, which have factually been exhibited in some famous museums around the world.
‘For me, a house is like an itinerary.’ Xavier Corbero once said, “What I do is not so much rations as a piece of poem that I intend to create.” That’s right, it was his ‘poetic pursuit’ behind his willingness to dissipate life for an aesthetic castle.
Corbero took to understanding the value and meaning of time existent over life during his building of the house for nearly half a century. "The secret of life is growth, that is, self-sufficiency. To achieve this, you need to follow a path, but first you need to find it. All these take time. And time, that's what we give to the people who live here,” he said.
Today, Xavier Corbero's house is no longer a private garden but a piece of art, Corbero’s most important art known to the world with increasing fame and influence among contemporary architects and artists.
For example, the flagship store of Eyties, a popular Swedish sneaker brand in recent years, opened in Stockholm, with its decoration style from Corbero’s surrealist mansion.
And Parlour, the latest project developed by INC Architecture & Design in Brooklyn in 2019, was also greatly inspired by Corbero’s.
Thus it can be seen that Corbero played a significant role in modern architecture. He was transcendent from being mediocre, from the building’s designed spatiality to our pondering on time and life set by his works. Though this great artist has passed away, what he has left to us are countless artistic treasures, like in-house vines ever growing toward sunshine.
In a fast-paced society, it seems that everything has been given a measure of value and interests. How many of us can truly be in pursuit of our ultimate beauties, lyrics and romances?
‘The starting point of design lies not in rationality, but in life itself. Rationality helps me lay bricks and walls.’ This is the attitude of Corbero toward designing. But if you are curious about the secret how he could stick to art, he would probably tell you, “It’s the guidance of aesthetics, morality and the God.”
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[mages via Art & Design, Jinri Toutiao, Baidu]
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