29 December 2016 | Posted by Equipo Editorial de PhD
Doctoral Thesis of Dr. Marc Arnal Huguet
L'art de viure. Cases per a artistes a Cadaqués. L'art concret com a generador d'arquitectura. Peter Harnden i Lanfranco Bombelli
Jury Members : Dr. Jaume Freixa, Dr. Josep Fuses, Dra. Anna Martínez
Summary :
This thesis analyzes the works built or planned by the architects Peter Harnden and Lanfranco Bombelli in Cadaqués between 1959 and 1971 for customers artists or related to the art world: the gallery owner George Staempfli , the sculptors Mary Callery and Xavier Corberó and Jean Claude Fasquelle editor. During the 60s and early 70s, when Spain was immersed in the dictatorship, Cadaqués was an international cultural center of first order where they spent the summers artists of the category of Dali , Duchamp, Man Ray , Hamilton, Roth , Casamada , Tharrats among others.
After the death of Peter Harnden in 1971, Bombelli continued building in Cadaqués, each time with more intensity. The opening of the gallery Cadaqués led that the relationship between the architect and the art world was strengthened. One of the first projects developed by the Italian alone was the reform of an old factory of fish salting reconverted in houses and workshops for artists and art galleries. It is studied how was the relationship between these unique customers and Harnden and Bombelli, all united by a passion for architecture, Cadaqués and art.
It is studied how in the ‘ampurdanesa’ population frame the art and architecture interact to merge and get some buildings of a powerful abstraction and great purity and modernity, driving out all the useless, unnecessary and superfluous -like the popular architecture does- and how the spaces resulting from this architecture influence the lives of their singular inhabitants and in his works, especially when it occurs in these exceptional architectures. The art, and especially the twentieth century one, helped architecture to shed all useless and unnecessary that may be more the result of representation or injury than a design devised for the enjoyment of life.
The art, while frees us and help us to understand life differently, should take us a much freer conception of it. We can then talk about the art of living.