Rev. Félix Granda y Álvarez Buylla (21 February 1868 – 1954) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and sacred artist who founded the liturgical art workshop Talleres de Arte and directed its activities until his death. The workshop is now known as Talleres de Arte GrandaTalleres de Arte Granda in Spanish-speaking countries and as Granda Liturgical ArtsGranda Liturgical Arts in English-speaking countries.
Early life
Félix Granda was born on 21 February 1868 in Mieres, in the Spanish principality of Asturias. He was the oldest of the six children of Wenceslao Granda, a physician, and his wife Elvira. He began studies for the priesthood at the minor seminary in Oviedo at the age of ten, and refined his skills in draftsmanship, painting, sculpture and metalwork by studying with artisans. He spent many summers in Muros de Nalon with a group of painters that included Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida and Cecilio Pla y Gallardo. He founded Granda one of the world's leading Catholic liturgical art and design studios, in 1891 in Madrid.
He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Madrid in 1891.
Talleres de Arte
That same year, at the age of 23, Granda founded Talleres de Arte in Madrid. The Archbishop-Bishop of Madrid-Alcalá, Jose Maria Cos y Macho, whom Granda had known when Cos was the rector of Oviedo Cathedral, approved the young priest's ministry, writing:
The works of art that leave your factories will open paths, as much in the republics of South America as in the European nations... by the profundity of the thought and the Christian spirit that animates them, by the newness and beauty of the drawing and the careful execution... Continue without hesitation, for the good of religion, the profession of the arts, joining perfectly your sacerdotal vocation with your artistic aptitude.Talleres de Arte Granda: 1868-1954
The original workshop was located on Calle Fernando el Santo in Madrid, but was soon relocated to the Hotel de las Rosas residence in the Altos del Hipodromo to accommodate the growing number of artisans. Granda described the location:
To be able to make the art that we intend, we all live within a morally and physically sanitary environment... In the healthiest part of Madrid, at the extension of la Castellana, to the left of the racetrack, are buildings surrounded by gardens, with studios, workshops and living quarters that are spacious and flooded with air and light.
Félix Granda lived at the Hotel de las Rosas with his sister Candida, a childless widow who assisted him in the administration of the workshop. By 1900, over 200 artisans were employed by Talleres de Arte, creating altarpieces, statuary, tabernacles, reliquaries, monstrances, sacred vessels and other works of sacred art. The relationships with artists in various media that Granda had established in his formative years proved invaluable when gathering together so many artisans into a single enterprise. In 1911, he wrote:
My desire is to decorate; that is, to bring order, subordinating to a determined end various works of art, and that is why I have tried to gather under one address all those artistic professions that I believe most necessary for my aim: painting, sculpture, goldsmithery, enamelwork, carpentry, work in bronze; as well as drawing and embroidery for religious vestments.
Granda began no new project without a detailed explanation of its iconography to all of the artisans who would contribute. Each studio was directed by a master of the craft who managed the artisans and trained the apprentices. Labor ceased at dusk, when the workers were given time for formation, classes and conferences. The sculptors Jose Capuz Mamano, Luis Ortega Bru and Juan Vargas Cortes were among the many artisans who received their training at Talleres de Arte.
In 1911, the year of the International Eucharistic Congress in Madrid, Félix Granda won the gold medal at the city's Exposition of Decorative Arts. The same year saw the publication of the workshop's first general catalogue.
Artistic philosophy and influences
The animating principle of the workshop was taken from Psalm 25.8: I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house; and the place where Thy glory dwelleth. This, coupled with Félix Granda's own aspiration: I am moved by the ideal of employing all my strength to make beautiful Thy temples and Thine altars, became the motto of Talleres de Arte. The emblem of the workshop depicted a man praying at the foot of an olive tree shedding many of its branches. The words that the man speaks are written on a banderole: Vetera novis augere et perficere (a motto of Pope Leo XIII: To augment and perfect the old by way of the new) and Defracti sunt rami ut ego insererer (Romans 11.19: The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in).
When Granda wrote a short exposition of his purpose in 1911, he began by quoting the aforementioned motto of Pope Leo XIII, as well as that of Pope Pius X: Instaurare omnia in Christo (Ephesians 1.10: To restore all things in Christ). The twofold theme of innovation and restoration was essential to his artistic and religious mission. Ernest Grimaud DeCaux, the Madrid correspondent for The Times explained:
At first sight he but returns to the first ages of the Church, when art was utilized to bring home to the multitudes, by the aid of symbols, religious dogmas and mysteries. Where Father Granda's originality shows itself, however, where a new art appears, is in his method of representing the eternal Christian symbolisms. He buries himself in the past and by patient study absorbs the spirit of the ancient symbols and with the knowledge thus acquired, aided by his mastery of the Scriptures, which are his code, he throws such power of expression into his work that not only every article dealt with, but even every line and shape of each piece has its symbolical voice recalling some act of Christ, a saying of the Holy Fathers, or a dogma of the Catholic religion. This eternal theme would be cold and monotonous if clothed in the past forms of art. In the hands of this artist priest penetrated with the spirit of the past, versed in the essence of Christianity, but with a modern mind, it takes a new shape, and it is in this respect that Father Granda is an innovator, because, whilst still going to the old well of tradition, he draws fresh water from it.
Granda himself wrote:
To make an art impregnated with the scent of Christ, saturated with memories of the past, where the Biblical spirit beats; and that this art be alive, united to the trunk of the traditions; and because it is of the past, that it correspond to the needs of the present: such is my desire... To begin a work from those same origins; to drink from the same fonts that inspired Christian art in its most glorious epochs. All this, deeply felt and executed with careful study, is what I desire to do with my own labors, and is what I want the artists and workers who form these workshops to do.
Under his direction, Talleres de Arte fabricated work in a variety of styles: Mozarabic, Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Rococo. Granda sought inspiration for his artwork from the beginnings of Christian history to his own time. When describing the iconographic schemes in his work, he often justified them by the precedent of Christian antiquity, citing studies by the archaeologists Antonio Bosio, Giovanni Giustino Ciampini, Giovanni Caetano Bottari, Rev. Giuseppe Marchi, Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Louis Perret, Rev. Joseph-Alexander Martigny and Alphonse de Boissieu.
Yet Granda also corresponded with the architects of the Catalan Art Nouveau, such as Antoni Gaudí, who represented the artistic vanguard of his time, and he shared their enthusiasm for daring incorporation of natural forms into sacred art. For example, both Gaudí and Granda were fond of using figures of sea turtles as supports; Gaudí for the bases of the columns of the Sagrada Familia, and Granda as the legs of his monstrances. Granda was at times even bolder than Gaudí in his imagery. He wrote:
Today it is not enough to study the works of God as they have been studied before, to admire only the world that our eyes see... Through the microscope we can see the infinitely varied microorganisms; more powerful images have never come to the imagination of the artist. Should we not take advantage of this immense arsenal of scientific data that they provide to us, to make richer and more varied our decorations, and to teach the truth contained in the verse of the Kingly Prophet: nimis profundae factae sunt cogitationes tuae Domine!?
Granda discerned his principles from intense study of art history, scripture, patristics, sacred liturgy, religious tradition and nature; his purpose was to apply the same principles to everything made in his workshops, regardless of historical style. In 1929, Rev. Demetrio Zurbitu Recalde, SJ wrote an essay describing the work of Talleres de Arte; according to him, the whole of Félix Granda's philosophy of art could be condensed into four words: dignity, religiosity, popularity and symbolism.
Dignity
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the quality of religious art declined, as artisanal traditions were replaced by industrial models of production. A sentimental style of mass-produced art, known as l'art Saint-Sulpice after a Parisian neighborhood famous for its religious goods stores, became the international standard of sacred art for the Roman Catholic Church.McDannell, 168-169 Zurbitu decried the prevalent artistic standards of his time:
It would be said that the artists had ceded their posts to the merchants; it would seem that the sculptor and the goldsmith had no concern for making a beautiful object to inspire piety, but rather for making an industrial model able to be multiplied by the dozen. The noble carving of marble and wood had been laid aside before the invasion of common plaster... And in this inundation of so many profane and vulgar objects, as wretched in form as in material, it would be useless to look for any sign of religious inspiration or even a recollection of the respect deserved by the noble destiny for which they were forged: honor to the House of God and participation in the most august sacrifice.
In contrast, the artwork produced at Talleres de Arte was made according to the highest standards of craftsmanship and material. The finest sacred metalwork produced at Talleres de Arte was the richest then produced in Spain, embellished with repoussage, set gemstones, carved ivory figures, vitreous enamels, and medallions, figurines and friezes worked in metal. But Granda also believed that humbler objects, produced for churches and monasteries without wealthy patrons, although lacking the splendor of richness must never lack the dignity of beauty. He wrote that it has more value that a man venerate a statue of Tanagra clay than a shapeless gold sculpture of decadent art. Granda preferred the direct carving of wood and stone to cast sculpture, believing that the easy methods of mass production resulted in a paganized sensuousness of form. The sculptures carved by his artisans were rather noble and sober, full of gravity and purity, without tragic poses or excessive gestures; the most proper to the serene beauty of religious art. Granda decried theatricality in religious art, applying to it Saint Jerome's condemnation of pompous rhetoric: Like a strumpet in the streets, it does not aim at instructing the public, but at winning their favor.
Religiosity
Félix Granda's second principle was religiosity; he wrote of his desire [t]o use art as we use language, to speak and to teach about Christ - not to teach about ourselves, and much less to boast of our luxury and vanity. As a devout priest, Granda's imagination was saturated with the images of Holy Scripture, which he described as an inexhausible treasury of motifs and figures. Zurbitu commented: