Casa Vicens () is a modernist building situated in the Gràcia neighbourhood of Barcelona. It is the work of architect Antoni Gaudí and is considered to be his first major project. It was built between 1883 and 1885, although Gaudí drew up the initial plans between 1878 and 1880. The work belongs to the orientalist style, similar to Neo-Mudéjar architecture, although interpreted in Gaudí’s own personal way, with a uniqueness that only he knew how to add to his projects. In this work, and for the first time, Gaudí outlined some of his constructive resources that would become regular features throughout the emergence of Modernisme. The work was widely discussed when it was built and caused a great sensation among the general public at the time. When the building was constructed, Gràcia was still an independent urban nucleus of Barcelona; it had its own council and was classified as a town, though nowadays it is a district of the city.
The original project had a large garden area, in addition to the house, but over time the land was subdivided and sold for the construction of residential buildings. Nowadays, the property has been reduced to the house and a small surrounding area. To take advantage of the space, Gaudí designed three facades, with the house attached by a dividing wall to an adjoining convent. In 1925 an extension of the house was planned, a commission that was offered to Gaudí, which he declined. Instead, he passed it to one of his protégés, Joan Baptista Serra, who built an extension following Gaudí’s original style, with the inclusion of a new facade, resulting in the building being fully detached.
The work belongs to Gaudí’s orientalist period (1883-1888), an era in which the architect made a series of works with a distinctly oriental flavour, inspired by the art of the Near and Far East (India, Persia, Japan), as well as Hispanic Islamic art, such as Mudéjar and Nasrid. During this period, Gaudí used an abundance of ceramic tiling to decorate his work, as well as Moorish arches, columns of exposed brick and temple-shaped or dome-shaped finishes.
The building was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1969, with registration number 52-MH-EN; an Asset of Cultural Interest in 1993, with reference number RI-51-0003823; and a World Heritage Site in 2005, with reference number 320bis.
History
Gaudí’s first significant work
Antoni Gaudí (Reus or Riudoms, 1852 - Barcelona, 1926) studied architecture at the Llotja School and the Barcelona School of Architecture, where he graduated in 1878. To finance his studies, Gaudí worked as a draughtsman for various architects and builders, such as Leandre Serrallach, Joan Martorell, Emilio Sala Cortés, Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano and Josep Fontserè. After obtaining his architecture degree in 1878, his first projects were lampposts for the Plaça Reial, the Girossi Newsstand project, the display case for the Esteban Comella glove shop, and the furniture for the chapel-pantheon of the Sobrellano Palace in Comillas, all completed in the same year as his graduation. The Cooperativa Obrera Mataronense (Mataró Workers’ Cooperative) (1878-1882), was his first important commission, although it was not completed in its entirety, since only one warehouse was built. His subsequent work included furniture for the Gibert Pharmacy (1879), the decoration of the church of Sant Pacià in Sant Andreu de Palomar (1879-1881) and the church of the Col·legi de Jesús-Maria in Tarragona (1880-1882).
Gaudí combined the construction of Casa Vicens with other commissions: in 1883 he took over the work of the Temple Expiatori of the Sagrada Família, started the previous year in a project by Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano, which he withdrew from shortly after due to a disagreement with the construction board. Gaudí would then devote the rest of his life to the construction of the temple, regarded as his greatest work and the synthesis of all his architectural findings. In the same year, 1883, he worked on an altarpiece for the chapel of the Santíssim Sagrament in the parish church of San Feliu in Alella, as well as topographical plans for the Can Rosell de la Llena farmhouse in Gelida. He was also commissioned to build an annexed villa for the Sobrellano Palace, owned by Antonio López y López, Marquis of Comillas, in the Cantabrian town of the same name, known as El Capricho. It was built between 1883 and 1885 in an orientalist style similar to that of Casa Vicens, where its ceramic cladding is clearly visible. He also built the Güell Pavilions in Pedralbes (1884-1887) in a similar style, a commission from Eusebi Güell, his principal patron and friend.
This moment represented the first stage of Gaudí’s career. The period is characterised by his use of an architectural language with great constructive simplicity, in which the straight line prevails over the curved line. Stylistically, it belongs to a stage of orientalist influence, where the structural and ornamental forms correspond to a preference for oriental art. These principally include Mudéjar, Persian and Byzantine, and can be seen in other works of his, such as the Pavellons Güell, the Bodegas Güell and El Capricho in Comillas. Gaudí had studied Neo-Mudéjar art in the works of Owen Jones, such as Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra (1842), Designs for Mosaics and Tessellated Pavements (1842) and Grammar of Ornament (1856).
The concept Gaudí had of the family home – which was reflected in Casa Vicens – is captured in an unpublished article he wrote in 1881, entitled The Manor House (). He writes, ‘The house is the small family nation. The family, like the nation, has history, foreign relations, changes of government, and so on. The independent family has its own house, that which is not, has a rented house. The owned house is the native country, the rental house is the land of emigration; this is why the owned house is the ideal for all. One cannot conceive of the owned house without a family, only the rented house is conceived in this way’.
The commission
In 1878 Gaudí received a commission from Manuel Vicens i Montaner to build a summer residence for the family in the town of Gràcia. Manuel Vicens (1836–1895) was a stock and currency broker, although there is little information about him. From his will, it is known that he had a house in Alella, as well as two properties in the centre of Barcelona and some land in the Vallvidrera area. The land where the house was built had been inherited by Manuel Vicens from his mother, Rosa Montaner i Matas, in 1877. He died on April 29, 1895, leaving his properties to his widow, Dolors Giralt i Grífol.
The way in which Vicens met Gaudí is unknown, although it is likely that they coincided in the cultural circles linked to the Renaixença that they both frequented. Subsequently, Vicens and Gaudí became friends, and between 1880 and 1890 the architect often spent his summers at Vicens’ house in Alella. For this house, Gaudí designed two pieces of furniture: a wood and metal corner fireplace with the initials M.V. (by Manuel Vicens), currently kept in the Casa Vicens; and a cedar wood corner cabinet with gilt brass and the initials D.G. (by Dolors Giralt), purchased by Casa Vicens at auction in 2023 in order to be exhibited after restoration. As a result of Gaudí’s time there, he began a project to design an altarpiece in 1883 for the church of San Feliu in Alella, commissioned by the parish priest Jaume Puig Claret, but the project was never completed. A drawing in India ink on fabric paper is preserved, at a scale of 1:25.
At the time, the town of Gràcia was its own entity and independent from Barcelona. Its population centre was built around the Carmelite convent of Santa Maria de Gràcia – popularly known as els Josepets – which was founded in 1630. It was an agricultural area, populated with farmhouses, which at the beginning of the 19th century began to urbanise and an incipient industrial framework emerged. The town was added to Barcelona in 1897 along with five other neighbouring towns: Sants, Les Corts, Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, Sant Andreu de Palomar and Sant Martí de Provençals. At that time, many bourgeoisie families had their second homes in Gràcia, since it was close to the city yet had the tranquillity of a town. The house is located on a street named Carrer de les Carolines, in honour of the Caroline Islands – an old Spanish colony – in 1908; it was previously called Sant Gervasi.
The original plot was situated between the convent of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, who shared a dividing wall with one side of the building (the northeast side), and a narrow street with a dead end, called Carreró Racó de Sant Gervasi, which later disappeared. This land came from three different sites acquired between 1846 and 1854 by Agustí Maria Baró i Tastàs, which included several ground floor buildings. In 1866 it was inherited by the mother of Manuel Vicens, Rosa Montaner i Matas, widow of Onofre Vicens i Domènech. She died in 1877 and it passed to Manuel Vicens. It is unknown whether the buildings on the site were demolished or used in part in Gaudí’s project. In 1876 and 1881, Vicens bought two plots adjacent to Carreró Racó de Sant Gervasi, which allowed the property’s garden to be extended.
Gaudí completed the project for the house and garden in 1880, although the plans were not signed until 1883, when they were presented to the Gràcia Town Council. Its design combined a relatively simple architectural structure with the complexity of its meticulous decoration, especially in terms of the use of ceramic tiles. Stylistically, it belongs entirely to his orientalist phase, but the abundance of decorative artwork (ceramics, ironwork, glasswork, and woodwork) shows signs of what would be Gaudí’s golden age within Catalan Modernism. The work was carried out between 1883 and 1885. Gaudí personally managed the construction: according to the testimony of Joan Baptista Serra to George R. Collins in 1959, the architect sat under a parasol and supervised the build, occasionally knocking down what he considered to be poor workmanship.
Throughout the project, Gaudí called on the help of various craftsmen who would regularly assist him in his work, such as the sculptor Llorenç Matamala, the carpenter Eudald Puntí and the blacksmith Joan Oñós, as well as Claudi Alsina, a contractor. The decoration was carried out by the painter Francesc Torrescassana and the sculptor Antoni Riba.
The original site measured , with a surface area of 1035 m2. The house had three facades, since on its northeast side there was a dividing wall shared with a neighbouring convent. Although the entrance was on the southeast side, facing Carrer Sant Gervasi, the main facade looked out onto the garden, on the southwest side, bordering the small street of Carreró Racó de Sant Gervasi, which was wide. The house, designed as a single-family home, had a wine cellar and basement for storage; a main floor with a foyer, dining room, porch, smoking room, kitchen and laundry room; a first floor with bedrooms, bathrooms, a dressing room and a library; an attic for staff accommodation; and a roof terrace with small walkways between the gables with chimneys and a pavilion in the northwest corner. It had a Catalan vaulted staircase with wooden wainscoting on each step, decorated with small oil paintings by Torrescassana, which were lost in the renovations of 1925.