The Souvenir
Cuando los sueños terminan en un souvenir
When the world-renowned Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was run over by a tram, the taxi drivers who passed by did not stop to help him because they thought he was a homeless,. The last years of his life were tragic and of economic poverty. Today his most iconic building, the Sagrada Familia, is visited by millions of tourists every year, no one could imagine Barcelona without his most notorious building.
When the Hotel Sagrada Familia in Barcelona commissioned the artistic duo known as Harpö, made up of Lucas Milà and Arcadi Poch, to paint the façade of their building, they both wondered what would happen if Gaudí raised his head from his grave… The work talks about how work of a lifetime of an artist, in this case an architect, can end up as a souvenir that bears little resemblance to the original work.
In the mural, 32 meters high and located in the Eixample district of Barcelona, very close to the Sagrada Familia, we can see an old Gaudí, barefoot and pale, almost like a ghost who observes an unattractive souvenir of his great masterpiece.
Fer Alcala Photos