Antonio Gaudi was born on June 25, 1852, and baptized the next day at the Church of St. Peter in the town of Reus. Afflicted with poor health in his youth, he developed a keen eye for observing the natural world and the forms of living things. He excelled at geometry, and attended a school known for its strong Christian faith and Marian devotion.
His gifts as an illustrator and draftsman gradually came to light– along with some of his artistic and personal idiosyncrasies. The young Gaudi opened his mind to many new stylistic influences that were emerging as the rigid forms of 19th century classicism began to fade. At the same time, he also embraced his Catalan identity and its aesthetic influence.
Initially working in a neo-Gothic style influenced by English revivalists, he came to incorporate increasingly unusual contours, mimicking nature and the human body.
Gaudi's stylistic innovations both amazed and baffled Barcelona, sometimes simultaneously. His last “secular” project, the Casa Mila, resembles a wavy set of cliffs. Its balconies look like abstract iron corollaries to the trees on the streets below. The sculptural forms atop the roof resemble anthills, human faces, and castle ornamentation. Virtually every signifier of Gaudi's indefinable style was there; he had hit his artistic stride.
That building was Gaudi's last completed secular project. He had already begun work, in 1883, on a project he did not expect to see completed in his lifetime. From 1914 to his death in 1926, he worked exclusively on the Cathedral of the Holy Family. Gaudi's consuming project summoned all of his artistic talent, in a single act of faith.
Combining his love of ornamentation and grandeur with the fruits of prayer and theological meditations, Gaudi's cathedral is clearly more traditional than most of his other later works. But its unusual arch shapes, brightly-colored spires, and authoritative yet joyous-looking towers clearly reflect the artist's own vision. He hoped that other architects, designing future cathedrals, would look upon it as the beginning of an entirely new style– albeit one harmonious with the past.