THE ARCHITECTURE OF LUIS BARRAGAN
Emilio Ambasz
Emilio Ambasz: THE ARCHITECTURE OF LUIS BARRAGAN. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1976. First edition. Slim quarto. Black cloth decorated in red. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 128 pp. 28 color plates and 66 black and white photographs and diagrams, plans, etc. Jacket lightly curled at top and bottom edges with a couple of tiny nicks. Front flap creased, so a nearly fine copy in a very good dust jacket.
9.5 x 12 hardcover book with 128 pages and 28 color plates and 66 black and white photographs and diagrams, plans, etc. Photographs by Armando Salas Portugal. Catalog that accompanied the 1976 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The text discusses 7 of Barragan's major works. List of Works (an illustrated list, with some lengthy entries, includes all of Barragan's works and projects, to 1976).
Modernism is a global language. For many modernist architects, although their buildings were situated in a particular place, they didn’t necessarily reference that place conceptually or materially. One exception comes to mind—Walter Gropius’ house in Lincoln, MA employed clapboard siding of all things! And then there’s Barragan who is so obviously a modernist and yet incorporates Mexico’s rich cultural and historic history into his structures.
From the dust jacket: "The illustrations assembled here provide a dazzling visual survey of [Barragan's] work, and the total Barragan oeuvre is documented in a list of works and accompanying bibliography."
"Barragan's magnificent gardens and carefully constructed plazas seem to stand either as great architectural stages for the promenade of horses or as echo chambers for the constant cascade of water. While his design approach is classical and atemporal, the elements of his architecture are deeply rooted in his country's cultural and religious traditions; through the haunting beauty of his heiratic constructions we may begin to understand the ardor and intensity of Mexico's architecture."
One of Mexico's greatest architects, Luis Ramiro Barragán Morfín (1902 – 1988) revolutionized modern architecture in the country with his use of bright colors reminiscent of the traditional architecture of Mexico, and with works such as his Casa Barragán, the Chapel of the Capuchinas, the Torres de Satélite, "Los Clubes" (Cuadra San Cristobal and Fuente de los Amantes), and the Casa Gilardi, among many others.
Barragán was born in Guadalajara, graduating as a civil engineer and architect. Two years later in 1925, he started on a journey of two years in Europe, where he was impressed by the beauty of the gardens of the cities he visited and the strong influence of Mediterranean and Muslim culture, and above all of the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts. It was on this trip where his interest in landscape architecture began.
The atmosphere of the gardens marked what would be his architectural work, integrating straight and solid walls and courtyards open to the sky. With a career of over 30 built works, his combination of lively block colors and serene gardens earned him the Pritzker Prize in 1980, the Jalisco Award in 1985; finally, a year before his death Barragán received Mexico's National Architecture Award.
In recent years, the discussion around Barragán's work has been rekindled thanks to the bizarre circumstances surrounding his archive. In 1995, the archive was purchased by Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman of the furniture company Vitra, as an engagement gift for his fiancé Federica Zanco. Since then, the archive has been largely off-limits to researchers as Zanco has attempted to organize and catalog the archive, but many have been angered by the lack of access. The situation came to a head in 2016, when artist Jill Magid presented Zanco with a diamond engagement ring made from the ashes of Luis Barragán himself, in the hope of persuading Zanco to provide researchers more access to her original engagement gift.