Modernist, Eclectic and Regionalist Architecture
Antonio Palacios • Julio Galán • J. López Rego • R. Ucha Piñeiro • M. Gómez Román • José Franco Montes • A. López • R. Boán • Leoncio Bescansa • J. de la Fuente Álvarez • A. Cominges • Eduardo Rodríguez • Pedro Mariño • D. V. Gulías • Conde Fidalgo
ISBN: 84-96070-03-4
It is not easy to gather the variety of artistic styles proposed by the people who lived between the 19th and the 20th centuries in just one book. As regards the Galician architects, we find a group of professionals that were educated in the schools of architecture of Madrid and Barcelona. They had to go through the threshold of modernness and they were not able, in many cases, to gain access to most avant-garde movements of the moment.
These were architects educated in the final Eclecticism of the 19th century, who had to develop their professional lives in Galicia, far away from the leading cities as regarded the architectural production. They were outlying architects and, many times, isolated architects, who knew, however, how to be informed or even how to be on a par with any famous European architect thanks to the trips they made or thanks to the magazines they read.
During the four first decades of the 20th century, the ones that we study in this volume, these masters had to choose among the many different styles that dominated at the time. They adopted Modernism, the second Eclecticism or the Regionalism, following their own intuition or the fashion’s mandates.
Besides, this constructive period in the Galician cities coincided with a real personalized design, in which every house or building responds to an idea and offers an specific and different image, far away from the homogeneity of the traditional styles or from the formal simplification into which the following rationalist architecture will turn.
From Rationalism
to Modern Ag
Rafael González Villar • Antonio Tenreiro y Peregrín Estellés • S. Rey Pedreira • Eloy Maquieira • J. M. Banet Díaz-Varela • Fco. Castro Represas y Pedro Alonso • A. Álex Reinlein • J. Caridad Mateo • Alejandro de la Sota • Molezún y Corrales • X. Bar Bóo • A. Fdez. Albalat
ISBN: 84-96070-33-6

We are before a book that studies the pioneers of the modern architecture in Galicia and that is essential to clarify its vicissitudes. If it is obvious that Galicia shares with the rest of the State the similarities derived from the political ups and downs of the 20th century, it is also true that it has had and it still has its own singularities.
We can divide the selection of the architects that form the book into three groups that coincide with the first three generations of the architects of the Modern Movement. This generational coincidence also shows some parallelisms in the development of their professional careers:the beaux arts education or the academic education of the first generation, the progressive adaptation to the times that the industrialization and the modernness marked, and the search, mainly among the third generation, of local particularities to combine them with the ideals of the rationalist architecture.
In the first group, formed by those who were born around the two last decades of the 19th century, just like Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, we find Rafael González Villar, Peregrín Estellés, who in spite of having been born in Valencia developed his professional career in Galicia, and Antonio Tenreiro. In the second group we must include those who were born during the first decade of the 20th century: José Mª Banet y Díaz-Varela, Santiago Rey Pedreira, Francisco Castro Represas, Antonio Álex Reinlein, Pedro Alonso Pérez, born in Madrid, Eloy Maquieira and José Caridad Mateo. And the third generation was formed by Alejandro de la Sota, José Antonio Corrales, born in Madrid, and Ramón Vázquez Molezún, Xosé Bar Bóo and Andrés Fernández-Albalat Lois.
From Enlightenment
to Eclecticism
D. A. Lois Monteagudo • Carlos Lemaur • J. Sánchez Bort • M. Ferro Caaveiro • Melchor de Prado Mariño • Alejo Andrade • Manuel de Prado y Vallo • Faustino Dguez. Dguez. • Faustino Dguez. Coumes-Gay • Domingo y Alejandro Rguez. Sesmero • J. de la Fuente Dguez. • Gabriel Vitini • M. Pereiro Caeiro • Nemesio Cobreros • Juan Álvarez de Mendoza
ISBN: 84-96070-85-9
Until very recently, both the architectural criticism and the artistic historiography had shown little concern and interest about the architecture that was made in Galicia from the second half of the 18th century until the beginning of the 19th century. Even more, the Historicism and Eclecticism of the 19th century were thought to be minor styles that could not be at all compared to the moment of plenitude lived by our medieval art, which was mainly identified with the Romanesque style. Fortunately enough, this idea has changed in the last few years and now the contribution that the architects of that period made in our rich monumental heritage is valued. The different studies collected in this volume prove it. They try to put a value on the work of some of the architects of this period that were able to make many excellent works and even some exceptional ones.
From Modernism
to the 21st Century
José Javier Suances • Rafael Baltar Tojo • Manuel Gallego Jorreto • Carlos Enrique Meijide • Yago Bonet • César Portela • Manuel Andrés Reboredo • Alberto Noguerol y Pilar Díez • Celestino García Braña • Alfredo Freixedo • Iago Seara • Pedro de Llano, Alfonso Penela Fdez.
ISBN: 84-96070-95-6
This volume, devoted to the Galician architects who were born between the 1930s and 1950s offers a view of the protagonists of the Galician architecture of the three last decades of the 20th century. This heterogeneous group have in common their commitment to Galicia. All of them, with different educations, intellectual attitudes and architectural beliefs, work in the same cultural, social and economic context and have reacted through architecture to all this state of things.
On these pages, the works of these thirteen architects show some common elements, complementary explorations, similar positions and, what is most important, identical features. The modern legacy as a reference, whether they accept it or reject it, the relationship with the place as the most important element, the value of the material, the volumetric force and a certain sense of mass and weight can be understood as a group of features that lead to a family, although the members are so different.