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07/01
FERNANDO HIGUERAS. “FROM THE ORIGIN”
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Collection exhibition
. Barcelona
Organitza
Centre Obert d’Arquitectura
Lloc
Sala Altell i espai Picasso
Plaça Nova 5
Barcelona
Horari
de dilluns a divendres de 10h a 20, dissabtes de 10h a 15h i diumenges tancat
Preu
Free
Patrocinadors
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Retrospective on the figure and work of Fernando Higueras that presents a selection of drawings, documents, photographs and models of the architect who, despite not having any projects carried out in Catalonia, donated his documentary fund to the Historical Archive of the COAC.
The exhibition, produced by the ICO foundation and inaugurated at the headquarters of the ICO Museum in Madrid in 2019, and after touring different parts of Spain, arrives at the Barcelona headquarters of the Open Architecture Centre where a selection of original documents will also be incorporated.
Fernando Higueras
Fernando Higueras belongs to the CX 1954-1959 promotion of the Madrid School of Architecture. These students arrived with the illusion of developing their profession in a country where there was much to do and innovate, a Spain increasingly open to development and well-being.
Fernando Higueras is an architect who approaches avant-garde pictorial movements when developing his work. The stripping of the formwork for his final career project is an example: "he sprayed the formwork with petrol, setting it on fire and trying to approach everything that was abstract". Since he had a multifaceted artistic training which he did not dissociate himself from when presenting his proposals, the artistic side is intrinsic to him, and it is difficult for Higueras to detach himself from this continuous presence. His character and intuition allowed him to wander through the multiple disciplines he mastered and draw different conclusions from each one, but without dissociating himself from any of them.
It will take some years until he separates the different materials, although he loses in some sense this striking aesthetic in favour of a more reflective, rationalist and conventional one, but where he maintains the deep complexity of his inhabited geometries. Thanks to this diversity and his means of expression, his work was clearly differentiated from that of his contemporaries from the beginning of his proposals. In “Refuge in the high mountain”, he begins to investigate the potentiality of the circle, whose presence and variations will be constant throughout his work. Projects such as the one at the end of his career, the Children's Theatre, Residences for artists and, culminating this first stage, the building of the Centre for Artistic Restorations (National Architecture Award of 1961) demonstrate this way of doing things. Projects and proposals that will give rise to its first constructions, the building for Previsora Union, Lucio Muñoz House, Manrique House, Arche House and the Colegio Studio, some early works that already contain the genetics of its unmistakable architecture.
Despite the enormous influence that his work exerted at certain stages, both on the national and international scene - with successive references and monographic issues in national magazines such as Hogar y Arquitectura and Nueva Forma or the Japanese a+u, GA, GI, etc., as well as the consecrated articles in successive issues of magazines such as L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui–, Higueras has, inexplicably, not received in recent decades the attention he deserves. This exhibition, "Fernando Higueras: from the origin", aims to fill this gap by presenting both his extensive work, divided into six time periods, and his multifaceted creative figure.
Curator
Lola Botia