The impact of Japanese arts, architecture and culture on Catalonia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was extensive and diverse, rich in nuance and with numerous traces scattered throughout the region. However, in the field of architecture, many of these examples have either been lost —due to demolition, alterations and neglect— or are preserved as private properties and therefore inaccessible to the general public. Even so, the city of Barcelona still has enough buildings and heritage spaces to allow us to recall, in broad terms, the main characteristics of a phenomenon that was global in scope and which spread from capitals such as Paris and London to cities and towns including Barcelona, Badalona, Calella, Cornellà and Sitges.
In Barcelona, this phenomenon emerged around the modern Passatge del Crèdit, where, around 1878, the first traders specialising in the sale of Japanese art set up shop. Among them, the furniture and art objects shop of Francesc Vidal stood out. In 1884 it moved to a magnificent workshop-building designed by Josep Vilaseca, which has miraculously survived in part to this day on the corner of Diputació and Bailèn streets. Just a few metres away, Vilaseca also designed the workshop of the Masriera Manovens brothers, partners of Vidal, where a room was soon installed to display the painters’ Japanese collection. Meanwhile, around Passatge del Crèdit, the first shops dedicated to the sale of Oriental art began to open, such as El Mikado (Baixada de Sant Miquel, no. 1) and Santiago Gisbert’s Warehouses of Japanese Articles (Carrer de la Lleona, 11). The spread of this phenomenon was quickly felt in architecture: interior decorators such as Francesc Vidal began to design Japanese-style salons and furniture, while architects like Josep Vilaseca opted for a public presence of these motifs with projects such as the decoration of Casa Bruno Cuadros on La Rambla, at Pla de l’Os.
While at Casa Cuadros Vilaseca embraced a mimetic and formal Japonisme based on decorative motifs that arrived from Japan through prints and illustrated books, other architects such as Antoni Gaudí simultaneously chose to explore less obvious but equally suggestive forms of Japonisme, more commonly found in English proposals. This can be seen in the Güell Pavilions, the Palau Güell and especially Casa Vicens, where the fusion of nature and architecture, and the application of natural decorative motifs, clearly allude to Japanese models.
Vidal, Vilaseca and Gaudí all began to explore Japonisme in the early 1880s. However, it was from the Universal Exhibition of 1888 onwards that this phenomenon truly took off in the country, being embraced by a very large number of artists, designers and architects. The Japanese house erected in the Ciutadella Park, Japan’s participation in the Exhibition, and the growing trade and collecting all had an impact. In this regard, perhaps the most successful example can be found in Barcelona in the decoration of the ‘Saló de las Sirenes’ at Fonda Espanya, designed jointly by Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Ramon Casas. With an interior filled with marine motifs drawn from Japanese illustrated books in the architect’s private collection, it becomes a magnificent example of Catalan Art Nouveau, while also being read as a tribute to the Sea of Japan, presided over by Hokusai’s famous Great Wave.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Japanese salons continued to be very present in Catalan interiors, as shown by the former bathhouse of Can Mercader in Cornellà or the Japanese salon of Casa Pérez Samanillo (with restricted access) on Barcelona’s Diagonal.
However, times soon changed, as did aesthetics and tastes. With the arrival of the avant-gardes and the renewal of architecture, the old decorative approach gave way to new modern solutions associated with rationalism and international avant-garde movements. Several examples of these new tastes have been preserved, present in many projects by architects of the GATCPAC. Yet perhaps the example that best illustrates in Barcelona how, beyond Catalan Art Nouveau, modern architecture continued to pay attention to Japanese models is Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion, with its free plan and clean, noble and elegant forms.
