FT.com - Barcelona - Making of a modernist capital - by Clare Henry

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Barcelona - Making of a modernist capital - by Clare Henry

Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dali at New York’s Metropolitan Museum is a revelation. Well-focused, often spectacular, always informative, this show of 300 exhibits covering the half-century from 1888 to 1939 starts with a bang – haunting Blue Period Picasso, gritty Modernista oils, elegant Symbolist sculpture – and closes with powerful studies for “Guernica” and a group of celebrated works by that great 20th-century trio: Miró, Dali and Picasso.

In between, a rich mix of pictures, decorative art, graphic design, jewellery, sculpture, ceramics, art nouveau furniture, unfamiliar Gaudí artifacts and period photos provide a broad window on the arts created during this period. It all came to a crunching halt in 1939 with the birth of Franco’s fascist regime, although as any visitor to Barcelona today will know, the city has since recovered its dynamism.The exhibition is organised into nine thematic sections.‘Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dali’ is at the Metropolitan Museum, New York until June 3. Tel