Catalan Modernisme

Modernisme is the historiographic name for a Catalan art and architecture movement that sought a new expression of Catalan cultural identity, active from around 1888, the year of the first Barcelona World Fair, to 1911, the year the Modernista poet Joan Maragall died, with Barcelona as its center. It shared traits with the wider European Art Nouveau movement but developed its own character, favoring the curve over the straight line, rich decoration and detail, frequent vegetal and organic motifs, a taste for asymmetry, and dynamic shapes drawing on medieval and Arab architectural traditions. Antoni Gaudi is its best known architect, alongside Lluis Domenech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, though more than a hundred architects ultimately worked in the style.