Lot 63: LUIS BARRAGAN (1902-1988)

LUIS BARRAGAN (1902-1988)
A Sabino and Leather 'Barcelona' Chair, 1959
1 from an edition of 2, with contemporary cushions
29½ in. (75 cm.) high
impressed inventory mark LUIS BARRAGAN CASA PRIETO 1959 1/2

Casa Prieto Lopez, Mexico City, Mexico.

cf. A. Hernández Galvéz, A. E. Mallet Cárdenas et. al., Vida y Diseño en México Siglo XX, Mexico City, 2007, p. 359 for an illustration of one the two chairs in the Casa Prieto Lopez.

Keith L. Eggener, Luis Barragán's Gardens of El Pedregal, New York, 2001, pp. 42-52, figs. 45-49, for a discussion and illustration of the house.

Museum of Modern Art, The Architecture of Luis Barragán, New York, 1976, pp. 28-31 for illustrations of the house.

The other one of the pair exhibited in La Colección: La Tradición de las Rupturas, at El Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 14 February - 28 July 2008.


Though never having constructed anything outside Mexico, Luis Barragán is regarded as one of the 20th century's most important architects. Cited as an inspiration by a number of his successors including Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry, he first ascended to international acclaim in 1976 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a retrospective of his work. Soon after, in 1980, he would go on to receive architecture's most prestigious award, the Pritzker Prize. After his death, Barragán's home was restored and opened to the public as a museum in 1994, finally becoming a UNESCO world heritage site in 2004. Of all his undertakings, the development of the gardens of El Pedregal is widely considered to be Barragán's most important. Begun in 1945, the project included the construction of a house at 180 Fuentes for the attorney Eduardo Prieto-Lopez; a collaboration that would lead to the creation of one of Barragán's most notable works.

Born in Guadalajara into a politically conservative, wealthy and devout Roman Catholic family, Barragán trained initially as an engineer, before traveling to Europe in 1924 (and again in 1931). His architectural practice began in 1927 in Guadalajara. Influenced by the traditional structures of Spain and North Africa, in addition to the avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century (in particular the German Bauhaus and the work and teachings of Le Corbusier), his most profound inspiration was the vernacular architecture and forms of his native Mexico. He would achieve great renown for his unique interpretation of the Modern movement, reflected both in his buildings and their surrounding landscapes.

Seduced by the savagely beautiful, though seemingly inhospitable lava field of El Pedregal at the south-eastern edge of Mexico City, Barragán devoted himself in 1945 to transforming the wilderness of purplish black lava beds, cacti and gnarled palos bobos trees into a livable garden, where man and nature could be reconciled. Inspired by the Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera's essay on this very topic, Barragán came to consider the project akin to a divine mission. The resulting exclusive residential area, a key post WWII example of regional and humane modern development, is considered a turning point in the history of modern Mexican architecture. From 1945 to 1953 Barragán oversaw every aspect, from the conception, design, construction and marketing, to the creation of a network of roads, plazas, 'simple abstract' houses and gardens.

Throughout El Pedregal, Barragán collaborated with two good friends and local artists whose work and philosophies were, for him, of great import. For color and composition Barragán consulted the painter Jesus "Chucho" Reyes to brilliant effect, and also incorporated into the plazas and entrance porticoes the sculpture of the German-born artist Mathias Goeritz, who had been in Mexico since the late 1940s.

One of the earlier residences, important both historically and personally for Barragán, was the Casa Prieto-Lopez, which he designed for the wealthy attorney, his wife and their six children. While the houses previously constructed on the development were more generically modern and less sophisticated, the Casa Prieto-Lopez, more than any other at El Pedregal, reflects Barragán's ability to masterfully marry the contemporary currents of European and American modernism with the vernacular architecture of his native Mexico, to create the specific and unique forms that make his work that of a true master.

Deeply committed to the project and with complete confidence in Barragán, Prieto-Lopez was an ideal client. Barragán demanded total control over the entire house, insisting that Prieto-Lopez discard all his furnishings and start afresh, going so far as to melt the family silver so that it could be recast to his own design. Barragán's furnishings, like the spaces they were designed to fill, succeed in being simultaneously aware of and referential to both modern and traditional styles, successfully integrating current artistic trends with the vernacular to create a style that is at once both traditional and contemporary. In no piece is this more instantly apparent than his Barcelona chair. Made using locally sourced materials and techniques, each one of Barragán's pieces retains an unmistakably modern sense of national identity.