Publication information

GEHRY Artista e icono

The new ‘Retratos’ series – published by Arquitectura Viva in Spanish only – compiles texts that Luis Fernández-Galiano has written on the life and work of a select group of contemporary architects. Gehry: artista e icono is the fifth title out, after those devoted to Rafael Moneo, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, and Renzo Piano, and the rest – on Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Eisenman, and Santiago Calatrava – will likewise soon be seeing the light, in succession. Illustrated with the architects’ own drawings and enriched with in-depth interviews, biographical accounts, and analyses of their works, these small books try to paint pixelated portraits of current masters, informative and critical at the same time.

The book Gehry: artista e icono – 80 pages in soft cover – gathers fifteen essays on the oeuvre and life of the American architect. Frank Gehry has had an extraordinary impact on architectural practice, pushing conventional limits in a way that has inspired many and made him a popular figure the world over. A friend and collaborator of artists, his interaction with them was the creative spark behind the formal conflagration that would have its most iconic expression in the Guggenheim of Bilbao, making the museum the inevitable centerpiece of this collection of articles. But besides the vicissitudes of this masterwork, the texts explore the erratic constructions he has raised in his adoptive California – from the early houses to the emblematic Disney Hall in Los Angeles – as well European pieces like the Vitra Design Museum, the American Center in Paris, or Ginger & Fred in Prague, all sculptural buildings which had their own share of difficulties and controversies. Some of Gehry’s American edifices are presented in dialogue with realizations of European or Japanese colleagues, and the selection of texts closes with an extensive interview-monologue in which the architect discusses his professional journey and voices his opinions on architecture and art with disarming frankness.

Collection 'Retratos', 2021
Language: Spanish
Soft cover
80 pages