Gaudí Through Rosic Eyes
by: Matthew Hundley
While strolling the streets of Barcelona Paco felt the urge for a Big Mac. He ducked into a local McDonalds and brought his meal outside. He sat down, unwrapped his burger, and as he went to take a bite notice the phenomenal edifice towering before him. It was the monumental church El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (Expiatory Temple of the Sacred Family) – the most famous work of architect Antonio Gaudí.
Paco quick snapped pictures in his brain and on his camera. Photographs that would later allow him to paint the scene. Paco was taken in by this scene of a cathedral which “combines the naturalist plastic art and the modernist movement, the soul of the religious architecture and the Mediterranean culture as well, fused in a compendium constituting something unique in the world.” (sagradafamilia.org)
In many ways Antoni Gaudí and Paco Rosic stand on extremes of the artistic spectrum – yet in some ways they are much alike.
Antoni Gaudí began work on this monumental undertaking in the 1880s. A project that was only partially finished when he was hit by a trolly in 1926. A project is still under construction today. Gaudí once said, "The patron of this project is not in a hurry". In contrast, the Paco Rosic painting of the monumental cathedral took mere hours.
Gaudí dedicated his life, in his later years to the exclusion of all else – Paco is also dedicated to his work. “My paintings control me,” Paco recently told me, “I paint, but I do not know from where it comes from.
Gaudí, on the other hand, knew from whence his inspiration came. He wanted to create “a 20th century cathedral, a synthesis of all his architectural knowledge with a complex system of symbolisms and a visual explication of the mysteries of faith.” (Jonathan Metzer, Gaudí Central)
The church was based on the plan of a Gothic basilica with five naves, a transept, an apse, and ambulatory. This spectacular vertical dimension is captured in Paco Rosic’s rendering of the five spiral-shaped towers which reach upwards towards some heavenly realm flooded with white and yellow light.
Albeit subconscious, Paco succeeds in capturing the spiritual essence of Gaudí’s work on the canvas. He also captures the conflict that has surrounded the construction of this great edifice. There are figurines that seem to wave their swords in battle; and lording over the scene is this great angel assigned to protect the façade of this great cathedral and see that the construction will someday be completed.
The Paco Rosic painting of El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (Expiatory Temple of the Sacred Family) hangs on the wall of my office. For the past few weeks I have had a chance to get to know this painting. Sometimes I look up from a cup of coffee and it catches me offguard, much as it might have caught Paco off guard as he sat down with his McDonalds meal.
I have asked him about the things I see in this painting. He is not always aware of what is there – in fact he had to rush over when I told him that he had painted himself into the scene as the guardian angel of the cathedral.
About the closest he could come to explaining this phenomenon was to say, “Each painting is a piece of me. It will be at your house, but it is a piece of me at your house.”
I have not been to Barcelona, but based on the photos I have seen of El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, Paco definitely captured the spiritual and architectural essence of Gaudí’s work.
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Paco Rosic calls Waterloo, Iowa home. His works have been shown in Chicago, LA, New York and in Europe.
Posted: January 23, 2005  
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