Architectural Icons and Fauvist Art: Wright, Gehry, and Matisse

Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright's Organic Architecture

Author: Frank Lloyd Wright
Date: 1939

Fallingwater (also known as the Kaufmann House) is probably Wright's best-known work. Its iconic image has often been used to represent the aesthetic and artistic virtues of the Modern Movement. Nothing could be further, however, from the intentions of the American master.

The Kaufmann House was conceived as a conscious rejection of both the recent formulation of the International Style and rationalism. It stands as the symbol par excellence of organic architecture.

Wright used the house not merely to integrate with nature, but as an architectural device to declare its own unique, almost unnatural, presence. While there is an engagement with the environment, the design seems to humble the surroundings by exalting the architect's will, featuring a spatial and volumetric complexity and use of materials that only appear to be fixed to the ground.

The source of this architecture is not nature itself, but architecture, even if the resulting images seem to contradict this notion.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: Frank Gehry's Masterpiece

Author: FRANK GEHRY
Date: 1997
Location: Bilbao

Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, one of the most striking buildings constructed in the late twentieth century.

The museum occupies a large plot of 32,500 square meters along the Nervión River, with the building itself covering 24,000 square meters and rising to 50 meters.

Architectural Structure and Materials

The structure consists of a series of interconnected volumes:

• Some volumes are orthogonal and covered with limestone.
• Others are twisted and bent, coated with titanium, one of Gehry's favorite materials.

These volumes are combined using glass curtain walls, which lend greater transparency to the structure. A key innovation in the design was the extensive use of computer modeling, resulting in a spectacular building that blurs the line between architecture and sculpture.

Interior Layout

The central atrium serves as the backbone of the building, crowned by an overhead skylight. From this atrium, three levels of galleries are distributed, connected by curved walkways, elevators, and stairs, creating the impression of a metaphorical city.

Henri Matisse's Dance (1909–1910)

Author: Henri Matisse
Date: 1909–1910
Museum: Hermitage Museum
Dimensions: 260 x 319 cm.
Material: Oil on canvas
Style: Fauvism

The Fauvist Movement and Color

The term Fauve (Wild Beast) alluded to the especially jarring and arbitrary use of color, which had nothing to do with reality. This technique involved violent, expressive brushstrokes, experimented with by Matisse and his friends in Collioure and Saint-Tropez in the south of France.

While colorful influences from artists like Van Gogh, Seurat, and especially Signac (with whom Matisse had lived) are evident, the Fauves completely liberated color from its traditional descriptive role.

Although critics attributed leadership to Matisse, the Fauvist group was loosely defined, consisting mainly of friends. By 1908, the group had dissolved, and its members moved on to other artistic endeavors.

After World War I, Matisse briefly returned to realistic figuration before immediately embracing the decorative style that characterized his 1920s works, notably the Odalisques series.