An awe inspiring man-made mountain fashioned from a contorted concoction of titanium, limestone and glass. One observer described it as a mass of free flowing forms that seem to have met in a train crash!
Origins of the Guggenheim foundation
However you describe Bilbao's breathtaking Guggenheim Museum, and whether you love it or hate it, this is a building which simply refuses to be ignored.
And that of course was the remit of the great Californian architect Frank O. Gehry who was charged with upholding the Guggenheim tradition of boldly going where no architect had dared to go before in a bid to open the eyes of the masses to art as they'd never seen it before.
It's a tradition which started in 1937 when wealthy American businessman, philanthropist and art lover Solomon Robert Guggenheim established a foundation to promote public appreciation of a “new kind of art in a new kind of space”.
Guggenheim never lived to see the opening of the first purpose-built Guggenheim Museum in New York 1959. The extraordinary swirling pyramid was designed by one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright, and shattered all previous notions of what a museum was meant to look like.
0 comments:
Post a Comment