Review: Félix Candela 1910–2010

Abstract

Felix Candela 1910–2010 Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain 21 October 2010–2 January 2011 Museo Extremeno e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporaneo, Badajoz, Spain 17 March–14 August 2011 Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City 22 September 2011–15 January 2012 Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University 11 February–31 March 2012 The exhibition of the work of the Spanish-Mexican architect-engineer Felix Candela, known for his thin-shell concrete structures, resonates with global contemporary architecture culture. For example, Candela’s parabolic forms bear a family resemblance to the work of a fellow Spaniard, Santiago Calatrava. As is the case with Calatrava’s work, images of Candela’s structures were widely circulated in the architectural press at the time. This exhibition reveals that there were, in fact, many differences. While today’s spectacular forms result from sophisticated computer modeling and fabrication, Candela’s thin-concrete shells were often based on on-site experimentation and crude construction methods. Although Candela enjoyed an international career and even stardom, his career is deeply rooted in the culture of his adopted homeland of Mexico of the 1950s. Organized and circulated by Accion Cultural Espanola with the collaboration of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), the exhibition Felix Candela 1910–2010 was originally presented in 2010 at the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of Candela’s birth. From there it traveled to the Museo Extremeno e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporaneo in Badajoz, Spain, the Museo de Arte Moderno of Mexico City, and finally to the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in spring 2012, thus following the route taken by of one of the greatest architect-engineers of the twentieth century from his native Spain to Mexico and subsequently to the United States. In a similar reflection on Candela’s international life and career, Juan Ignacio del Cueto Ruiz-Funes, the professor at UNAM who curated the show, drew on archival resources on two continents. The exhibition included work drawn from the collections of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, and the Archives of Mexican Architects …