Madrid Metropolis. The Dream of Antonio Palacios

Description

Antonio Palacios Ramilo (1874-1945) was a key figure in Spanish architecture during the first decades of the twentieth century, of special significance for Madrid. This exhibition pays homage to the illustrious Galician architect and to the vision of Madrid he built, a city with a vocation to become a modern metropolis.

Madrid Metropolis. The Dream of Antonio Palacios is an exhibition that showcases his work in the City that adopted him and made him the most representative architect of the Silver Age of Spanish architecture.

The exhibition presents more than 150 pieces —plans, drawings, watercolours, books and photographs— encouraging us to delve into Palacios’ vision for Madrid. In this space, we can discover the diversity of his buildings and spaces, each with a strong imprint of his personality.

The exhibition is structured in itineraries that guide us along the main axes that characterised his work, itineraries that Palacios envisioned as landmarks in Madrid’s urban memory.

The introductory space considers his training as an architect and his first projects. Then, the first itinerary takes us through the City’s main thoroughfares: the axis is evident in streets like the Calle Mayor, the Calle de Alcalá and the Puerta del Sol, which Palacios filled with many of his most iconic designs, such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the Banco Español del Río de la Plata and the Palacio de Comunicaciones, today Palacio de Cibeles.

Next, we see Palacios’ work on the Gran Vía axis, “superimposed” on the City’s historical layout, followed by the Prado-Castellana axis, on which he collaborated to establish it as a new artery as the City grew. One of his most outstanding works, the Hospital de Jornaleros de San Francisco de Paula, is on this itinerary.

The next space shows another fundamental element of the contemporary City, the Metro, for which Palacios gave shape to both the underground spaces and the above-ground constructions.

The final section is called the Axis of Dreams. It takes us on an itinerary through some of Antonio Palacios’ projects that were never built and concludes the exhibition with a reflection on his legacy to Madrid today. A reflection, in short, on his explicit proposal, or dream, for Madrid, the metropolis.

Curators: Javier García-Gutiérrez Mosteiro and Julián García Muñoz

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