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Jose Maria Sostres Biography

José María Sostres

(José María or Josep Maria Sostres Maluquer; Seo de Urgel, 1915-Barcelona, ​​1983) Spanish architect trained in Barcelona.He was a co-founder and member of Grupo R, which contributed to the renovation of postwar Spanish architecture.In a first stage, he experimented with natural materials and traditional elements in projects such as the Casa Elías (Bellver de Cerdaña, 1946), the Casa Cusí (Seo de Urgel, 1952) and the María Victoria hotel (Puigcerdà, 1952).From the end of the fifties he developed a fully modern style, influenced by neoplasticism, in works such as the Casa Agustí (Sitges, 1953-1955), the Casa Iranzo (Esplugues de Llobregat, 1957) and the reform of the newspaper building El Noticiero Universal (Barcelona, ​​1963-1965).Since 1962 he was professor of the history of architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture.He received the National Architecture Prize in 1972.

Born in the Lleida town of Seo de Urgel, at the age of six he moved with his family to Montblanc (Tarragona), where, according to his own testimony, his architectural sensitivity during the visit to the Poblet monastery.Shortly after he lived in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona) and came into contact with the modernist world thanks to his repeated visits to neighboring Sitges (Barcelona).In contact with Mir and other artists, Josep Maria Sostres began to practice painting, a practice that was to accompany him throughout most of his life.

In 1933 he moved to Madrid to enter the School of Civil Engineers; However, an unexpected illness forced him to return permanently to the family home, already located in Barcelona.In the Catalan capital he began his studies of exact sciences with the intention of entering the School of Architecture, he frequented the artistic environments and was linked to some literary groups.In 1935 he held his first exhibition at the Salon de Artistas Universitarios of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

During the Civil War (1936-1939), Sostres remained convalescing and became friends with the poet Joan Vinyoli.Through the magazine AC he kept his link with architecture alive, until in 1941 he officially began his studies in Barcelona.Throughout this period, he carried out some works worth mentioning, such as a preliminary project for a dramatic art theater and the Study on the figure and work of Otto Wagner , whom Josep Maria Sostres deeply admired.

After graduating in 1946, Joan Francesc Ràfols, one of his most renowned teachers, offered him a position as an assistant at the Barcelona School of Architecture.Linked throughout his professional life to this institution, from 1957 he was professor of History of Plastic Arts and History of Architecture, a chair to which he acceded in 1962.In 1946 he traveled to Italy and studied the work of Giuseppe Terragni, a of the most interesting and influential personalities of Italian architectural rationalism.Back in Barcelona he opened his own studio and was hired as an interim municipal architect in the town of Bellver de Cerdanya (Lleida).

At the end of the 1940s he projected his first buildings, among which it is worth mentioning the country houses on Camí de Talló, in Bellver.In 1949, together with five other colleagues, he won the first prize in the Ideas Competition for the Solution of the Problem of Economic Housing, organized by the College of Architects of Barcelona.At that time, he joined Catholic groups related to the field of architecture and housing, and established an intense professional relationship with Antoni de Moragas and Ramon Tort.

Casa Agustí (Sitges, 1953-1955)

In 1951 he participated in the formation of Grup R, of which Josep Maria Sostres was the main animator cultural and theoretical.His epistolary relationship with the art historian Nikolaus Pevsner nurtured in him the firm will to become a scholar and theorist of architecture.As of 1953, and in a space of time of barely a decade, most of its buildings were erected, works that showed its artistic independence and its secure theoretical position.Among them are the Casa Agustí de Sitges (Barcelona, ​​1953-1955), the hotel María Victoria de Puigcerdà (Girona, 1953-1957), the set of holiday homes in Torredembarra (Tarragona, 1954-1957), the Moratiel and Iranzo houses in Ciudad Diagonal (Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona, ​​1956-1957) and the building of El Noticiero Universal (Barcelona, ​​1963-1965; FAD Prize in 1986).

The planimetric distributions of Josep Maria Sostres respond to a practical and original sensitivity in the use of space, completely alien to repetitive solutions.The assumption of "simplicity above all else" is paradigmatic in buildings such as the hotel and the Barcelona newspaper mentioned.Parallel to these works, he took charge of small official commissions related to certificates of works, reforms, partial improvements of buildings, ornamental additions, urban furniture, etc.

In 1956 he held the Gaudí Exhibition and was appointed a member of the committee of honor in charge of commemorating the birth of the Ferrarian Renaissance architect Biaggio Rossetti.A couple of years later, the influential Italian architect and theorist Bruno Zevi told him of his desire to spread his work and ideas in Italy.From 1959 to 1969 he was a member (except for one year) of the jury that awards the FAD Prize.In 1964 he managed to introduce the subject Gardening and Landscape as an official subject of the School of Architecture.

From those years on, the figure of Josep Maria Sostres was partially eclipsed by the new aesthetic policies that arrived at the School and by the small struggles and political interests that took place in the area of ​​Barcelona architecture.Although he continued with his theoretical studies and continued to be claimed as an aesthetic advisor and member of various architectural commissions, his projects were practically reduced to an industrial complex in Rubí (Barcelona, ​​1969) and two single-family houses in Ventola (Ribes de Freser, Girona , 1971).

Almost a decade later (1980) he signed his last work together with Daniel Gelabert: the La Salut de Badalona market (Barcelona).In 1983, the Murcia Surveyors Association published an important part of his writings under the title Opinions on architecture .Two months before his death, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital due to a serious nervous breakdown.

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