Prieto, Jesús-Àngel

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

tbLULA MAbbANA. tXHlt3lllUN HALL 
T H E  D R E A M  O F  A PASTRY- 
COOK: T H E  E S C O L A  
MASSANA 
THE ESCOLA MASSANA, CENTRE FOR ART AND DESIGN OF THE 
BARCELONA MUNICIPAL INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION, HAS A 
CONCILIATORY SPIRIT BETWEEN HISTORY AND MODERNITY WHICH 
INTEGRATES THE DECORATIVE AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 
nally, to the city of Barcelona, 
epresented by its illustrious city 
: o u n c i l ,  five hundred thousand pe- 
setas in one thousand municipal bonds for 
the creation of a school of Fine Arts ap- 
plied to the decorative industries and arts, 
in which, as well as admitting a number of 
pupils without means and giving them clas- 
ses, the chance of studying and learning, 
at a modest fee, will be given to young 
workers and other people engaged in in- 
dustrial specialities who desire artistic 
training and culture." This is  section thir- 
teen of the will of Agustí Massana, a well- 
to-do Barcelona pastry-cook whose gene- 
rosity was not only financia1 but 
conceptual, sensing, as he did, the future 
marriage between industry and art and its 
significance: design. 
When the Escola Massana began its ac- 
tivities on 14 January 1929 (the year of 
the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, a 
meaningful coincidence), it combined two 
chief aspects that had made Catalan Mod- 
ernism possible: the extraordinary wealth 
of the artistic, or sumptuous trades, and 
the daring culture of the proiect, cha- 
racteristic of the architects Gaudí, Dome- 
nech i Montaner, Jujol, etc. 
The original premises were soon out- 
ITEMS OF JEWEUERY. ESCOLA MASSANA 
grown by the demand the new institution 
aroused and in 1935 the school moved 
into its definitive home in the former Hos- 
pital de la Santa Creu (a fine example of 
Catalan Gothic architecture), where it be- 
came an indissoluble part of Barcelona's 
Raval neighbourhood. 
The catalogue of specialities with which 
the school opened, under the direction of 
Jaume Busquets, included "gilding and 
the art of the altarpiece; glass engraving 
and cutting; metal embossing, engraving 
and enamelling; and decorative painting" 
(taken from the school's first programme, 
in the year 1929). 
After the period under Mique] Soldevila 
(1940-1 956), a period marked by se- 
vere problems of survival, the director 
Lluís M. Güell (1 956-1 976) extended the 
possibilities for learning by adding mural 
pictorial processes, ceramics, jewellery, 
stained glass, Japanese lacquer, scuip- 
ture, painting, tapestry and copperplate en- 
graving; and in 1963, for the first time in 
a school of arts and crafts in the lberian 
Peninsula, he introduced design: printed 
fabric design, graphic design, industrial 
design and interior design. After Joaquim 
Sabater's headmastership (1  976-1 980), 
Francesc Miralles (1 981 -1 989) set in mo- 
tion the present study plan, bringing the 
school in line with a more unitary con- 
ception with interconnections amongst the 
different branches of art. This study plan 
was gradually consolidated under Lluís 
Doñate (1 990-1 993), a period which saw 
the incorporation of the subiect of draw- 
ing and of intermedia option/contem- 
porary image procedures. 
This short historical summary reveals a 
characteristic inherent to this institution: 
its capacity for organic growth in tune 
with the times and, at the same time, its 
respect for the already consolidated edu- 
cational heritage. Because the challenge 
for a school of art lies in its formal and 
technical memory as a transmitter of ex- 
pressive languages with a history behind 
them we can not forget, but without this 
making it insensitive to new ideas, new 
languages and new technologies. Con- 
temporaneity and tradition would ap- 
pear to be the ideal conceptual dichotomy 
for a school of art and design. Above all, 
it i s  the pupils who are most sensitive to 
this dichotomy; they are inevitably con- 
temporary, but are in need of the techni- 
cal, formal and conceptual referents that 
will help them find their place in the flow 
of history. 
Nowadays, the complex, changing na- 
ture of our culture gives rise to conducts 
requiring a high degree of specializa- 
tion, alternating with others more mar- 
kedly interdisciplinary. These conducts 
are basic in the creative sphere. The Es- 
cola Massana provides a wide range of 
expressive and technical skil ls (some 17 
specialities), making up a four-year study 
plan which i s  structured in such a way as 
to allow specific or interdisciplinary learn- 
ing through personalized curriculums. 
This has generated a highly versatile 
school culture which helps students find 
their own referents and their own metho- 
dologies. To this end, the teaching team 
alternate ideas for work for students 
based on a free search for highly specu- 
lative solutions, with closely patterned 
proposals adjusted to very strict demands 
in the social surroundings, which include 
variables referred to the market that re- 
spect the environment. 
The school has for some years had a pol- 
icy of relations with the world of business 
which has resulted in a series of formu- 
las such as, especially, the contests and 
workshop-seminars for the development 
of ideas, helping students make contact 
with the world of production and, vice 
versa, opening doors to dialogue be- 
tween business and the professionals of the 
future. It is  particularly worth mentioning 
the contests with the firms Manbar, Aki- 
Briko, Societat General dfAigües de Bar- 
celona, Winterthur, Metges sense Fronte- 
res, AssiDoman Frovi, etc. 
Similarly, relations with other academic 
institutions are very important for the 
school: the phenomena of creativity need 
intercultural dialogue. The Kokusai Sogo 
Gakuin group of schools of design (Ja- 
pan), the Polytechnic University of Ma- 
nagua (Nicaragua), the National Centre 
for Art Ceramics (Tunisia), the St. Etien- 
ne College of Art (France) and the Uni- 
versity of Derby (England) are just some 
of the centres with which we rnaintain 
specific contacts for student exchanges, 
exhibitions, educational knowledge, teach- 
ing consultancies, networked seminars 
(via lnternet and others), etc. It's irnpor- 
tant to note that the presence of foreign 
students fluctuates between 1 O% and 14% 
of the total of annual enrolments. 
Barcelona i s  a city with a recognized ca- 
pacity for formal solutions, for a visual 
irnpact not exernpt of conceptual replies. 
The Mediterranean tradition, taken in the 
particular perspective of Catalan culture, 
has given considerable fruits in the field 
of art and design, both in terms of per- 
sonalities and of outstanding work, which 
have influenced developments in contem- 
porary taste. This synthesis and this fe- 
cundity which the city has rnanaged to 
catalyse has greatly eased the task of the 
institutions working in this field. And we 
realise this i s  sornething that feeds back 
-without the energy of their rnernbers, 
institutions, schools and business would 
not keep up with al1 the activities that 
take place in Barcelona, and without the 
city's capacity for tolerance and vitality, 
civil life would not show the sarne crea- 
tivity. 
It i s  in this respect that the Escola Mas- 
sana feels fully identified with Barcelona, 
both because of its status as a Centre for 
Art and Design dependent on the Barce- 
lona Municipal lnstitute for Education 
and because of the way it reconciles his- 
tory and modernity, its cosmopolitanisrn 
and its origin, since it was founded by 
private initiative but i s  publicly rnain- 
tained. Today, 67 years later, the school 
approaches the future with a clear idea 
that creativity i s  closely tied to our stu- 
dents' ability to interrelate different dis- 
ciplines and languages, to integrate the 
rurnptuous arts and the industrial arts, to 
work for a world of greater interconnec- 
tion and solidarity. We sense, frorn the 
simple words of Massana the pastry- 
cook, that this was the school he drearned 
of. 1 


The Dream of a Pastry-Cook: the Escola Massana

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Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert