Colour as Pathway of Light: Searching the Shadow in Luis Barragán

Abstract

This paper aims to restore some of the meanings that according to Luis Barragán have disappeared from the religious spirituality and the mythical roots that lead us to the very reason of being of the artistic phenomenon, by opposing the endoskeletal conception of Barragán, as to colour and architecture, and the exoskeletal and the one of Calatrava. The study is mainly based on the microcosmos of the studio house and Casa Gilardi. In this ‘laboratories’, the magic of colour, light and form reveal his material and spiritual vision. For Barragán, beauty is a source of spirituality that mingles the colours with Gods, art and Mexican nature, in a choreography of shadows and the implications of the sun. His dwellings are energised by lighting solutions that provide different tones of shadowy depths enveloping linear and geometric volumes in an atmosphere of contemplative silence, through a labyrinthine search of memories and intuitive resonances of tranquillity.