To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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The man who coloured architecture
By his own admission, RICARDO BOFILL LEVI was a ‘nomad’ of the profession but his Marxist convictions helped him become an unprecedented innovator of social housing design
EMBRACING: (L to R) Inner yard in Muralla Roja/Red Wall; Ricardo Bofill Levi; the facade of Walden 7 and Muralla Roja forecourt
[(L to R) erichology/flickr/Creative Commons David Olivari/flickr/CC Nicolás Boullosa/flickr/CC Joanbanjo/Creative Commons]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
RICARDO BOFILL LEVI, the Catalan architect whose studio retained a poet and a philosopher, has died on January 14 aged 82.
A Marxist activist during the Franco dictatorship, he was expelled from university in Barcelona, fled Spain for Geneva and only returned in the mid-60s when he assembled like-minded architects to set up Taller de Arquitectura/Architecture Workshop and located it in a converted cement factory in Barcelona. They were uniquely focused on providing housing solutions.
Bofill’s is a socially aware architecture that addresses the complex problems of urban communal living with rare courage and design flair. The projects were invariably characterised by a flamboyance of form never seen before.
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