Barcelona, Open-Air Sculpture Gallery

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Barcelona, as the title of this magnificent album implies, is a veritable open-air sculpture gallery. Pieces by Antoni Tapies, Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, Beverly Pepper and Anthony Caro play an integral role in the urban design. With 321 color photographs and a highly readable text by Barcelona art critic Permanyer, this showcase reproduces an astonishing array of boldly original works, among them Joan Miro's Woman and Bird festooned with glazed mosaics, Andre Nagel's spectacular and amusing St. George's Dragon, Eduardo Chilliada's monumental yet delicate In Praise of Water , Francisco Lopez Hernandez's Drowned Woman and Roy Shiffrin's epic David and Goliath, paying homage to the International Brigades that fought Fascism. Gracing the site of the 1992 Summer Olympics is Aiko Miyawaki's forest of concrete pillars crowned with swaying steel filaments that trace patterns in the air, a monument to continuous change. (June)

Library Journal

Barcelona has long been a model of interesting architecture and ingenious urban layout, and this year, with the Summer Olympics and a newly released study by critic Robert Hughes ( Barcelona , LJ 1/92), the city is on many people's minds. This book is really a photographic survey of the city's public monuments; the range of artworks tells a compelling story about modern sculpture and its relationship to landscape. Text and imagery are well balanced and suitably descriptive. Permanyer, a Barcelona journalist, draws evocative word pictures to accompany works by such masters as Miro, Chillada, Tapies, Castillo, and Botero, among others. Art in important public spaces is discussed in terms of aesthetic interrelatedness. This book will be of interest to art historians and travelers alike. Because Barcelona is so vividly portrayed, it will be useful for general and specialized libraries and their readers.-- Paula A. Baxter, NYPL