Exposed Brick Architecture
Introduction
Mudejar art is an artistic style that developed in the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula and that incorporated influences, elements or materials of the Spanish-Muslim style. It was the consequence of the conditions of coexistence existing in medieval Spain. It is an exclusively Hispanic phenomenon that takes place between the centuries and , as a mixture of the Christian (Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance) and Muslim artistic currents of the time and that serves as a link between Christian and Islamic art.
The characteristics of Mudejar art are:
For some historians, it is an epigone of Islamic art and for others, a period of Christian art in which Islamic decoration appears, as it was practiced by the Mudejars, people of the Muslim religion and Arab-Berber culture who remained in the Christian kingdoms after the conquest of their territory and, in exchange for a tax, preserved their religion and their own legal status; but also Moors and Christians who learned the techniques of Muslim art.[1].
It is not a unitary artistic style, but has peculiar characteristics in each region, among which the Toledo, Leonese, Aragonese and Andalusian Mudejar stand out. From the Iberian Peninsula, he also traveled to the Canary Islands and Spanish America. In the 19th century, along with other historicist styles, neo-Mudejar appeared.
The term "Mudejar art" was coined by Amador de los Ríos in 1859, when he gave his entrance speech at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts on The Mudejar style, in architecture.[2] Mudejar art is the most representative of Spain in medieval times, it is not grandiose, but rather peculiar and more personal. This peculiarity is given by its border character between the Christian north and the Muslims.
There are different variants of Mudejarism: brick Romanesque (León, Valladolid, Ávila and Segovia), Western Mudejar art (from the Tagus to Portugal), Aragonese Mudejar (with its own characteristics, among others, the profusion of ornamental glazed ceramic elements, and greater development in the Ebro, Jalón and Jiloca valleys), Extremadura, Andalusia (Granada, Córdoba and Seville), the Community Valencian (Castellón, Valencia and Alicante) and finally the Canarian Mudejar"), with a more lax union control where the Hispano-Muslim carpentry stands out, through the ceilings, balconies and mullioned windows.