Neo-Mudejar architecture
Introduction
Neomudéjar is an artistic and architectural style that developed mainly in the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the century and beginning of the 19th century. It is part of the orientalist currents of historicist architecture prevailing in Europe at that time.[1] The new style was especially associated with constructions of a festive and leisure nature, such as smoking rooms, casinos, train stations, bullrings or saunas.
In Spain, the neo-Mudejar style was claimed as a national style because it was based on a style specific to Spain, Mudejar art, a style that is also found in Italy or Portugal, for example. Architects such as Lorenzo Álvarez Capra, Emilio Rodríguez Ayuso and Agustín Ortiz de Villajos saw something uniquely Spanish in Mudejar art and began to design buildings using features of the old style, including abstract brick shapes and horseshoe arches.
However, what historiography has traditionally considered as neo-Mudejar, are in many cases works of neo-Arabic style (although they are not the same style), since they use Caliphal, Almohad and Nasrid elements, the only Mudejar aspect being the use of exposed brick.[2].
The Madrid bullring by Rodríguez Ayuso and Álvarez Capra, built in 1874, has been considered the beginning of the neo-Mudejar style, which would be continued by other architects such as Enrique María Repullés y Vargas, Joaquín Rucoba, Augusto Font Carreras, José Espelius Anduaga, Felipe Arbazuza") or Aníbal González.[1].
Examples
Churches
The neo-Mudejar style had to compete with other styles also claimed as national styles, such as neo-Gothic or neo-Romanesque, both preferred by ecclesiastical authorities due to the profusion with which Romanesque and Gothic were used during the Middle Ages for the construction of emblematic religious works. Compared to these "Christian" styles, the Arabizing neo-Mudejar was not the one chosen mostly by the Catholic Church, although a few churches were built in this style in Madrid, such as the Church of Santa Cristina "Church of Santa Cristina (Madrid)") (1906), that of San Matías "Church of San Matías (Madrid)") of Hortaleza (1877), the Church of La Paloma (1912), of Álvarez Capra, or the Church of San Fermín de los Navarros (1891) by Carlos Velasco and Eugenio Jiménez Correa.[1].
Outside Madrid there are the Church of San José "Iglesia de San José (Pinto)") by Pinto "Pinto (Madrid)"), built in 1891; the parish church of Cedillo (Cáceres) from 1894; the reform of the façade of the Teruel Cathedral, carried out in 1909, the Church of San Benito and Santo Domingo") of Castilleja de Guzmán, built in 1923, or the church of the town of El Temple "El Temple (Huesca)"), in the province of Huesca, designed in 1947.[3].