The Paths of Art. Calatrava in Naples

Santiago Calatrava has pursued his own creative path, and the few times ours have crossed, it has been under the aura of art. So it was in 2007 at Yale University, where he wowed the audience of a lecture by doing watercolors live, as described in ‘Encounters and Disencounters’ (Arquitectura Viva 237); and again almost twenty years later in Zurich and Madrid, where in 2025 my proposal for a recorded interview led to a visit to the archive in which he keeps drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and to a series of conversations punctuated by references to writers and artists.

The visit took place in October of that year and the interview about his life journey – summed up in the article ‘Ideas in Action’ (Arquitectura Viva 285) – would be recorded some months later, in April 2026. Before and after that, we spoke regularly, in conversations always sprinkled with quotes from the Gracián he so admires, veering off toward architecture and engineering only occasionally, as when he recommended I read José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez’s biography of Freyssinet, a work which had given him a full grasp of prestressing.

Nevertheless, it is art that has been the guiding thread of our relationship, through the works safeguarded in the archive or through his exhibitions, whether at the Hermitage, at the Glyptothek, at MoMA, or at the Met. And art in relation to the artisans who collaborate in his works, be they the blacksmiths who forge the sculptures or the ceramists who fire the pieces: it is easy to see how his painted vessels connect his sculptural calling to his devotion to the human body and nature, resulting in marvels of solemn balance and still motion.

For almost everyone, Santiago Calatrava is the author of colossal constructions, of iconic works that already have a place in the history of architecture. After many hours of conversation, he is for me also the creator of the magical interiors of the Church of San Gennaro in Naples, where porcelain, textiles, enamels, glass, and paintings together compose a space of lyrical intimacy and meditative spirit: a place of untapped light to which his path through time has guided him.