Oscar Tusquets: "Who would have thought that cooks would occupy twenty times more space in newspapers than architects?"

BarcelonaDuring the assembly of the exhibition that the Vila Casas Foundation dedicated to Oscar Tusquets in 2022Àlex Susanna, then the institution's artistic director, wasn't convinced that Tusquets should include a small painting depicting a woman kissing a bull. But the architect insisted, passionately taking the painting from his hands and searching for a place in the gallery to display it, all the while reminding Susanna that Villa Casas was a bullfighting enthusiast. This grumpy Tusquets drew attention, and at the same time, the character landed in the documentary God is coming., Directed by Àlex Guimerà and Guillem Ventura, the documentary premieres this Thursday at the Verdi cinema in Barcelona, ​​and on the 18th at the Verdi in Madrid. In other words, the multifaceted, witty, and hedonistic figure of Tusquets, who seems to have done it all without breaking a sweat, is the product of talent, skill, and dedication... and a few boos.

"I'm already a grumpy old man, and I admit I'm a grump," says Oscar Tusquets wryly, pleased that the documentary format avoids the classic succession of friends and acquaintances discussing different aspects of his life and career. “I’m quite tired of myself,” Tusquets asks, “but I think Àlex’s work is very good. I see myself very much reflected in the documentary, which is much more about me than about my work. That sets me apart from other documentaries about architects, and I’ve been lucky enough to make it while I’m still alive. Sometimes documentaries transform—there’s not a single person saying anything good about me in the whole documentary!” he explains.

The documentary, a Hic&Nunc production, is the result of five years of filming, condensing 120 hours of footage into an hour and a half. The directors worked with very small crews to be able to follow Tusquets everywhere and not alter the situations he experiences with some of the film's other protagonists, including the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the painters Antonio López and Miquel Barceló, his former partner Lluís Clotet, the filmmaker Albert Serra, and the illustrator Jordi La. Meanwhile, a lunch at the headquarters of the design publisher BD and his 80th birthday party capture his interactions with younger generations, such as the architects Igor Urdampilleta, of the firm Arquitectura-G, Pablo Bofill and Ricardo Bofill, the photographer and editor Nacho Alegre, and the writer and actress Julia de Castro. "It happens that your children don't love you much, but your grandchildren begin to value you," says Tusquets. “Oscar made it very easy for us, because he opened everything up to us,” says Àlex Guimerà. “What we were looking for was a more fictional narrative that unfolds through the characters, rather than more traditional interviews.”

As an architect, Tusquets has always shunned specialization and defined himself as someone who solves “complex problems.” He laments that, since the 1960s, architects have been losing importance. “Who would have thought that chefs would occupy twenty times more space in newspapers than architects?” he wonders. He has also always had a foot in more than one discipline at a time. "When I'm writing, I think I should be painting, and when I'm painting, I think I should be designing," says Tusquets, who is quite outspoken in many moments of the documentary: in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, he questions Picasso in front of a small fresco from Pompeii: "But how can we defend the idea that there's progress in art? They've preserved almost all of them for me; they define me very well." He also argues with Barceló, defending figuration over abstraction, and confronts Antonio López: "He's interviewed all the time, but no one ever questions him. I went to a workshop he gave at the University of Navarra; we spent a week painting, and I was the only student who questioned him."

From Casa Fullà in the Naples metro

In addition to his illustrious friends, throughout the documentary Tusquets revisits some of his most emblematic works, from the Casa Fullà, from his early period with Lluís Clotet, to an emblematic Naples metro station evocative of the underwater world, for which he had the collaboration of the director Robert Wilson“Lluís Clotet refuses to visit old buildings because he says they only bring disappointment,” Tusquets points out. “They bring disappointment because you’ve ruined them,” he adds, “or because they’re not as good as you remembered, or because they’re better than you remembered and you think you wouldn’t be able to recreate them today. But I’m not that radical, and so, yes, we went to see them.” While Casa Fullà, the Georgina belvedere, and the house on the island of Pantelleria are very well preserved, the old Regàs house in LlofriuThe building, also by Clotet and Tusquets, has lost many of its original features, which visibly angers Tusquets. "We also designed some shops and ground floors in the Eixample district, and none of them remain," he laments.

While Tusquets is thrilled to see that the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is as good as new after twenty-five years, the head of Carmela Jaume Plensa's sculpture bothers him in the corner of the Palau de la Música. "It detracts somewhat from the relief of the tree that Natxo Farreres and I created, which is quite interesting. The sculpture isn't very well placed, although I've never protested publicly. That's what he said." Lluís Permanyer"He was another very old friend who knew everything," he explains. Thus, the expansion of the Palau de la Música by Tusquets culminated some three decades of work on the building by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. "I'm very happy. Having put aside the anecdote of the financial scandal, I always say that, nevertheless, they were a very loyal client, because they put up with us for 30 years," says the architect.