Mural Barceloneta

Design: Josep Guinovart
Architect: José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
Materials: Painting

In 1954 it was finished constructing a building floor and six floors plus attic at number 43 Paseo de la Barceloneta, which was then officially called National ride and had blocked the ocean view for a department store that were shot down shortly before the 1992 Olympic Games was the first residential building cast by the architect Jose Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat and did so with the collaboration of Manuel Valls Verges commissioned by the promoter, Montepío of the Provident Fund of the National Merchant Marine.

It was an absolutely revolutionary work for the time construction began for the year of the International Eucharistic Congress when still dominated the rigidity of lines of war. The facade, on the corner of the streets of Mar and Almirante Cervera, is characterized by blinds fixed slats that completely cover and two vertical drainpipes glazed ceramic sienna which extend above the roof to cover the flues .

After the construction, the architects commissioned Josep Guinovart, who was then 26 years old and had just returned from a stay in Paris Midyear scholarship from the French Institute, the decoration of the wall of the entrance stairway with a mural painting. Guinovart chose a subject that is closely related to the neighborhood where it is located and for the purposes of the promoter, and that despite the abstract nature of the work clearly distinguishes a lighthouse in the middle and a boat that seems in a position to shipwreck in the closest to the door, separated by several forms of blue tones representing seawater moving end. It is one of his first non-figurative wall paintings corresponding to the same era and style that made inside the theater of the Mundet Homes.

The building is included in the catalog of architectural heritage of Barcelona with the ID number 18 and the highest level of protection (BCIN or A). In the description of the building, the catalog indicates that it is a "spectacular piece of great innovation that earned international acclaim and even today remains an example rarely matched." The limitations placed on subsequent interventions warning that "in the common elements -Vestíbulo and scale- must respect all original compositional features and original parts" it is made.

Over the years, the mural Guinovart progressively deteriorated, especially in the lower part, was not as protected in any way or has made any conservation or restoration work. It has been putting out the original colors and humidities, splashes of cleaning steps and the friction of going up and down the ladder have done the rest. The maximum absurdity came when the summer of 2011 the residents did put a handrail and a switch to open the door by regattas and holes made directly on the wall painting. Municipal intervention urging residents to remove the added items and restore the painting to its original state, carrying out a restoration, has not yet given at the time of writing, no result.