If there's one place where you can feel like you're inside an Escher painting, it's undoubtedly at the Carmen de la Fundación Rodríguez Acosta, in Granada. Indeed, those black and white images of impossible labyrinthine staircases connected to each other, leading to rooms with wide arches, seem to come to life in this place. Perhaps it has to do with Escher's visit to the Alhambra in 1936, when he stopped to contemplate this space, or perhaps it's just a coincidence that, given the resemblance, we easily relate.
But what we want to focus on today is what this carmen conveys, because if the walk up to the Alhambra is a marvelous stroll full of colors and landscapes, where vegetation and construction intertwine as you leave the city behind and below, visible from any point along the way, stopping at this place, I believe, emotionally impacts anyone.
As a starting point, when we speak of a carmen, we are referring to a traditional Granadan house walled off from the outside and always accompanied by a garden and an orchard.
In this case, the carmen was built by the Granadan painter José María Rodríguez Acosta, who, from 1913 to 1930, decided to abandon painting to dedicate himself to the construction of this space, which he would use as his personal studio-workshop.
The result was this place full of magic and mystery, labyrinthine, Art Deco, Cubist, classical, and Islamic at the same time, blending local tradition with diverse aesthetics brought from his travels to Europe, the Orient, and America.
A space in white, black, and green, where everything retains its patina, and it is precisely the patina itself that unifies a whole that, far from enveloping you in a pastiche, fits the diverse aesthetics to complete the essence of an atmosphere with its own character. A space full of details, of nuances, in which each of the perspectives has been composed as if it were a painting.
When we visit museum-houses, I like to sit, stop, lose myself from the tour and try to behave as I think the person who lived there would, and not understand the whole with the character of a later "work of art" with which it is visited today, but as a space where one day people lived and that was created by its owner to adapt to his particular way of life.
In this case, the places we could explore seem to me to be spaces designed simply for sitting and looking. Or for looking and walking, perhaps more alone than accompanied. Contemplative spaces. For looking today from here and tomorrow from there. Looking at Granada through different frames.
But also, to enjoy the scenarios enclosed within its walls, which are undoubtedly a sensory display, where it is easy to be enveloped by the sound of running water, the change in temperature according to the environment, the fresh scent of the hedges, and the visual delight from any corner you look.
It's curious how the same space can simultaneously transport you to so many other distant times and places and yet preserve its harmony and identity.
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