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Irving Gill: Progress & Poetry in Architecture
This online exhibit commemorates the 150th birthday of Irving J. Gill with the production of an online presentation of two of the exhibits that were part of the 2016 exhibition Irving Gill: Progress & Poetry in Architecture.
Irving Gill is one of San Diego's greatest architects, revered by fellow designers, architecture lovers, and preservationists. His early 20th-century modernist buildings are extraordinary in the way they embody the essence of California's missions, yet make a successful leap forward with enduring cubist designs.
Gill demonstrated his own imaginative, romantic and honest response to the region's Spanish heritage when, at the turn of the 20th century, he worked on the stabilization of the crumbling adobe San Diego Mission de Alcalá, a project supported by civic leader and preservationist George Marston who commissioned the architect to design his home. By 1907, Gill had devised his own spare, geometric architectural language that appears to be partly derived from studying the mission's spiritual qualities and classic form.
"The straight line borrowed from the horizon is a symbol of greatness, grandeur and nobility; the arch patterned from the dome of the sky represents exultation, reverence, aspiration; the circle is the sign of completeness, motion and progression, as may be seen when a stone touches water; the square is the symbol of power, justice, honesty and firmness," Gill wrote in The Craftsman.
Presented here are two private collections of images that represent much of Gill's work in San Diego: a rare collection of historic c. 1910 glass slide photographs of Gill buildings taken by the architect's firm, and the most complete known collection of postcards that traces Gill's career.
Research, editorial, production, and design by Alana Coons, Ann Jarmusch, and Sandé Lollis.
Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
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