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What got me thinking about my junior year abroad (1968-69) and how incomprehensibly rich it was for my artistic spirit was a recent podcast interview with Eric Rhoads (Outdoor Painter podcast #114) to promote the Plein Air Convention, where I gave a presentation and assisted with paint-outs. Eric asked me about early artistic inspiration.

Fifty years ago last September I was a shy, dreamy 17-year-old kid from Denver embarking on a European adventure of a lifetime. Along with a group of twenty or so other boys, I sailed from New York Harbor on the SS Aurelia, second slowest passenger ship on the oceans (what a claim to fame!) heading to Le Havre, France. From there, we took a train to Paris for a few days of sightseeing featuring Louvre highlights—artwork I’d seen in art history books—and a private tour of Versailles. My mind was already blown!

Another train ride took us to the border where we made a midnight switch because of different sized tracks between France and Spain. Our destination: Barcelona and a school year abroad. Many classes were taught in Spanish. Then called Schoolboys Abroad—now coed and called Schoolyear Abroad—this is a program put on by several New England prep schools with participants from high schools around the country.

Each boy was paired with a Spanish family for nine months. After some initial delay while I stayed with another fellow’s family in a modest apartment, and expecting same, I was taken to one of the most marvelous dwellings I’d ever experienced: a confection built by an aide to Antoni Gaudí, the world-famous Modernist architect (in Spain, Arte Moderno) who was based in Barcelona. This historic home was a veritable wonderland. Remodeled in 1906, outside was a concrete wall with delightful and intricate natural-shaped wrought iron twisting atop; within the wall was a tiled, towered, Moorish- inspired edifice. Inside the building were wonderful tiled floors, stained glass windows, a variety of wallpapers. I get to live here?! 

My Barcelona home viewed from the side

So naive I was! Even though we had read books on Spain and its culture, I expected something along the lines of a sleepy little Mexican town with donkeys and dusty streets. Barcelona is a world-class metropolitan city. Its republican fervor was then still repressed by dictator Franco’s government, yet the thriving Catalan spirit could not be suppressed. A bustling city, its architecture spanned centuries from remains of Roman walls all the way up to modern high rises. Of course, on display were many of Gaudí’s most famous buildings, the Sagrada Familia (we could then wander freely, climbing inside the towers), Parque Güell, and otherworldly apartment buildings that are now open for public tours. There were myriad examples of arte moderno style. The city has a marvelous gothic cathedral ringed with the narrow, twisting streets of the Gothic Quarter. A Picasso Museum showed the original anti-war Guernica. Original paintings by Miró, Dalí, and Chagall were on display in museums. What a new world for a boy who’d been delighted simply by what the Denver Art Museum had to offer.

On our vacations from school, we were bussed to other regions of the country. One trip was to southern Spain, where I was dazzled by the incomparable architecture of the mosque at Córdoba and the Moorish wonderland of the Generalife and the Alhambra, a pinnacle of Moorish delicacy and decoration. Worlds apart from anything I’d ever experienced in Colorado!

Inside the mosque at Córdoba

In the Prado Museum in Madrid, we saw the works of Bosch and Breughel, Velazquez’s world-famous Las Meninas, and Goya’s horrific Saturn Devouring his Son. On the same trip, we saw in Toledo original paintings by El Greco.

One trip took us to northern Spain, the Basque Country, where we were allowed to tour the caves at Altamira, site of prehistoric polychrome paintings of animals and plants, handprints and symbols. We got to walk on a Roman aqueduct out in the country.

Prehistoric paintings in the caves at Altamira

I doubt such a year would even be possible nowadays. Some of the sites we saw and wandered through are now closed to the public or have months-long waits for tour reservations. What an amazing experience for a teenaged boy. I really had no idea at the time what an influence this exposure to such a variety of the world’s creativity would have on me. With the richness of all these sights and the accompanying experiences, is it any wonder I became an artist?

The front gate of my home in Barcelona