Acacia Mateo, Casa decorada / Decorated house

this image and the next three as on Streetview

The decorated house, as pictured above, is located on a street in Lorca, a municipality with over 91,000 inhabitants (2016) in the south-east of Spain.

Life and works

This decoration was created by Acacia Mateo Pérez-Castejón (25 September 1905 - 1 May 2003), simply referred to as Acacia Mateo. He was born in Motril, a municipality about 250 km south-east of Lorca. 

Why his parents moved from Motril to Lorca is unknown, just as not everything is known about Mateo's professional life.

Mateo did his military service in Barcelona.

Here he came into contact with the art that Gaudi created. He was particularly struck when he saw that all kinds of buildings were decorated with ceramics. This must have given him the idea to do the same with the house in Lorca that he moved into after his time in Barcelona.

The house is situated in a street with adjoining buildings, both apartment flats and simple family homes. Mateo's house belongs to the latter category, with a downstairs space, an upstairs space and a roof terrace.

The images above show that the right balcony seen from the street is missing the railing, which was caused by a passing truck hitting it.

Mateo began decorating the façade in the early 1930s and worked on it for about twenty years. 

The style he worked in is trencadís, an approach that was also widely used by Gaudi and is characterized by the use of small pieces of ceramic from stone objects or marble tiles, which are used to create various forms of mosaic.

The interior is also richly decorated. Tables, beds and bedside tables are equipped with trencadis, there is a covered fountain and also a kind of cave. 

There are no images of it, because after Mateo's death in 2003 the house was no longer inhabited and not accessible anymore

On May 11, 2011, the city of Lorca was hit by two earthquakes. The decorated front of the house remained unscathed, but it is possible that because of the earthquake two small buildings on the roof collapsed, which is not visible from the street. 

In 2021 the decorated house was classified as a protected monument by the municipality.

A self-decorated grave monument

this image and the next one (2015) courtesy of  Jo Farb Fernandez

In the local cemetery Parroquial San Cristóbal, in 1963 Mateo created a funerary monument to commemorate the death of his father that year. It was later completed with decorations after the deaths of his mother and brother, and Mateo himself will also be buried there.

The monument is decorated in the same style with colorful trencadís and is surrounded by sculpted benches, wavy fences and flower pots.

Documentation

* Article (2014) by Jo Farb Hernandez on the website SPACES

* Article (2018) by Guillermo Cegarra Beltrí on his weblog Modernismo y Art Deco

Acacia Mateo

Decorated House

Calle Ortgea Melgares 15

Lorca, region Murcia, Spain

can be seen from the street

Google Streetview