A garden in the Putxet, the garden of a neoclassical tower from 1900, was the paradise that Olga Sakharov and Otto Lloyd found in Barcelona. The couple were fleeing World War I when they settled in the city and some twenty years later, when they rented this house, Franco had already crushed Republican Spain.
The best years of his life were spent in this garden and in this house located at number 3 Manacor street.
Olga was a Russian from Tbilisi and Otto an Englishman from London. Her families had money. They met on Capri and lived in bohemian Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. They were painters. Together they explored the paths opened by cubism.
The international community was numerous in the Barcelona of 1916. Between Vallcarca and Putxet many intellectuals and artists rented the summer houses of the local bourgeoisie. Otto and Olga became friends, for example, with Francis Picabia who lived on Calle República Argentina.
Otto was the nephew of Óscar Wilde and brother of the poet Arthur Cravan with whom he shared his fondness for boxing. On April 23, 1916 Cravan faced American heavyweight Jack Johnson in the Monumental bullring. The fight was rigged. Cravan came drunk to the ring and dropped to the canvas in the sixth round. He resisted the minimum that the contract required. Otto helped him to his feet and recover. The anecdote reflects the strength of the characters who ended up in Barcelona while Europe was sinking into barbarism.
Olga and Otto settled in El Putxet during the republic and there they adapted to Francoism. The garden was his refuge. They rarely came out. They preferred to receive their friends at home, a group of illustrated Catalan women: Artigas, Mompou, Seix, Llimona, Masoliver, Mallol, Rebull, Viñas, Millàs, Raurell, Villa... Olga cooked and if time permitted they ate sitting between the terraces of the garden.
The terrain is very vertical and the vegetation is stratified. Walls and balustrades order the space. There are eucalyptus, mimosas, fainting, some palm tree at the top, vines and aspidistras. A staircase divides the garden in two, both in front and behind the house. The plants surround it and are preserved as in the days of Olga and Otto.
The colla artists were realists. They did not catch the abstraction train. They felt somewhat left behind.
Olga painted without artifice, but with great formal perfection. She preferred portraits and flowers. The innocence that her canvases gave off did not deserve the support of critics. Her beauty was very delicate, too feminine for the taste of experts. They did not appreciate Olga's intention for her harmony, her search for purity, her effort to strip her characters of the burdens of her life.
Otto was photographing the garden. They were sensual photos, full of nostalgia and emotion. In some there were dancers and in others, a naked woman.
Otto Lloyd did not consider himself a photographer. He insisted that he was a painter even though he spent more time with the camera than with the brushes. He hoped that a museum would acquire his work and at that time photography was not considered an art. His life was not very artistic. He looked more like a merchant who was fond of speed, of motorbikes and cars, of racing in the Arrabassada.
The house has two floors on a ground floor, as well as an attic. Olga decorated it with Persian rugs and various paraphernalia that she found in the Els Encants market. She there she installed her studio, just like Otto her laboratory. They had no children, but did have several cats and a Great Dane named Dicki.
At the beginning of the fifties, Olga and Otto left the Putxet house again in the hands of its owner, Joaquima Fina, a woman from Palafrugell, a friend of Josep Pla.
The architects then entered to make reforms: Nicolau Rubió and Tudurí intervened in the garden, while Francesc Mitjans and José Antonio Coderch did it inside.
The house continued to be a magnet for local intellectuals. Eugeni d'Ors, Américo Castro, José Vergés y Rubió and Tudurí were regulars. They were trying to transcend the vacuum of ideas that Francoism had opened.
The house is now occupied by Helena Rosa, Joaquima Fina's granddaughter. The architects have restored the splendor of the first day. The interior spaces have been modernized, but the house has not lost its spirit. It remains a balcony over the city, a refuge above the noise. Helena appreciates "the inertia that she has to preserve herself." The passage of time has not distanced it from its initial purpose as a place of recreation and contemplation. Barcelona continues at its feet, just like the sea and the sky are still struggling to share the blue background.
