A purist is mentioned as someone whose orality or writing is traditional, without resorting to foreign terms or neologisms.
Purist is an adjective that is linked to purity or what is pure (that is, to that which is not mixed with something different or that maintains the original essence). The concept is usually used to name the individual whose writing or orality is precise and traditional, excluding neologisms and foreign terms .
For example: “This writer is a language purist: his texts are neat, with elegant prose” , “I do not consider myself a purist, but I do not understand the way of speaking that young people today have” , “The man, a purist of his language, he complained about the journalist's lexicon."
Examples of purists
Let's see with a specific case how purism works. A person may indicate: “I'm going to go to the shopping center to buy a mouse for my notebook.” The phrase, which can be understood without problems in Spanish, includes several foreign words. A purist, on the other hand, would express himself in the following way: “I'm going to go to the mall to buy a mouse for my laptop” or “I'm going to go to the mall to buy a mouse for my laptop.”
Purists are also those who claim that a discipline , a doctrine , a method or a custom remain unchanged despite the passing of the years. A tango purist may oppose the use of electric guitars in the genre, to name one possibility. A traditional cinema purist, for his part, does not agree that eating can be done inside the theater since the noise modifies the classic ritual.
The term in photography
Within the field of photography, we can also determine that the term purist is used.
Specifically, in this case the adjective is used to refer to the professional of said artistic discipline who refuses to use computer retouching programs. That is to say, he is an individual who at all times opts for the snapshots to not be altered in any way by digital technique.
The Hospital de las Cinco Llagas, current headquarters of the Parliament of Andalusia, is a purist work.
Purist architects
In addition to everything stated so far, we cannot ignore that purist is what the artists who carried out the architectural style known as purism were called. This was developed in Spain , during the period between 1530 and 1560 , and was presented as an aspect within the Renaissance style . Its basis was none other than making use of simple forms, a notable harmony of proportions and a palpable balance , without falling, for example, into the decorative “excesses” that Plateresque did have.
Precisely those bases on which purism was based were what led purist architects to design buildings of all types using simple elements such as barrel vaults or semicircular arches, among others.
Andalusia and Castilla y León are where most examples of beautiful works of purism can be found. Thus, among the most significant and spectacular are the Palace of Charles V in Granada, which is located within the Alhambra and was built by Pedro Machuca , or the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas in Seville, by Martín de Gainza , which today is the headquarters of the Andalusian Parliament .