Ramon Casas

RAMON CASAS CARBÓ (Barcelona, 1866 - 1932).
"Lady", ca.1900.
Mixed media (pastel and watercolor) on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
With "Pèl i Ploma" stamp in the lower corner.
Measurements: 30 x 22,5 cm; 49 x 41 cm (frame).

Drawing made by Ramon Casas for the artistic and literary magazine "Pèl i Ploma", of which 100 issues were published between 1899 and 1903. With great economy of means, energetic and spontaneous stroke, Casas captures with few and accurate touches of color and emphasis in the drawing the elegant aspect of a bourgeois lady of the dawn of the century, wearing a hat, wearing a green blouse of fresh tonality and sporting a shawl or scarf of the same carmine color as her lips. Casas achieves a perfect balance between energy and melancholy, the latter given by a dreamy slant in her eyes. The short hair, delicately outlined, suggests the image of an independent woman. It is a work closely linked to the graphic design of the time: the sinuous line, the chromatic sobriety and the attention to current themes coincide with the features of posters and illustrations for magazines. Casas himself financed the edition of "Pèl i Ploma", and was its artistic director and main illustrator, while Miquel Utrillo was in charge of the literary section and Emilio Galcerán was in charge of the administrative part. It was one of the most representative magazines of Catalan modernism, a driving force of this movement and a platform for the dissemination of modern art.

An outstanding painter and draftsman, Casas began painting as a disciple of Joan Vicens. In 1881 he made his first trip to Paris, where he completed his training at the Carolus Duran and Gervex academies. The following year he participated for the first time in an exhibition at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, and in 1883 he presented a self-portrait at the Salon des Champs Elysées in Paris, which earned him an invitation to become a member of the Salon de la Societé d'Artistes Françaises. He spent the following years traveling and painting between Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Granada. In 1886, suffering from tuberculosis, he settled in Barcelona to recover. There he came into contact with Santiago Rusiñol, Eugène Carrière and Ignacio Zuloaga. After a trip through Catalonia with Rusiñol in 1889, Casas returned to Paris with his friend. The following year he took part in a group exhibition at the Sala Parés, together with Rusiñol and Clarasó, and in fact the three of them continued to hold joint exhibitions there until Rusiñol's death in 1931. His works at this time are halfway between academicism and French impressionism, in a sort of germ of what would later become Catalan modernism. His fame continued to spread throughout Europe, and he held successful exhibitions in Madrid and Berlin, as well as participating in the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Casas settled permanently in Barcelona, immersed in the modernist environment, although he continued to travel to Paris for the annual salons. He financed the premises that would become a point of reference for the modernists, the café Els Quatre Gats, inaugurated in 1897. Two years later he organized his first individual exhibition at the Sala Parés. While his fame as a painter grew, Casas began to work as a graphic designer, adopting the Art Nouveau style that came to define Catalan Modernisme. In the following years his successes followed: he presented two works at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, won a prize in Munich in 1901, several of his works were included in the permanent exhibition of the Círculo del Liceo, had several international exhibitions and, in 1904, won first prize at the General Exhibition in Madrid. He is represented in the Prado Museum, the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, the Reina Sofia National Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Museum of Montserrat, the Cau Ferrat in Sitges, the Camón Aznar Museum in Zaragoza and the Contemporary Art Museums of Barcelona and Seville, among many others.