| Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Ramon Casas i Carbó |
| Year | 1897 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Location | Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona |
Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem is a painting by Ramon Casas in exhibition at the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona.
Casas painted Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem in 1897 specifically for the interior of Els Quatre Gats, a bar that was at the center of the Modernisme art movement in Barcelona. [1] It depicts Casas and Pere Romeu, one of the promoters of Els Quatre Gats , on a tandem bicycle against the Barcelona skyline. Casas is seen in profile with his pipe, while Romeu looks directly at the viewer. [2] Although painted on canvas, the composition has the graphic quality of a huge poster with its bold drawing and simplified forms, reflecting the fact that the artist was a skilled poster designer and illustrator. [3]
The original inscription in Catalan on the right side of the painting, which was later cut off, read "to ride a bicycle, you can't go with your back straight." [1] The message described the attitude of the bar founders (two of whom are depicted here), that in order to make progress, you must break with tradition, as was done at Els Quatre Gats. In 1901, this painting was replaced with another large composition by Casas, entitled Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu in an Automobile , in which the tandem bicycle has given way to a car, symbolizing the new century. [1] When reproductions of the two paintings appeared in the magazine Pel & Ploma , they were referred to as The End of the 19th Century and The Beginning of the 20th Century, respectively. [4]
Ramon Casas i Carbó was a Catalan artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona, he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris, and beyond; he was also known for his paintings of crowd scenes ranging from the audience at a bullfight to the assembly for an execution to rioters in the Barcelona streets. His posters and postcards helped define the Modernisme art movement.
The emerging Modernisme art movement gained a center with the opening of Els Quatre Gats, a bar modeled on the Parisian café Le Chat Noir, whose founder, Rodolphe Salis, had recently died. “Four Cats” is a colloquial Catalan expression for “only a few people” and the name of Els Quatre Gats is derived from this saying. [5] Casas largely financed the bar on the ground floor of Casa Martí, a building by Architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch on Montsió Street near the center of Barcelona; it opened on June 12, 1897 and closed in 1903 (and was later reconstructed in 1978). His partners in the enterprise were Pere Romeu, as well as Santiago Rusiñol and Miquel Utrillo. The bar organized tertulias and revolving art exhibits, including the first -man shows by Pablo Picasso; Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem was the most prominent piece in its permanent collection. [6]
Modernisme (Catalan for "art nouveau") was a cultural movement associated with the search for Catalan national identity. It is often understood as an equivalent to a number of fin-de-siècle art movements, such as Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Secessionism, and Liberty style, and was active from roughly 1888 (the First International Exhibition of Barcelona) to 1911 (the death of Joan Maragall, the most important Modernista poet). The Modernisme movement was centered on the city of Barcelona, and is best known for its architectural expression, especially the work of Antoni Gaudí, but was also significant in sculpture, poetry, theater, and painting.
| Year | Museum or gallery | City | Title | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1897-1900 | Els Quatre Gats | Barcelona | ||
| 1958 | Palau de la Virreina | Barcelona | Ramon Casas | |
| 1969 | Casón del Buen Retiro | Madrid | El Modernismo en España | |
| 1970 | Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art | Barcelona | El Modernismo en España | |
| 1978 | Princeton University Art Museum | Princeton | Els Quatre Gats. Art in Barcelona around 1900 | [7] |
| 1978 | Smithsonian Institution | Washington, D.C. | Els Quatre Gats. Art in Barcelona around 1900 | [7] |
| 1979 | Palazzo Medici Riccardi | Florence | Picasso e dintorni. I Quattro Gatti. Il Modernismo catalano | |
| 1980 | Palacio de Velázquez | Madrid | Cien años de cultura catalana 1880–1980 | |
| 1981–1982 | Saló del Tinell | Barcelona | Picasso i Barcelona 1881–1981 | |
| 1982 | Museum of Modern Art, Madrid | Madrid | Picasso i Barcelona 1881–1981 | |
| 1982 | Museu Picasso | Barcelona | Picasso i Barcelona 1881–1981 | |
| 1982 | Palau de la Virreina | Barcelona | Exposicion Ramon Casas | |
| 1983 | Barcelona Museum of Modern Art | Barcelona | Els Autoretrats del Museu d'Art Modern | |
| 1984 | Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux | Bordeaux | 50 ans d'art espagnol 1880–1936 | |
| 1985–1986 | Hayward Gallery | London | Homage to Barcelona. The city and its art 1888–1936 | [8] |
| 1987 | Palau de la Virreina | Barcelona | Homage to Barcelona. The city and its art 1888–1936 | [8] |
| 1987 | The Prefectural Museum of Modern Art | Kobe | Homage to Barcelona. The city and its art 1888–1936 | [8] |
| 1987 | The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura | Kamakura | Homage to Barcelona. The city and its art 1888–1936 | [8] |
| 1987 | Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu | Gifu | Homage to Barcelona. The city and its art 1888–1936 | [8] |
| 1990–1991 | Barcelona Museum of Modern Art | Barcelona | El Modernisme | |
| 1992 | Palau Robert | Barcelona | Art i esport a Catalunya | |
| 1995–1996 | Museu Picasso | Barcelona | Picasso i els 4 Gats. La clau de la modernitat | |
| 2001 | National Art Museum of Catalonia | Barcelona | Ramon Casas. El pintor del moderinsme | [9] |
| 2001 | Mapfre Vida Cultural Foundation | Madrid | Ramon Casas. El pintor del moderinsme | [9] |
| 2001 | Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais | Paris | Paris Barcelone de Gaudi a Miró | |
| 2002 | Museu Picasso | Barcelona | Paris Barcelona 1888–1937 | |
| 2006–2007 | Cleveland Museum of Art | Cleveland | Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudi, Miró, and Dalí | [10] |
| 2007 | Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York | Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudi, Miró, and Dalí | [10] |
Modernisme, also known as Catalan modernism and Catalan art nouveau, is the historiographic denomination given to an art and literature movement associated with the search of a new entitlement of Catalan culture, one of the most predominant cultures within Spain. Nowadays, it is considered a movement based on the cultural revindication of a Catalan identity. Its main form of expression was Modernista architecture, but it also encompassed many other arts, such as painting and sculpture, and especially the design and the decorative arts, which were particularly important, especially in their role as support to architecture. Modernisme was also a literary movement.
Josep Puig i Cadafalch was a Catalan Modernista architect who designed many significant buildings in Barcelona, and a politician who had a significant role in the development of Catalan institutions. He was the architect of the Casa Martí, which became a place of ideas, projects and social gatherings for such well-known Catalans as Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas.
Lluís Domènech i Montaner was a Spanish architect who was highly influential on Modernisme català, the Catalan Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movement. He was also a Catalan politician.
Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was a Spanish painter, poet, journalist, collector and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan modernisme movement. He created more than a thousand paintings and wrote numerous works in Catalan and Spanish.
Ramon Casas i Carbó was a Catalan artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona, he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, and beyond. He was also known for his paintings of crowd scenes ranging from the audience at a bullfight to the assembly for an execution to rioters in the Barcelona streets. Also a graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme.
The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, abbreviated as MNAC, is a museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Situated on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina, near Pl Espanya, the museum is especially notable for its outstanding collection of romanesque church paintings, and for Catalan art and design from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including modernisme and noucentisme. The museum is housed in the Palau Nacional, a huge, Italian-style building dating to 1929. The Palau Nacional, which has housed the Museu d'Art de Catalunya since 1934, was declared a national museum in 1990 under the Museums Law passed by the Catalan Government. That same year, a thorough renovation process was launched to refurbish the site, based on plans drawn up by the architects Gae Aulenti and Enric Steegmann, who were later joined in the undertaking by Josep Benedito. The Oval Hall was reopened in 1992 on the occasion of the Olympic Games, and the various collections were installed and opened over the period from 1995 to 2004. The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya was officially inaugurated on 16 December 2004. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.
Passeig de Gràcia is one of the major avenues in Barcelona (Catalonia) and one of its most important shopping and business areas, containing several of the city's most celebrated pieces of architecture. It is located in the central part of Eixample, stretching from Plaça Catalunya to Carrer Gran de Gràcia.
Els Quatre Gats is a café in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain that famously became a popular meeting place for famous artists throughout the modernist period in Catalonia, known as Modernisme. The café opened on 12 June 1897 in the famous Casa Martí, and served as a hostel, bar and cabaret until it eventually became a central meeting point for Barcelona’s most prominent modernist figures, such as Pablo Picasso and Ramon Casas i Carbó. The bar closed due to financial difficulties in June 1903, but was reopened and eventually restored to its original condition in 1989.
The Casa Martí is a modernista building designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch in 1896, having been commissioned by relatives of Francesc Vilumara, a textile magnate. It stands at Carrer Montsió, 3, Barcelona.
Alexandre de Riquer i Ynglada, 7th Count of Casa Dávalos, was a versatile artist intellectual and Catalan designer, illustrator, painter, engraver, writer and poet. He was one of the leading figures of Modernisme in Catalonia. He belonged to an aristocratic family, the Counts of Casa Dávalos. His father, Martí de Riquer, Marquis of Benavent, was a senior leader of the Carlists of Catalonia, while his mother, Elisea Ynglada, belonged to a family of intellectuals and artists.
Joan Brull i Vinyoles was a Catalan painter active in the late 19th century. He was a Catalan symbolist painter, along with other artists including Adrià Gual, Josep Maria Tamburini, and Alexandre de Riquer.
Ricard Opisso (1880–1966) was a Catalan cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and painter.
Salon Pedal is a color lithograph on paper designed in 1897 by the Catalan artist Alexandre de Riquer. The print's design evokes the decorative style seen in Modernisme art. The artwork is in the collection of Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, in Barcelona.
Over My Dead Body, 1893, is a painting by Ramon Casas, in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona.
Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu in an Automobile is a painting by Ramón Casas that is exhibited at the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona. It features two people in an early car.
Casa Trinxet was a building designed by the Catalan Modernisme architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch and built during the years 1902–1904, officially considered completed in 1904. It was located at the crossroads of Carrer Balmes and Carrer del Consell de Cent, in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Casa Trinxet was "one of the jewels of Barcelona Modernisme" and one of the buildings of Barcelona's Illa de la Discòrdia, because of competing attitudes among Domènech i Montaner, Puig i Cadafalch and Antoni Gaudí.
Joaquin Mir Trinxet or Joaquin Mir y Trinxet was a Catalan artist known for his use of color in his paintings. He lived through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona. His paintings helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme.
Lluïsa Vidal i Puig was a painter. Raised in a well-off family closely related to Catalan modernist circles, she is known as the only professional women painter of Catalan modernism, and one of the few women of that period who went abroad to receive art lessons.
Pèl & Ploma was a Catalan artistic and literary journal that published 100 issues within four years between the dates of June 3, 1899 and December 1, 1903. Catalan artists Ramón Casas and Miquel Utrillo ran the publication together, based out of the city of Barcelona. Casas financed the publication as well as provided the majority of covers, illustrations, and advertisements for each issue, while Utrillo directed the publication's literary components.
Alex Clapés was a Catalan modernisme artist. He was one of the less known painters in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Catalonia, Spain. He was born in Vilassar de Dalt on September 10, 1850. He died in Barcelona in 1920. He is most known for performing some commissions for the Güell family, thanks to his friend and colleague, Antoni Gaudí.
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