CASAS I CARBÓ, Ramón

Ramon Casas i Carbó was a Spanish (Catalan) painter. He was famous for his portraits, caricatures and paintings of the high society, intellectual, economic and political life of Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. He also became famous for his paintings of riots in the streets of Barcelona. He was a graphic designer and his posters and postcards helped him to define the Catalan art movement known as modernism.

From an early age, he showed an aptitude for drawing, but evinced very little interest in his regular studies. By the age of twelve, he had quit school, and, with the encouragement of his father, had enrolled in the atelier of Joan Vicens (1820-1886), who operated what was considered the best studio in Barcelona at that time. For the next three years, Casas studied with Vicens, acquiring a solid foundation in technical painting skills.

From 1881 he frequently visited Paris where he began his studies with Charles Auguste Émile Durand, better known as Carolus-Duran. In the 1880s, he gathered a circle of fellow Spanish artists about him, many of whom he met while he continued his studies in France at the Académie Gervex, the school in which he enrolled after leaving the atelier of Carolus-Duran. Casas’ art from this period became heavily influenced by the movements occurring in Paris. In the 1990s, he brought home with him to Barcelona the concepts he garnered in Paris. Later he split his métier between his successful painting output, and his graphic designs for poster art.