Ramon Casas

Barcelona, 1866

Ramon Casas i Carbó (Barcelona, 4 January 1866 – Barcelona, 29 February 1932) was a Catalan  artist. He was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, and beyond. He was also a graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme.

In 1877 he abandoned the regular course of schooling to study art. In 1881, still in his teens, he was a co-founder of the magazine L’Avenç. That same month, he began his first stay in Paris, where he studied that winter at the Carolus Duran Academy and later at the Gervex Academy, and functioned as a Paris correspondent for L’Avenç. The next year he had a piece exhibited in Barcelona and in 1883 in Paris the Salon des Champs Elysées exhibited his portrait of himself dressed as a flamenco dancer; the piece won him an invitation as a member of the salon of the Société d’artistes français.

The next few years he continued to paint and travel, spending most autumns and winters in...