Ramon Casas was one of the most distinguished artists in Catalan modernism. An excellent painter, draughtsman and poster artist he soon felt a strong attraction to painting and the cultural movements that were happening in Barcelona at the time. When he was just eleven years old, he began studying art with Vicens Cots and later, on his first trip to Paris, he was welcomed by the famous painter Carolus Duran. He was also a co-founder of the Pèl & Ploma and Forma arts and literary magazines, and financed, along with Pere Romeu, Santiago Rusiñol and Miquel Utrillo, Els Quatre Gats, a Parisian-style bistro in Barcelona that became a meeting place for artists and intellectuals of the time. In terms of his work, both in capturing everyday scenes and events, as well as his posters and charcoal portraits, Ramon Casas’ unmistakable strike, influenced by Japanese art and French impressionists, transcends the limits of the prevailing academicism to endow the bodies with rhythmic and natural movements which, combined with a composition on the plane free of adornments and visual obstacles, captures the essential beauty of his subjects, whether in their gaze, smiles, the flow of their hair, or even just in the position of a hand emerging from a random line.
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