Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu in a Motor Car
In 1901, this painting replaced another one in which the same characters are depicted riding a tandem bicycle and that used to decorate Els Quatre Gats since its inauguration in 1897. Casas managed to make the image transmit the feeling of movement thanks to the attitude of the two characters as well as the wheels of the car, in which the spokes are not visible. The artist might have chosen to depict himself driving a car because not only is it a vehicle much more representative of the 20th Century than the bike, but also because he was very keen on motorcars. In regard to the artistic language, this artwork withdraws from conventional painting and gets close to the poster image. This is not strange, since Casas was one of the best poster designers of the Catalan modernism art.
This work has been selected for the project 'Partage Plus – Digitising and Enabling Art Nouveau for Europeana'
Barcelona, 1901
208 x 291 cm
Permanent loan by the Generalitat de Catalunya, Abadal settlement, 2010
214453-000