Casas-Rusiñol
Two modernist visions

14 November 2014 - 1 March 2015
Ramon Casas

Portrait of Mercedes Llorach

1901 Oil on canvas, 73 x 61 cm Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Gift of the heirs of Mercedes Llorach, 2013
Portrait of Mercedes Llorach
Santiago Rusiñol

Green Wall. Sa Coma V

1904 Oil on canvas, 95 x 105 cm Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Green Wall. Sa Coma V
Ramón Casas

Julia

ca. 1915 Oil on canvas, 85 x 67 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection on loan to the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga
Julia
Santiago Rusiñol

Gardens of Monforte

ca. 1917 Oil on canvas, 91 x 129.5 cm BBVA collection
Gardens of Monforte

Separate Ways

Personal tastes led them to each favour different subjects, despite their friendship and shared artistic experiences. Casas preferred to paint figures, mainly female, which ended up becoming his signature images: nudes, women lying on a bed, chulas in Manila shawls, portraits of bourgeois ladies and above all Julia, his companion and wife and the undisputed main subject of his works for several decades. Rusiñol, for his part, adopted melancholic, solitary gardens imbued with a symbolist poetic and atmosphere as the leitmotif of his output, which earned him considerable fame and national and international success, especially the series of Gardens of Spain painted during his travels around various parts of the country.