Ramon Casas lands in Madrid with the most comprehensive exhibition outside Catalonia

Ramon Casas, a long yearned modernity, written in Catalan, became Ramon Casas, la modernidad anhelada. Yesterday, CaixaForum Madrid inaugurated the exhibition of Casas, which includes most of the works already seen at Museu Maricel de Sitges, though with some variations. The exhibition is organized by Obra Social "la Caixa", the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and Museus de Sitges and can be seen until June 11. The exhibition will travel to Palma next July.

Ramon Casas, a long yearned modernity, was presented yesterday in society and was inaugurated today. The opening ceremony convoked a wide representation of institutional and cultural Madrid. Also attended by Mayor, Miquel Forns, and the Director of Museums of Sitges, Vinyet Panyella. Forns stressed "after the success in Sitges, the Madrid exhibition is an excellent opportunity to publicize the work of Casas and modernists beyond Catalonia, and also reaffirms the commitment of Sitges to exercise their importance as cultural capital. " For her part, Panyella stresses the gigantic jump represented by the commemoration of the Year Ramon Casas for the life and works of the artist, who is now better known and most notable for the entire population. The opening of the exhibition has been widely followed by the media as one of the leading cultural events of the season in the Spanish capital.

The exhibition follows the same pattern held in Sitges. In fact, the curators are the same (Ignasi Domenech, head of Museum Collections Sitges) and Francesc Quílez (MNAC collections coordinator). As the Museu de Maricel, the exhibition is divided into five themes: Building an artistic identity, the bohemian impulse, the paradox of the modern artist, the poetry of the crowd and mixed identities.

The number of exhibits in Madrid (203) is slightly higher than in Sitges (which was 187), since the exhibition space is also larger. In Madrid there are some works that have never been seen in Sitges, but there are others who have returned to their collections of origin after being exhibited in Museu de Maricel. The artists present in the exhibition are first class: Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, John Singer Sargent, Julio Romero de Torres, Joaquin Sorolla, Carolus-Duran, Joaquim Torres-García, Santiago Rusiñol and obviously Ramon Casas.

The exhibition in Madrid shows the most famous and iconic work of Casas, “the tandem”, which is part of the collections of the MNAC and that has abandoned these facilities for the second time in his life (the previous was the Metropolitan in New York). The oil dominates one of the rooms of CaixaForum Madrid. In addition to MNAC and Cau Ferrat, the exhibition  hosts  pieces from museums such as the Uffizi Gallery of Florence; or the Musée Picasso of Paris; Augustinians of Toulouse; Bordeaux Fine Arts; Bilbao Fine Arts; the Prado, Reina Sofia and Sorolla in Madrid or Picasso of Barcelona, among others.

The exhibition at CaixaForum is complemented with parallel activities such as a conference today pronounced by curators, children’s workshops, guided tours and visits with coffee-gathering.