Ramon Casas

RAMÓN CASAS CARBÓ (Barcelona, 1866 - 1932).
"Boer Paper", 1901.
Lithograph poster on cardboard.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Includes certificate of authenticity issued by Adrià Codina, descendant of the heirs of Ramon Casas Carbó.
Bibliography: Ramon Casas: Catàleg Complet / Volum I - Gothsland Galeria d'Art.
Work cited in the issues of La Vanguardia of December 25, 1901, p. 2; January 6, 1903, p.2Also cited in 37. UTRILLO, Miquel. "L'obra de Casas, Forma, I, number 9, 1904, p. 325.
Measurements: 51.5 x 36 cm; 74.5 x 56.5 cm (frame).

The one now being auctioned is a previously unpublished poster, never before published, which Miquel Utrillo came to consider one of the best by the artist. This copy is today the only known testimony of this magnificent composition, preserved for decades privately in the artistic collection of the painter's heirs.

The image shows a seated woman smoking a cigarette, elegantly dressed according to the fashion of the time in a long blue suit, a fur stole and a short-brimmed hat. In the background is the portrait of Paul Kruger, president of the South African Republic of the Transvaal and emblematic figure of the Anglo-Boer War, a conflict that aroused widespread sympathy in various European circles at the end of the 19th century. The presence of his effigy gives the poster a political and topical dimension, linking the advertised product to the Boer imaginary and to an evocative idea of resistance and international exoticism.

The work is fully inscribed within the modernist aesthetics and advertising language that established Ramón Casas as one of the great renovators of Spanish poster design in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It fully combines the characteristics of modernism, visible in the stylized elegance of the female figure, the decorative refinement, the sinuous lines and the careful formal synthesis. Likewise, the composition reflects the modernist taste for cosmopolitan sophistication and the integration between art, design and advertising, essential elements in the poster production of Ramón Casas.

A leading figure of modernism and one of the most internationally renowned Spanish artists of his time, Ramón Casas developed a decisive career between Barcelona and Paris, with an early presence at the Salon des Champs Elysées. His work is now part of the main public collections -Museo del Prado, MNAC, Museo Reina Sofía, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, among others-, confirming his position as an essential reference of modern portraiture and Spanish art collecting between centuries.