When Catalan artist Carles Casagemas invited friends for dinner on February 17, 1901, no one realised it would be a last supper.
After the meal, fortified by wine and absinthe, he turned to Laure “Germaine” Gargallo, a model who had become a favourite subject for both him and his close friend Pablo Picasso. Casagemas had fallen for Gargallo, but while Picasso had taken up with her friend Louise “Odette” Lenoir, Casagemas had proved physically unable to consummate his own relationship. As it ended, he fell into a severe depression.
Now, at the Café de l’Hippodrome on the Boulevard de Clichy, Casagemas asked Laure if she would marry him. When she said she would not, he produced a pistol and fired a shot towards her, but missed. Then he pointed the pistol to his own right temple and pulled the trigger.
It was a shocking and shattering moment for a group of young, determined painters and writers from Catalonia, primarily Barcelona, who had made their homes in Paris, then the capital of the modernist art world. Their lives centred around Montmartre and Montparnasse, where they shared apartments and studios and met up in bars, cafes, brothels and nightclubs.
They immersed themselves in the Parisian demi-monde and painted what they experienced – as seen in La morfinòmana (The Morphine Addict), painted in 1894 by the superb portraitist Santiago Rusiñol. With some exceptions, including Casagemas, they largely succeeded, supporting each other as a group.
La persevança tot ho alcança (perseverance achieves everything), is a Catalan proverb that well describes what they must have faced – the struggles to learn French, to forge new connections in the city’s theatres, to support themselves while continuing to make progress with their own work. It was a continuation of their lives in Barcelona, pushing through new art, literature and music.
Casagemas was part of grup bohemi-barceloní (the Barcelona-Bohemian Group) and with others including the non-Catalan Picasso, joined a community of talented expatriate Catalans in Montmartre. An exhibition at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona focuses on these groups.
Rusiñol and Ramón Casas were among the first to move to Paris in the 1880s; Isidre Nonell – a huge influence on Casagemas – followed with Pere (Pedro) Mañach, a Barcelona art dealer and industrialist who proved willing and able to promote their work, for a fee.
The Museu Picasso show is a reminder of how many Catalan artists were operating in Paris around the turn of the century, pushing into the new wave of contemporary art, and creating paintings of Flamenco dancers, bullfights and circus performers – all popular subjects for collectors – and also modernist en plein air views of the City of Light.
Today, we associate the French capital with street views by Monet, Manet and Caillebotte. Less familiar but no less impressive are works in the exhibition by Andreu Solà Vidal (Notre Dame de Paris des del Quai de la Tournelle, 1890), Casas (Plein Air, 1890-91, and Interior del Moulin de la Galette, c1890-91), Hermen Anglada Camarasa (the luscious Le Paon Blanc, or White Peacock (1904) and Pere Ysern Alié (Moulin Rouge, c1913).
All reveal different experiences and are symbolic of a prolific period of progressive art created by Catalans in Paris from 1889-1914, until world war interrupted.
The exodus was symbolic of a cultural connection between Barcelona and Paris, which had been linked by direct train since 1878. That same year saw the first of three Universal Expositions that gave international exposure to Catalan art.
By 1884 Catalan modernism was recognised as an avant-garde art movement, with Rusiñol and Casas exhibiting in Paris with the Société des Artistes Indépendants, launched that year as an alternative to the official Paris Salon. The Catalans featured alongside French avant-garde artists including Paul Signac, Georges Seurat and Odilon Redon.
In 1897, Rusiñol and Casas would be two of the “four cats” involved in opening Els Quatre Gats tavern in Barcelona, which staged exhibitions, concerts and poetry readings in the modernist Casa Martí building. Its name was inspired by Le Chat Noir, a celebrated Montmartre cabaret club.
Two years later, Picasso held his first show there and although not a local, the Andalucían became a friend to the Catalan modernists, sharing an apartment on Carrer Riera de Sant Joan in Barcelona with Casagemas.
By 1900, a second generation of Catalans known as the Colla del Safrà (Saffron) group – which featured warm yellow tones in their paintings – took their work to Paris, while Picasso had a painting chosen for the Universal Exposition there. He travelled with Casagemas to see the show, staying in the vacated apartment of their friend Nonell, who introduced Picasso – who spoke no French – to art dealers.
The expositions brought tourist collectors of contemporary art, including Russians and Americans, who had been buying Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas but now invested in Cézanne, Rusiñol, Casas, Matisse, and Picasso.
In the Museu Picasso exhibition – brimming with art, literature, music and film – what stands out are not only the portrayals of bohemian life, but the portraits created by this close community of one another. There is Rusiñol’s full-length portrait of Miquel Utrillo (another of the Quatre Gats) from 1889-90, and Eugène Carrière’s Portrait of Pau Casals (1903), a study of the cellist and composer.
Another highlight of the exhibition is Picasso’s Waiting (Margot), painted in Paris in the May and June of 1901 for a gallery show organised by Pere Mañach.
By then Casagemas was dead. Picasso, who had fallen out with his friend on a visit to Barcelona shortly before the suicide, did not return for the funeral. He came back in May to paint in the studio he had shared with Casagemas, visited Café de l’Hippodrome and fell into an affair with Gargallo, who moved into the studio to murmurs of disapproval from the Catalan set.
After Picasso moved on, Germaine married the Catalan artist Ramón Pichot in 1906. They lived in Montmartre, opening a restaurant, La Maison Rose, in his studio. His portrait of her, Germaine (1900) is in the Museu Picasso show.
When Pichot died suddenly in 1925, Picasso included him as one of the trio of figures in Three Dancers. The others are said to be Germaine Gargallo and Carles Casagemas, reunited at last.
From Montmartre to Montparnasse: Catalan Artists in Paris, 1889-1914 runs until March 30 at the Museu Picasso, Barcelona
