Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu in an Automobile

Ramon Casas painted himself and his friend and business partner Pere Romeu in an automobile in 1901, replacing an earlier version of the composition that had shown the two men on a tandem bicycle. The substitution of the car for the bicycle marked the rapid pace of technological change at the century's turn and signalled Casas's awareness of modernity as subject matter. Casas was the leading figure of Catalan Modernisme and a co-founder of the famous Els Quatre Gats café in Barcelona where Picasso launched his career. The work now at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya became an emblem of the spirit of the Barcelona avant-garde and the embrace of modern urban life.

Casas uses a bold, flat compositional approach with the car filling most of the picture plane, echoing poster design aesthetics he had refined through years of printmaking. The figures are rendered with confident, simplified line and subtle tonal modelling. A pale background landscape opens behind, giving the machine and its passengers a monumental, emblematic quality.