Foreshortened female nude

"Casas also dealt with the genre of nude for a short period of time during his long artistic career, mainly from 1893 to 1894 but with some exceptions. So this topic was not abundant in his pictorial production. Three of the female nude that we know painted by Casas belong to the collection of his friend Santiago Rusiñol and are placed in Cau Ferrat.

Ramon Casas nudes are works where the painter look and realization falls almost exclusively on the nude figure, looking for in the positioning of the model complex positions that create quite original points of view. Figure doesn’t belong to an argument nor to a story, it is a simply beauty exaltation. Bodies take up all the space and the painter gaze it is never a frontal view, but it is solved, using photographic language terminology, from a lower or upper point of view. In summary these nudes are certainly not academic at all and they are really far away from the painting that a narrative or incidental fact is the necessary pretext to introduce the presence of a woman naked figure.

Realism, Naturalism and Impressionism derivations, gave nude its own personality, but this was certainly not accepted by those who had a traditionalist moral. In fact, we must remind that a Ramon Casas nude was removed from an exhibition in the “Ateneu Barcelonès” on the year 1893."