Rusiñol, life like a garden

Imagine being born in Barcelona in 1861, very, very rich, into a family of industrialists. Any activity you can think of you can do it without problems for a lifetime.

This happened to Santiago Rusiñol i Prats who chose to be a painter.

Rusiñol was self-taught in the sense that he attended private schools which, of course, he could afford without any problem. Positive, enthusiastic and curious character, he absorbed and was interested in every new aspect in ideas and art.

He was a writer, journalist, wrote plays for the theater, tourist guides and they were all successful activities because he had the ability to be in tune with the public.

In painting he experimented with modern techniques and styles, eventually coming to favor gardens as a subject. He wrote: "Gardens are a landscape represented in verse".

In Paris he was fascinated by the environment of Montmartre and by the meeting of artists at the café "Le Chat Noir" (The Black Cat), so much so that when he returned to Spain he financed the café in Barcelona "Els Quatre Gats" (The four cats), because there were four artists who initially participated in the initiative.

Rusiñol's initiative quickly became the reference center for all emerging artists and it was here that a talented young man named Pablo Picasso.

Rusiñol's painting is luminous and well composed, glimpses and cuts of light capture the eye, leading the observer to scrutinize the canvas as if it were a landscape, a window on subjects where nature and man collaborate and integrate, taking each other by the hand towards beauty.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini