Garrote vil (Garrotte)

Garrote vil, painted by Ramon Casas in Barcelona in 1894, shows a public execution by the garrote, the method of strangulation used in Spain. In those years Casas had moved away from the crowd scenes that had produced works such as Las regatas, concentrating instead on portraits, interiors and the nude. Yet a public execution in Barcelona in 1893, which drew many onlookers, gave him material to record the city of his day, and the painting is usually seen as the start of his series of social chronicles. Casas avoids both denunciation and solemn rhetoric, presenting the scene with an almost photographic exactness from an elevated viewpoint that works like an eyewitness account. No single figure dominates; the victim is barely distinguishable between the executioner and the confessors, and the viewer's eye wanders over the crowd pressed around the scaffold. A tree in the foreground cuts across the view and even makes the scaffold hard to see, a detail that heightens the sense of being present on the spot. The work was shown at the Spanish National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1895, where it won a third medal and was bought by the state.

Painter

Ramon Casas

Date

1894

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

127 × 166 cm

Museum

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Movement

Art Nouveau

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