Flors desfullades

Flors desfullades (Flores deshojadas, or Stripped Roses) is an 1894 oil on canvas by Ramón Casas, a leading figure of Catalan Modernisme. It shows a young nude woman lying on the floor, surrounded by roses whose petals have been torn away. That detail, which gives the painting its title, works as a symbol of the violence she has suffered. The high, overhead viewpoint places her in a position of helplessness that heightens the drama of the scene.

The painting is commonly read as a denunciation of a specific social problem. In the late nineteenth century a mistaken medical belief held that a man infected with syphilis could be cured by having sex with a virgin, and this idea was linked to a rise in assaults on adolescent girls. The work belongs to a group of female nudes Casas painted that same year, showing women in foreshortened, huddled poses. Such subjects were new in his career, which had begun only a year earlier.

Shown at the General Fine Arts Exhibition in Barcelona in 1894, the painting caused a major scandal and found no buyer. Casas ended up giving it to his friend, the composer Isaac Albéniz, to whom he dedicated it with a Catalan inscription. It is now regarded as one of the artist's boldest works.

Painter

Ramon Casas

Date

1894

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

80 × 101 cm

Movement

Catalan modernism

Genre

genre art

Depicts

rose, petal, nudity, mons pubis, waist-length hair, teenager, pubic hair removal, black hair

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