Ramon Martí

Alsina, Barcelona-born painter was one of the most important figures of artistic realism in Catalonia and Spain. He was born in 1826, and due to family pressure, he was forced to study philosophy, although he attended night classes at the Lonja School, where he learned from teachers such as Claudio Lorenzale or Lluís Rigalt.At the beginning of the 1850s, he participated in the organization of exhibitions with the Association of Friends of the Fine Arts of Barcelona, which he also combined with the work of a professor of figure at the Escuela de la Lonja, as well as that of a private teacher. However, at that time he made a trip that influenced his painting enormously: in 1855, he visited Paris to see the World's Fair and discovered works from the Barbizon School and Gustave Courbet. From that moment on, the work of Martí Alsina took a turn, and in 1858 he appeared at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, organized in Madrid, where he came third with the work Estudi del Natural. The following year, in 1859, he was called an academic of what is now known as the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi, and in 1860 he joined the Ateneu Català (currently the Ateneu Barcelonès), of which he came to preside over the Fine Arts section in the last years of his life. He was commissioned to paint three panels to decorate the ceiling of the Liceu after the first fire in 1861, although these works disappeared with the second fire, in 1994. Martí Alsina was a prolific artist who tackled a great multitude of genres: historical, allegorical and costumbrist themes, as well as portraits, female nudes and still lifes. However, the influence that Courbet's painting had on his work can be seen in the fact that Martí Alsina stood out above all for his extraordinary landscapes and seascapes, where he demonstrated a great mastery of color and technique. In this genre, he abandons the romantic topic, giving way to evident pictorial realism, defending reality as the only source of inspiration.