Santiago Rusiñol
1861–1931
Biography
Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was born in Barcelona in 1861 and died at Aranjuez, south of Madrid, in 1931. He worked as a painter, poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and collector, and he wrote in both Catalan and Spanish. He was among the central names of Catalan Modernisme, the movement that sought a modern and urban voice in the arts at the turn of the twentieth century.
His output was very large. He is credited with more than a thousand paintings and with roughly a hundred literary titles, besides a great many articles for newspapers and magazines. His plays and prose sit beside his canvases as parts of one career that refused to stay within a single art.
The book on this site, L'auca del senyor Esteve, is where those interests meet most clearly. It was first published in March 1907 as a novel of twenty-seven episodes about the types and scenes of the Ribera district of Barcelona. Ramon Casas drew twenty-seven pictures for it, and Gabriel Alomar wrote twenty-seven short rhymed captions; the book's title credits the drawings to Casas and the rhymes to Alomar. The novel mixes the nineteenth-century costumbrist sketch with the auca, a traditional illustrated picture-story, and a stage version premiered in Barcelona in 1917. It is also a clear statement of how Modernisme saw the relationship between artist and society.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
L'auca del senyor Esteve: ab redolins dibuixats per en Ramón Casas; escrits per en Gabriel Alomar
by Santiago Rusiñol
The life of Esteve, born into the family haberdashery La Puntual in nineteenth-century Barcelona, told from the cradle onward in the manner of an auca, the illustrated broadsheet of rhymed scenes. Thrift, order and the shop counter shape every step he takes, until his own son…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.