From the cave paintings discovered at Llerida to several true giants of the 20th century -- Picasso, Dalí, and Miró -- Catalonia has had a long and significant artistic tradition. Today it is the Spanish center of the plastic arts and design culture.
The first art movement to attract attention in Barcelona was Catalan Gothic sculpture, which held sway from the 13th to the 15th centuries and produced such renowned masters as Mestre Bartomeu and Pere Johan. Sculptors working with Italian masters brought the Renaissance to Barcelona, but few great Catalonian legacies remain from this period. The rise of baroque art in the 17th and 18th centuries saw Catalonia filled with several impressive examples but nothing worth a special pilgrimage; the old masters such as El Greco and Velázquez worked in other parts of Spain (Toledo and Madrid, respectively).
In the neoclassical period of the 18th century, Catalonia -- and, particularly, Barcelona -- arose from an artistic slumber. Art schools opened and foreign painters arrived, exerting considerable influence. The 19th century produced many Catalan artists who followed the general European trends of the time without forging any major creative breakthroughs.
The 20th century brought renewed artistic ferment to Barcelona, as reflected by the arrival of Málaga-born Pablo Picasso. (The Catalan capital today is the site of a major Picasso museum.) The great surrealist painters of the Spanish school, Joan Miró (who also has an eponymous museum in Barcelona) and Salvador Dalí (whose fantastical museum is along the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona), also came to the Catalan capital.
Many Catalan sculptors achieved acclaim in this century, including Casanovas, Llimon, and Blay. The Spanish Civil War brought cultural stagnation, yet against all odds many Catalan artists continued to make bold statements. Antoni Tàpies was one of the principal artists of this period (the Fundació Tàpies in Barcelona is devoted to his work). Among the various schools formed in Spain at the time was the neofigurative band, which included such artists as Vásquez Díaz and Pancho Cossio. The Museum of Modern Art in the neighborhood of El Raval illustrates the various 20th-century Catalan artistic movements, including the Dau al Set, the surrealist movement started in the 1940s by the "visual poet" Joan Brossa. His art and many other works by leading sculptors dot the streets of Barcelona, making it a vibrant outdoor museum. Watch out for Roy Lichtenstein's Barcelona Head opposite the main post office in the Plaça d' Antoni López, Joan Miró's phallic Dona i Cell in the park of the same name, and Fernando Botero's giant cat on the Rambla del Raval.
Today many Barcelona artists are making major names for themselves, and their works are sold in the most prestigious galleries of the Western world. Outstanding among these is sculptor Susana Solano, who ranks among the most renowned names in Spanish contemporary art, and the neoexpressionist Miguel Barceló. Design and the graphic arts have thrived in Barcelona since the heady days of modernisme. It seems that nothing in Barcelona, from a park bench to a mailbox, escapes the "designer touch." Leading names include the architect and interior and object designer Oscar Tusquets, and the quirky graphic artist Javier Mariscal, whose work can be seen in many of the city's designer housewares stores. The most important plastic-arts schools in Spain are located in Barcelona, and the city acts as a magnet for young, European creatives who flock here to set up shop.
