Art in Barcelona

Great art is in Barcelona’s blood. Although much was lost in the city’s turbulent past, the Catalan National Art Museum has the world’s greatest collection of Romanesque murals, salvaged from remote Pyrenean chapels; both Picasso and Miro, Barcelona’s 20th-century masters, were inspired by their bold otherworldly figures. The same museum has a treasure trove of elegant, courtly Gothic art from Barcelona’s golden age, notably by the great Jaume Huguet.

The city’s second golden age, beginning in the late 19th century, produced Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusinol avant-garde painters headquartered at the Quatre Gats cafe that cultivated the young Picasso.

Other key figures include theorist and abstract expressionist Antoni Tapies, one of the leading figures of 20th-century art in Europe; the famous conceptual artist Angels Ribe; Agusti Puig, heir of Picasso and Miro; and the jovial street artist El Pez.