Die Attacke

Ramon Casas finished this in 1899 and meant it for the Paris world's fair of 1900, but the Spanish jury refused to send it, so he put it away. It shows a mounted officer of the Civil Guard riding down an unarmed crowd in a Barcelona street, the horse rearing over people scattering across the empty foreground. Barcelona in those years was a city of factories and hard strikes, and this kind of cavalry charge was how order was kept. After a general strike shook the city in 1902, Casas brought the picture back out and retitled it Barcelona 1902, though he had painted it three years earlier. It hangs today in Olot, in the museum of the Garrotxa.