The Ricard Opisso Museum in Barcelona

Ricard Opisso was one of the great graphic chroniclers of Barcelona in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Tarragona in 1880 and brought to Barcelona at a very young age, he began working at just twelve years old as a assistant to Antoni Gaudí on the works of the Sagrada Família Basilica. Associated with the modernist atmosphere of Els Quatre Gats, he shared friendships and artistic affinities with figures such as Pablo Picasso and Ramon Casas. His work, marked by irony, humor, and social observation, vividly portrayed the streets, cafés, popular festivals, and characters of everyday life in Barcelona.

The connection between Opisso and Hotel Astoria has become one of the city’s most distinctive cultural links. Since the late 2000s, the hotel has housed a permanent exhibition dedicated to the artist, thanks to the private collection assembled by hotelier Jordi Clos and enriched with documentary material contributed by the artist’s granddaughter, Mariángeles Opisso. This initiative has turned the hotel into a space for the dissemination and preservation of the work of the artist who best captured the human and social pulse of modern Barcelona.

The Opisso Museum Room at Hotel Astoria is now the largest existing collection dedicated to the artist, with more than 400 works spread across five rooms in the hotel. Drawings, illustrations, watercolors, oils, and posters trace the career of a creator who turned the observation of urban life into a true historical and artistic record. Among the more than 400 works, the collection includes portraits of friends and contemporaries such as Picasso, Casas, Isidre Nonell, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, establishing this space as a small reference museum for understanding the cultural and social atmosphere of Barcelona in the early 20th century.