The Transgressive Shadow of Catalan Art To look at the work of Ismael Smith I Marí is to confront a deliberate disruption of order. While his contemporaries in Catalonia were retreating into the controlled, Mediterranean calm of Noucentisme, Smith was busy injecting the scene with a frantic, often unsettling energy. He did not seek the placid approval of the establishment; instead, he leaned into the grotesque and the ambiguous. His p…