The Metropolitan Museum of New York (Met) will dedicate a detailed exhibition of drawings and engravings of Francisco de Goya. The sample of these pieces, produced During the more than six decades of their career, they aim to introduce the viewer to the ideologies and personal concerns of dthe iconic Spanish artist-
“The central idea is to explore the artist’s strategies, how he thinks through his prints and through his drawings,” explained the exhibition’s curator, Mark McDonald, during the press presentation event.
Titled Goya’s Graphic Imagination The Goya’s graphic imagination, sample gathers 105 pieces of the nearly 900 drawings and more than 300 engravings that he produced during his lifetime, which reflected specific moments of the history of Spain, from the illustration to turbulent stages such as the Inquisition or the Liberal Triennium.
“I think he is the most fantastic artist that has ever existed. He is so interesting and complex, and there is so much to explore,” says Goya, the Met’s expert in drawings and engravings, who emphasizes that, contrary to what can be think, your “main focus was not painting “but this discipline.
“He spent a good part of his life making albums of drawings and prints and prints,” says McDonald, who has been working on the selection for more than three years, stressing that this type of work reflects the “more personal” side of the revered artist. .
“They are not made for an audience, and in fact not all series of prints are published while he is alive. So there is a sense of privacy, of inner life, of exploring his personal ideas and concerns,” he explains.
Of the 105 pieces in the exhibition, which can be seen from February 12 to May 280 of them are part of the Met’s own permanent collection, while the rest have been loaned, 12 by the Prado Museum and 8 by private collectors.
The exhibition, which occupies three rooms on the second floor of the monumental museum, is organized in chronological order, and looks back from its beginnings in this discipline, when in 1775 it began to produce sketches for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara, up to the last lithographs that he produced in Bordeaux shortly before his death, around 1825, a series known as The bulls of Bordeaux.
Between his beginnings and his last works, the exhibition has copies from intermediate seasons such as “Los Caprichos”, both pieces that he painted at the end of the 18th century and in the first two decades of the 19th century, as well as the series “Tauromaquia”, and “The disasters of war”, made between 1810 and 1815.
Among the hundreds of works, the Met has placed at the entrance of the exhibition a small but detailed self-portrait of Goya that he drew in 1796 when he was 50 years old, several years after he became deaf, which transmits an extraordinary psychological intensity.
Also has a privileged position Sitting giant, believed to have painted between 1814 and 1818 and to have been closely associated with The colossus, a piece that symbolizes the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814).
The Seated Giant, where a large figure is seen looking out over a desolate landscape, is believed to symbolize helplessness after the conflict.
Although they were produced about 200 years ago, the Met expert points out that they are works with which the current public continues to identify.
“A good part of his themes convey to us now, in our torment, the pain and suffering that we live during conflicts. So I think that, in some way, he has spoken since the 19th century but the same problems come to us, the same issues. , the same fears and the same tensions, “he says.
BGHL
– .
