New York, New York.- The Metropolitan Museum of New York (Met) wanted to dive into the mind of the iconic Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, To whom they dedicate a detailed exhibition of drawings and engravings that he produced during more than six decades of his career and that reveal his ideologies and personal concerns.
“The central idea is to explore the artist’s strategies, how he thinks through his engravings and through his drawings,” the curator of the exhibition explains to Efe, Mark McDonald, during the press presentation event.
Titled “Goya’s Graphic Imagination”, the exhibition brings together 105 pieces of the nearly 900 drawings and more than 300 engravings that the artist produced during his lifetime, which reflected specific moments in the history of Spain, from the Enlightenment until 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, his “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 2, 80 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, until the last lithographs that he produced in Bordeaux shortly before his death, around 1825, a series known as “Los toros de 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 in a privileged position is the “Seated Giant”, believed to have been painted between 1814 and 1818 and which has been closely related to “The Colossus”, a piece that symbolizes the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814).
The “Seated Giant”, where a large figure is seen observing 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 “, ditch.
– .
