Goya

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was the great Spanish painter and graphic artist whose fame rests not only on his superb painterly abilities, but also on the darkness and drama of the subject matter he recorded. Rembrandt's powerful influence is easily observed. Born in Saragossa, he settled in Madrid in 1774. His early paintings are lively, cheerful, and almost rococo in feeling (e.g., his tapestry cartoons in the Prado). In 1789 Goya was appointed official court painter---a position once held by Diego Velazquez, whom he admired and emulated.

In 1794 Goya became deaf, and his mood changed profoundly. He began to draw and etch. The Caprichos (1796--98), aquatinted etchings which date from that period, present satirical, grotesque, and nightmarish scenes. His famous, unsparingly realistic, Family of King Charles IV (critics still wonder how he got away with it) was painted in 1800. When Spain was taken over by Napoleon in 1808, a terrible civil war ensued. Goya, torn between his Francophile liberalism and his Spanish patriotism, more than all else hated the cruelties of war. The 65 etchings that comprise Los Desastres de la Guerra are among the most moving antiwar documents in all art. Fourteen large mysterious murals, the so-called Black Paintings, were painted toward the end of Goya's life. He spent his last years in Bordeaux, in voluntary exile from the Spanish Bourbon regime.

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