Goya at Rutgers
To view the paintings of the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, you have to go to El Prado museum in Madrid.
But starting Tuesday and through December 14, you can see 100 of his prints in New Brunswick, at Rutgers’ Zimmerli Museum. The show is called Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya.
Art historians consider Goya (1746-1828) one of the last of the Old Masters as well as a father of modern art. He was schooled in traditional schools of painting in Spain and Italy, and became the preferred portraitist of Spanish nobility in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
But Goya was a restless spirit who would not conform to the norms of his day, even though he had gained the favor of King Charles IV. Goya’s The Family of Charles IV presents the Spanish court in an ironic, unflattering manner - the self-absorbed royals never caught on to what Goya had done to them. The artist’s subversive attitude marks a beginning of modern art.
The exhibition at the Zimmerli presents the complete suite of works from two separate series of etchings. Goya completed Los Caprichos ("The Whims") in 1799 and Disparates ("Follies") between 1816 and 1824. The prints are sometimes comicals, sometimes dark visions about the follies of Spanish society in his era.
But he elevates these works to the universal. Perhaps the most famous is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos (above, left). Goya is saying that when humanity abandons reason, it unleashes the destructive side of human nature.
“Goya’s prints allow us to see his brilliant mind and his sure hand at work,” says Christine Giviskos, co-curator of the exhibition. “Not only do they showcase Goya’s imaginative and modern subjects and his accomplished technique, the prints also represent the new directions of his work at the turn of the nineteenth century.”
In addition to the etchings, 12 works by Pablo Picasso and two painters active today show the influence of Goya on modern art.
The exhibit was selected from the Arthur Ross Foundation and is sponsored by Secaucus-based Goya Foods.
Tags: New Brunswick | art
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