Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes Boeken

English, French (translation)

This exhibition presents an extensive collection of Goya's artwork, featuring key pieces from private collections that have never been displayed before. Co-produced with the Fondation Beyeler, it offers a rare opportunity to explore the depth of Goya's influence and creativity, showcasing his masterpieces outside of Spain.

The dazzling range and scope of the great 19th century Spanish painter is suggested in works ranging from court paintings of nobility to genre scenes and fantastic images of monsters.

1970. Paperback Edition. 39 pages. Illustrated paper cover. Contains colour and black and white illustrations. Clean pages and illustrations with light tanning and mild foxing throughout.Pencil markings to half title page. Binding remains firm. Paper covers have mild edge-wear with slight rubbing to surfaces and curling to corners. Lettering is bright and clear. Moderate sunning to spine and edges with crushing to spine ends. Visible wear marks to boards.

Goya--the name alone evokes countless masterpieces, both painted and printed: the raw and brutal "Third of May 1808," the nightmarish "Caprichos" etchings (with the famous motto, "The sleep of reason produces monsters"), the compellingly erotic "Nude Maja" and "Clothed Maja," the savage "Disasters of War" series and, of course, the late black paintings, with their murky forebodings of public unrest and private turmoil. Although Goya's influence on his contemporaries was minimal (eclipsed as he was at the time by artists trained in the classical style of David and Ingres), it can now be traced clearly from Manet through Picasso to Surrealism, Polke, the Chapman brothers and on. Nobody expressed the ravages of warfare and the extremes of human experience like Goya; it made him the envy of Picasso, who, as a young artist, copied his signature over and over, as though to absorb the personality and abilities of his one supreme influence. And it is perhaps the wildly imaginative freedoms of Goya's late work that has kept him so contemporary--that, and the palpable emotion in his brushwork, so full of impact and sensation. Here, Jose Gudiol, renowned author of essays and monographs on Velazquez, El Greco and Spanish art, provides a serious introduction to the massive subject that is Goya.

This book is part of the Phaidon Colour Library Series, a series of introductory books on the great masters and movements in art. Each volume contains an extensive essay and 48 full-page color plates of the most significant works in the movement or by the artist, accompanied by extensive notes and comparative illustrations. Books in the series are highly regarded for their insight and authority, and deliver a concise and palatable overview of the subject or artist at hand. Books from the Colour Library are perfect sourcebooks for art students seeking to brush-up their knowledge, or museum-goers looking to supplement an afternoon trip.

After a serious illness in 1792, Goya spent five years recuperating and preparing himself for the burst of creativity that was to follow. He read deeply in the French revolutionary philosophers. From Rousseau he evolved the idea that imagination divorced from reason produces monsters, but that coupled with reason "it is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders." In Spain he saw a country that had abandoned reason, and he peopled Los Caprichos with the grotesque monsters that result from such an action. Plate after plate shows witches, asses, devils, and other strange creatures, many of which are caricatures of members of the society against which Goya was fighting.The plates were first published in 1799. There are still in existence, however, six extremely rare sets of artist's proofs, considered by most who have managed to see them as infinitely superior to the work actually published. Now, for the first time, this edition reproduces one of these sets of 80 prints, together with the "Prado" manuscript, a commentary on the plates.