The exhibition "Goya: Testimony of his Time" brings together ten paintings that will be presented for the first time in Portugal.
The exhibition "Goya: Testimony of His Time" brings together ten paintings that will be presented for the first time in Portugal, along with four series of prints by the Spanish master. The exhibition, which will be on view until July 9, is an initiative of the D. Luís I Foundation and the Cascais City Council, within the scope of the Museum Quarter programme.
Considered one of the most important Spanish artists of the 18th century, and a precursor of Modern Art due to the innovative character of his work, Goya inspired artistic trends that would emerge in the following centuries, from Romanticism to Surrealism. The curators Maria Toral and Maria Oropesa made a selection that proposes a journey through the most important themes of the graphic and pictorial work of Francisco de Goya, to highlight the way in which he "opened doors to a new concept of art".
Among the 10 paintings exhibited for the first time in Portugal, the six that form the series "Jogos Infantiles", produced between 1775 and 1786, in which Goya naturally portrays scenes of everyday life and the games of a group of children stand out. . The works belong to the Collection of the Fundación de Santamarca y de San Ramón y San Antonio, based in Madrid.
In the details of these works, visitors will be able to observe how Goya also made an acute observation about the society of his time, drawing attention to the bitter social inequalities of the time. For example, in "Crianças no Baloiço", the painter portrays some children dressed in impeccable school uniforms, which contrast with the tattered clothes that other children of the same age wear. or in the scene that unfolds in "Children Fighting for Chestnuts", in which a man throws chestnuts from a window at the children who are fighting each other to get some.
Also noteworthy are two works belonging to the Goya Museum – Ibercaja Collection, "Baile de Máscaras" (c. 1808-1820) and the study for "O Dois de Maio de 1808 ou A Carga dos Mamelucos" (1814), one of the his masterpieces, now part of the Prado Museum Collection in Madrid. The other two paintings are religious paintings that Goya produced in the first phase of his career, when he lived and worked in Zaragoza, and are relevant because they witness both his first steps and his consolidation as an artist.
For many years the official painter of the Spanish Royal Family during the reign of Carlos IV, Goya was also a chronicler of the social issues and wars of his time, as evidenced by his four spectacular series of engravings that the Centro Cultural de Cascais presents, three of them in entirety. Produced from the 1790s, a particularly turbulent period in the artist's life in which an unidentified illness left him deaf, the engravings are also the artist's response to the great political and social upheaval he witnessed during the Peninsular War, waged by Napoleon Bonaparte against Spain and Portugal.
The sequence begins with "Os Caprichos", from 1799, where the artist satirizes the excesses of society at the time in a series of 80 engravings on vices and defects, religion, morality, superstition, witchcraft and the Inquisition, including the famous "O Dream of Reason Produces Monsters". Although they didn't circulate for long – Goya withdrew them for fear of becoming a target of the Inquisition himself – "Os Caprichos" became his best-known and most influential work.
The second set of prints presented is "The Disasters of War", a series of 85 images made between 1810 and 1820 that portray the atrocities and consequences of the war he witnessed and make up a critical social and political reflection. In the same period, at the age of 70, Goya produced the third series, entitled "A Tauromaquia", about the history and tradition of bullfighting in Spain.
The exhibition ends with the presentation of thirteen engravings that are part of "Os Disparates ou Proverbios" (1815 – 1824), the last series produced by Goya and which are the most enigmatic of his compositions. In dreamlike representations marked by violence, the grotesque and darkness, which even today generate the most different reactions and interpretations, the artist addresses the most diverse themes, from Carnival to politics. It is certain that the exploration of the subconscious in these works advocates the art of the expressionists and surrealists in the 20th century.
"GOYA, TESTIMONY OF HIS TIME" emphasizes Goya's impact on artists who followed him, from Pablo Picasso, to Edouard Manet, Joan Miró It is Salvador Dalí, and his prominent role in the history of Western art, where he is often cited as a great master and the first truly modern artist, both for his inventiveness and his mastery of the techniques he employed, as well as for his political position and firm opposition to war and ignorance.