Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya is a Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker, titanic figure of Western art whose protean work marks the transition between classical art and modern art. Court painter to Spanish kings Charles IV and Ferdinand VII, he first creates joyful tapestry cartoons and aristocratic portraits of implacable psychological lucidity, before the illness that leaves him deaf in 1792 and the horrors of the Napoleonic wars radically transform his vision. His Disasters of War (1810-1820), series of 82 prints of brutal realism, constitute the first modern artistic testimony on the atrocity and absurdity of war, while his Caprichos denounce with fierce black humor the superstitions and injustices of Spanish society. Reclusive and aging, he covers the walls of his Quinta del Sordo with hallucinating and terrifying Black Paintings - including the famous Saturn Devouring His Son - that plunge into the abysses of the human psyche and anticipate Expressionism. Oscillating between Rococo light and Romantic darkness, between Enlightenment reason and visionary madness, Goya embodies the tormented genius who paves the way for modern art through his uncompromising exploration of violence, madness and the human condition.