Birth Year : 1746
Death Year : 1828
Country : Spain
Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, one of the greatest and most
original of Spanish painters, was born in Fuendetodos, and took his first
art lessons from his father, a master gilder. Goya learned the art of etching
from the monks in Saragossa before going in 1776 to Madrid where Tiepolo
and Mengs were working. Goya found the work of Tiepolo
to his liking and his earliest works show the influence of that master
and of the French Rococo painters. In 1786 he became court painter and
accomplished a brilliant series of royal portraits in the styles of Velazquez
and Rembrandt, the two artists whom
he then most admired. These royal portraits were subtle in gradations of
tone, with light pouring in from the side, and are executed in a sparkling
manner.
Goya fell ill in 1792 and lost his hearing, but
during his convalescence the powerful style for which he is now remembered
emerged: introverted, sarcastic, and humanistic-biting satire on social
mores with more than a hint of double meaning. The Napoleonic Invasion
in 1808, the cruel and merciless killings of the invading armies caused
a transformation of Goya's art. His paintings reflect his own bitter experience
during this time: the broad brushstrokes blazing with light and color set
against dark backgrounds create a vivid image of the horrors of war. In
1814 with the restoration of the Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand VII,
Goya, a Republican, retired to a house in the country and abandoned his
bright palette for a dark and somber one. He adorned his walls with the
so-called "Black" frescoes-pessimistic yet imaginative images of degraded
and bestial humanity. They are terrible but fascinating-hallucinatory nightmares
that foretell of death and destruction. At the fall of the Cortes in 1824,
Goya retreated into voluntary exile, in Bordeaux, where he died in 1828.
His greatest influence was upon the nineteenth-century French Romantic
painters, particularly Delacroix and
Gericault.
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Francisco
Jose de Goya (y Lucientes)
Bullfight
Francisco
Jose de Goya (y Lucientes)
Execution
of Rebels of the 3rd of May
Francisco
Jose de Goya (y Lucientes)
Don
Manuel Osorio
Francisco
Jose de Goya (y Lucientes)
Nude
Maja
Francisco
Jose de Goya (y Lucientes)
Los
Caprichos No. 43: The sleep of reason produces monsters
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