Francisco Jose de
Goya
1746-1828
One of the Greatest Painters Of All Time
Spanish
Rococo /Romantic
Painter
Artistically Influenced by the Following Painters and Art Movements: Velázquez, Rembrandt, El Greco and Gothic Art
Education - at age 14 apprenticed to painter Spanish Jose Luzan
Cause of Death - Old age
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Goya painted the most varied subjects. His religious frescoes are parodies of Tiepolo. Beautiful women look down coquettishly from the ceiling and angels, with challenging laughter display their legs. His portraits of maidens, especially the celebrated double picture of the clothed and nude Maja, belong to the finest studies of the century. In other pictures he has depicted with powerful brushwork scenes from popular life: processions, bull-fights, beggars, and brigades. But however seductive he may be when charmed by his model, he is a weary painter. His commissioned portraits of the wealthy are rapidly observed and rapidly executed, without passion and drama. Goya is a revolutions, an agitator, a nihilist. Even in his portraits of the royal family these opinions are betrayed. He seems to laugh over the pompous nothingness that stood before him, and to be chagrined at having to paint the noble ladies and gentleman is such solemn poses, instead of letting them deport themselves and jump over balustrades as did his angles. Many of his paintings have a soul searing quality. This son of a revolutionary age deprived the poor princes who are his sitters of the talisman of majesty and displayed them stripped before the eye of the world.
His
etchings reveal the true
Goya. Only is such prints,
and a few of his oil
paintings, could his wild
fire, his harsh, stormy
spirit find expression. A
mad uncanny fantasy is
everywhere revealed. Witches
ride upon broomsticks and
white cats; woman tear out
the teeth of executed
criminals; robbers scuffle
with demons and dwarfs. A
dead man arises from the
grave and writes with his
finger the word Nada. But
the prevailing note is a
hatred of tyrants. Nothing
which had formerly been
considered authority escapes
his scorn. In Capriccios he
attacks with raving fury the
kings and magnates, and
scoffs at the priests robe
concealing human passions.
In Los desastres de la
guerra (The Disasters of
War) he contrasts the
military glory which his
predecessors had celebrated
with the blood ruin which is
the price of glory.
Everywhere he struggles with
cutting away irony, against
despotism and hypocrisy,
against the vanity of the
great and the servility of
the small; heaping all vices
of the time into a horrible
hecatomb. In his works there
sounds the suppressed
rumblings of the revolution
whose crater had in the
meanwhile opened.
Francisco Goya Quotations
Inspiring Quotes and Proverbial Wisdom about Destiny, Truth and Beauty, Life and Death
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united
with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
--Francisco Goya Quote
The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he
found salvation ~ Francisco Goya Quote
The object of my work is to report the actuality of events. ~ Francisco
Goya Quote
My work is very simple. My art reveals idealism and truth. ~ Francisco
Goya Quote
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