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| FRANCISCO GOYA |
Francisco Goya was born on March 30, 1746, in Fuendetodos, a village in northern Spain. The family later moved to Saragossa, where Goya's father worked as an altarpiece guilder. At the age of 14, Goya served as an apprentice to José Luzan, a local painter, and later traveled to Italy for a year to continue his study of art. Upon his return to Saragossa in 1771, he painted frescoes in the rococo tradition for the Church of the Virgin in El Pilar, and in the process, established himself as an artist. In 1773 he married Josefa Bayeu, sister of local artist Francisco Bayeu, and they had many children though only one son lived through childhood. From 1775 to 1792 Goya worked at the royal tapestry factory in Madrid. As a tapestry designer, Goya did his first cartoon-like genre paintings, or paintings of everyday life, and as a result, he developed a sharp eye for human behavior. Goya also achieved his first popular success at this time: he served as a portrait painter to the Spanish aristocracy, and was elected to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1780, named painter to King Charles III in 1786, and made a court painter in 1789. In 1792 Goya lost his hearing, and, isolated by his deafness, he occupied himself with fantasies and inventions of his imagination and critical, satirical observations of human behavior. His style became free, bold, and took on a similarity to cartoons. He published Los Caprichos , a series of satirical etchings about human folly, superstition, and weakness. His portraits also became characterizations of how he saw his subjects. Between 1795 and 1797, Goya served as director of painting at the Royal Academy and was appointed first Spanish court painter in 1799. During the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish war of independence from 1808 to 1814, Goya served as the court painter to the French. During this time of ugly warfare, he produced the series The Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Geurra) which show the horrors of war, but the series was not published until after his death in 1863. In 1816 he published his etchings on bullfighting, called the Tauromaquia , and from 1819 to 1824, Goya lived in seclusion outside of Madrid. Free of court restrictions, he further personalized his style. In the Black Paintings , done on the walls of his house, Goya expressed the darkest areas of his imagination. This nightmarish aspect also swallows the satirical etching series entitled Disparates , or Proverbios . In 1824, after the failure of an attempt to restore liberal government, Goya voluntary went into exile in France and settled in Bordeaux where he continued to work until his death on April 16, 1828. No Quieren , from the series Los Desastres , depicts the attempted rape of a young girl. By combining etching and aquatint to create the strong contrasts between light and dark, Goya heightens the realistic drama and the hopelessness of the struggle. With the background being a dark, hazy gray, out attention is drawn to the black and white action of the three figures. The innocent girl, dressed in white, plants her feet and lowers her body, trying desperately to escape her attacker's clutches while clawing at his face, who happens to be a soldier of war. The strong, opposing diagonals are also signals of a struggle. The only other figure who seems to be nearby is the elderly woman to our right coming up behind the soldier with dagger in hand and ready to strike who is the girl's somewhat feeble but determined looking mother. |
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 PANNELL ART GALLERY
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