Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya

Voorhees Special Exhibition Galleries
Sep 02, 2008 - Nov 16, 2008

Francisco Goya (1746-1828), the great Spanish painter of insightful portraits and prestigious royal commissions, ranks among the world’s masters of graphic art. This exhibition of 99 prints from the Arthur Ross Foundation, New York, presents the dramatic range of the artist’s rich imagination, from nightmarish visions to images of biting humor. Los Caprichos (1799), the artist’s first major series of eighty etchings with aquatint, depicts fantastic witches and goblins, as well as scenes satirizing various human foibles, social classes and customs, political conditions, education and religion in the Spain of his day. Goya revisited the themes of mocking the follies of human behavior and conjuring various dark creatures in a later series of eighteen prints, called Los Disparates (“Follies”, also known as Los Proverbios, or “Proverbs”), created between 1819 and 1824, but published decades after the artist’s death. Also included in this exhibition is a rare lithograph from Goya’s Bulls of Bordeaux series (1825). The enlightened approach and visual power of these prints helped to establish Goya as one of the first truly modern artists.

The exhibition is co-organized by Marilyn Symmes, Curator in charge of the Zimmerli Art Museum’s Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts, and Christine Giviskos, Associate Curator of Nineteenth-century European Art. This exhibition will be complimented by a small display of prints by Pablo Picasso and Enrique Chagoya, selected from the Zimmerli Art Museum’s collection, to show the inspiration and legacy of Goya’s art on later artists.

Admission:
$3.00 per person for adults who are not members of the museum. Entrance to the museum is free at all times for members, all children under 18, and Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. In addition, the first Sunday of each month will be free to all.