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Taft Museum of Art Presents Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos

The Taft Museum of Art has opened Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos on view through January 30, 2011.

For those who feel a secret empathy with Scrooge and the Grinch, the Taft offers an antidote to Yuletide’s good cheer this winter. The full set of Francisco Goya’s 80 haunting images from Los Caprichos (“The Whims” or “The Fantasies,” published in 1799) confront human hypocrisy, pretense, fear, and irrationality, picturing them in every conceivable form. Goya’s singularly original visions of monsters, specters, corpses, and other bitter or callous beings enact challenges to authority of all kinds, including that of the church and state.

Los Caprichos are likely the great Spanish artist’s most influential works and continue to inspire artists to this day. As both prints and images, they are decades ahead of their time. In them, Goya pioneered astonishingly innovative etching techniques, visual forms, and artistic themes, anticipating the later movements known as Realism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.

The etchings on view are from an early first edition, one of four sets acquired directly from Goya, and belong now to an American private collector. The exhibition is organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions. Goya (1746–1826) is one of the world’s greatest artists, as famous for portraits that seemingly penetrate his sitters’ souls as he is for portrayals of the brutality of the Napoleonic Wars in Spain (1808–14). The Taft Museum of Art owns an important oil portrait by Goya, Queen Maria Luisa of Spain, of about 1800.

The Taft Museum of Art is one of the finest small art museums in America. A National Historic Landmark built in 1820, the Taft is home to an extensive art collection that includes European and American master paintings, Chinese porcelains, and European decorative arts. See major works by Rembrandt, Hals, Goya, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Turner, Ingres, Whistler, and Sargent, as well as the greatest Gothic ivory sculpture in America.

www.taftmuseum.org

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