Art Of The Day Weekly
#369 - from 18 December 2014 to 7 January 2015
Goya in blood and gold
Goya was a tortured artist who immortalized the Spanish royal family but also went against the conventions of his time by painting the Nude Maja which shook the last inquisitors. He fiercely criticized the French when the latter invaded Spain (in his famous Dos de Mayo), but died in Bordeaux, alone, bitter and deaf. This artist fits into no category and deserved a strong, poetic and lyrical biography. The challenge has been met in this work by the late director of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, which details his painting on easels, his frescoes – in the church of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid for example – and his prints, often nightmarish and which reflected the standards of his time.
• Goya, by Werner Hofmann, éditions Hazan, 2014, 336 p., €79 (English edition by Thames & Hudson, 2003).
