Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya, A Selection from the Collection of the Arthur Ross Foundation

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 complimented by a small display of prints by Pablo Picasso and Enrique Chagoya, selected from the Zimmerli's collection, to show the inspiration and legacy of Goya's art on later artists.

Co-organized by Marilyn Symmes, Director of the Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts and Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Christine Giviskos, Associate Curator of European Art. 

Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya, A Selection from the Collection of the Arthur Ross Foundation is sponsored by Goya Foods.