A major Goya retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel is showing around 70 large-format representative paintings and more than 100 drawings and prints by the Spanish master, who is considered one of the last great court artists and the first pioneer of modern art, until January 23, 2022. The extensive show – one of the most important outside Spain […]

Until January 23, 2022, a major Goya retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel is showing around 70 large-format representative paintings and more than 100 drawings and prints by the Spanish master, who is considered one of the last great court artists and the first pioneer of modern art. The extensive show – one of the most important outside of Spain – was organized in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid

The Fondation Beyeler is dedicating one of its most important exhibitions to date to Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) – one of the most important pioneers of modern art – in the 275th year of his birth. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes occupies a contradictory position in European art history as one of the last important court painters and a forerunner of the modern artist. In order to make the uniqueness of his oeuvre, which spans a period from the late Rococo to the Romantic period, tangible and to do justice to the richness of form and content of his paintings, drawings and prints, the exhibition presents the entire spectrum of pictorial genres and motifs specific to Goya. Around 70 large-format representative paintings and more than 100 masterful drawings and prints will be on display in the chronologically arranged exhibition. The focus of the exhibition will be on Goya’s late creative period.

The retrospective is an opportunity to experience Francisco de Goya’s multifaceted and ambivalent work in its entirety. Rarely seen paintings from Spanish private collections, some of which have been in the same hands since the artist’s lifetime, will be brought together for the first time with key works from renowned European and American museums and private collections. The exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler opens up a view of the court artist on the one hand and the inventor of enigmatic and disturbing pictorial worlds on the other, of the sacred and profane works, of depictions of Christ and witches, of portraits and history paintings, of still lifes and genre scenes. In addition to paintings commissioned by the royal family, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, works can be seen that Goya created in a space of artistic freedom that he himself conquered, including cabinet paintings that were often only shown in a private setting. In the history of European art, Goya was one of the first artists to rebel with rebellious determination against the dogmas and rules that constricted art and instead championed the artist’s stubbornness and inventiveness (“capricho” and “invención”).

On display at the Fondation Beyeler: four rarely loaned panels with genre scenes from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid

Among the highlights of the exhibition are the portrait of the Duchess of Alba, 1795, and the iconic depiction of the Clothed Maja (La maja vestida), 1800-1807. Equally unique are the two rarely exhibited paintings Maja and Celestina on the Balcony and Majas on the Balcony, from private European collections, which Goya painted between 1808 and 1812. Another special feature of the exhibition are the small-format genre paintings, most of which are held in Spanish private collections and have rarely been shown outside Spain until now. These are paintings in which Goya – as in his drawings and etchings – gave free rein to his inner inspiration. For the first time since the only presentation to date in the Museo Nacional del Prado, the entire series of eight surviving history and genre paintings from the Madrid collection of the Marqués de la Romana is being made accessible to the public at the Fondation Beyeler. They are joined by the four famous, very rarely lent panels with genre scenes from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.

Sam Keller, the director of the Fondation Beyeler, presents his institution in Riehen near Basel:

In his genre scenes and history paintings, Goya depicts incidents from the turbulent social, political and religious everyday life of Spaniards around 1800, with recurring scenes including markets and bullfighting arenas, prisons and ecclesiastical institutions, asylums and inquisition tribunals. The depictions of witches, in which Goya illustrates the superstition of his time, are also of great importance. In addition to a group of etchings from the Desastres de la guerra (The Horrors of War), 1811-1814, the exhibition will also present a selection of sheets from the Caprichos series published in 1799, including the famous etching no. 43 with the programmatic title The Sleep/Dream of Reason begets Monsters, which reflects Goya’s insight, characterized by melancholy and resignation, that neither reason nor irony and sarcasm can be used to combat unreason. Goya’s enigmatic and enigmatic pictorial worlds have been held in high esteem since the French Romantic period at the beginning of the 19th century. In modernism, artists such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, Francis Bacon and the surrealists saw in Goya a kindred spirit. Goya is also an important reference for numerous contemporary artists, including Marlene Dumas and Philippe Parreno.

Goya film by Philippe Pareno

Commissioned by the Fondation Beyeler, the French artist Philippe Parreno (*1964) has created a film on Goya’s iconic series of Pinturas negras (Black Paintings), 1819-1824. The Pinturas negras, which were originally wall paintings in Goya’s house on the outskirts of Madrid, can now be seen in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid and are so fragile that they cannot be shown outside the museum.

The Fondation Beyeler was initiated by Ernst Beyeler, gallery owner and co-founder of Art Basel, together with his wife Hildy. You can see a video portrait here: