A unique collection of prints by Goya on display in Nicosia
THE MED?UM of prints is often regarded as somewhat boring, especially when compared to colourful oil paintings.
It is only when a viewer knows how to appreciate their detailed uniqueness and precise execution that he is able to understand their real value and beauty.
The Caprichos exhibition, opened last Wednesday at Nicosia’s Leventis Museum, deals just with engravings and, as such, could be happily omitted from your week-end art viewing if you are not a print lover but the works are by Francisco de Goya, they are originals and they are shown in a completely innovative way that has not been tried anywhere else.
In short, the show is a must, even if you hate prints, unless you have your own set.
The name given to the series used to be a common word in the Spanish language of the late eighteenth century and referred to things of imagination, spontaneity and creativity, bound by no restrictions. As such it is actually an appropriate description of this collection full of satirising prints, punchy and enigmatic, full of ugly goblins, monsters, and witches.
People often quote Nietszche in connection with the Caprichos and sayings such as “he who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster” or “when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you” definitely come to mind whle walking through the Leventis.
Goya produced 80 Caprichos engravings between 1797 and 1799 after a long and heavy illness that left him completely deaf. Many historians say that it was actually this deafness that caused him to change his approach to life and become more critical of the world.
The Caprichos critisise the church, the state, women, and overall, stupidity. They deal with the Spanish Inquisition, the abuses of the nobility, witchcraft, child rearing, avarice, and frivolity. They analyse the human condition, social abuses and superstitions, and attest to the artist’s political liberalism and his revulsion towards ignorance and intellectual oppression. In short, they criticise the lack of reason on which the artist himself commented that “it breeds monsters”.
“The Caprichos portray a world in crisis,” says Javier Blas Benito, the curator of the exhibition. “A crisis understood in the sense of change. Conceptually they reveal the cracks in the social and political structure of Spain. Artistically, they advance the arrival of modern sensitivity and a change towards a form of art dominated by subjectiivity and the freedom of creativity. On a personal level, the Caprichos appear during one of the most decisive decades in the life of the painter. Goya felt an urge to create a series of satirical illustrations which would be able to offer him a multiple answer to his inventive perception of art, his ever growing isolation, his mistrust towards other human beings and to his new social interest rooted in the Enlightment.”
The 18 original prints of the series, regarded by many as the beginning of modern art, has been brought to Cyprus by the Spanish Embassy from Madrid’s Calcografia Nacional. They are accompanied by 20 digital images of their details and also by numerous notes and comments on the subject left both by the artist and his contemporaries. It is the first time that both the originals and the digital prints are being presented together.
l La Concienca Retratada. Prints by Francisco de Goya. Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia. Until June 30. 10am to 4.30pm. Tel: 22 661475
