ARTISTS
Goya, modern masters rub shoulders in Milan
An exhibit comparing Spanish painter Francisco Goya with modern masters such as Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso opened on Wednesday at Milan's Palazzo Reale.
AFP
17 Mar, 2010
MILAN, March 17, 2010 (AFP) - An exhibit comparing Spanish painter Francisco Goya with modern masters such as Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso opened on Wednesday at Milan's Palazzo Reale.
Goya and the Modern World brings together 184 paintings, drawings and engravings.
It sets out to show how "Goya was a precursor of contemporary art: a disturbing, lucid, scathing, sarcastic personality capable to depict human nature in all of its power, without any compassion or pity," said art historian Claudio Strinati in an analysis of the exhibit.
Goya's Self-portrait, loaned from the Prado Museum in Madrid, is displayed alongside his portrait of Eugene Delacroix from the Uffizi Museum in Florence and that of King Charles VI and wife.
They are accompanied by Picasso's Woman with Mantle.
Other sections of the exhibit compare Goya's works with those of Joan Miro, Alberto Giacometti and Jackson Pollock.
It ends by putting together three powerful paintings: Goya's Christ in the Olive Garden, Bacon's Three studies for a portrait of Peter Bear, and the Red Man with Moustache by Willem de Kooning.
Goya was born in northeastern Spain in 1746 and died in Bordeaux, France in 1828.
He is perhaps best known for his dramatic depiction of the French repression against a Spanish revolt in 1808 in his paintings Dos de Mayo and Tres de Mayo.
The artist also served as the official painter of the Bourbon royal family in Spain.
Goya and the Modern World brings together 184 paintings, drawings and engravings.
It sets out to show how "Goya was a precursor of contemporary art: a disturbing, lucid, scathing, sarcastic personality capable to depict human nature in all of its power, without any compassion or pity," said art historian Claudio Strinati in an analysis of the exhibit.
Goya's Self-portrait, loaned from the Prado Museum in Madrid, is displayed alongside his portrait of Eugene Delacroix from the Uffizi Museum in Florence and that of King Charles VI and wife.
They are accompanied by Picasso's Woman with Mantle.
Other sections of the exhibit compare Goya's works with those of Joan Miro, Alberto Giacometti and Jackson Pollock.
It ends by putting together three powerful paintings: Goya's Christ in the Olive Garden, Bacon's Three studies for a portrait of Peter Bear, and the Red Man with Moustache by Willem de Kooning.
Goya was born in northeastern Spain in 1746 and died in Bordeaux, France in 1828.
He is perhaps best known for his dramatic depiction of the French repression against a Spanish revolt in 1808 in his paintings Dos de Mayo and Tres de Mayo.
The artist also served as the official painter of the Bourbon royal family in Spain.
