From Library Journal
The tempestuous works of Spanish painter Francisco Goya (b.1746) set him far apart from his European contemporaries. He is best known for his ability to get away with subtly mocking the bourgeoisie, something most brilliantly accomplished in his notorious "Family of Charles V." The painter was a witness to the ferociously bloody resistance by the Spanish during France's occupation, which greatly influenced his work, and he was also afflicted by an illness that robbed him of his hearing. Goya went on to produce some of the most grotesque, capricious, and chilling images in the history of Western art with his "Black Paintings" series. This well-structured book includes hundreds of cropped and full-framed color reproductions of Goya's oeuvre. In the highly analytical text, Licht, curator for the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice, investigates and contextualizes specific eras of the artist's life, ranging from the satirical graphic art of "The Caprichos" to his group portraits, his tapestries, religious paintings, and eventually the "Black Paintings." In his section on the Majas (self-assured Madrilene ladies), Licht disputes the widespread speculation that the woman depicted in Goya's most scandalous paintings, "The Naked Maja" and "The Clothed Maja," was not society lady the Marquesa de Alba (with whom Goya has also been romantically linked) but rather an unknown woman. Licht's ability to see Goya's life and works from the contemporary perspective of modern art and culture, rather than from that of a classic art historian or technical observer, makes for a psychoanalytical and insightful study. Recommended for libraries with large collections on European painters. Adriana Lopez, "Cr¡ticas"
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts
"The most brilliant, far ranging, and profound study of this fascinating artist that I have ever read."
Book Description
Newly revised and lavishly illustrated, this acclaimed study of Spanish master Francisco Goya reveals the artist as a pioneer of modern art and culture.
Stunning color reproductions comprehensively survey Goya's paintings and prints in this essential study of his art and its impact on the modern world. Fred Licht's masterful text, revised and updated for this edition, has been hailed as "brilliant" and "profound," one of the most original and illuminating studies of a modern European artist.
Born in 1746 in a small Aragonese town, Goya rose to prominence in Madrid in the period around 1780, being named court painter in 1786. The atrocities of the Napoleonic period and the repressions of the restored Bourbon regime led Goya to paint his greatest works, now recognized as harbingers of modern art. Goya died in exile in France in 1828.
Organized according to the mediums and genres in which the artist worked, Goya is a series of investigations of those aspects of Goya's art that make it especially relevant today. By focusing closely on the work, Licht also illuminates, as few before him have done, the enigmatic personality of this artist, who, as the author affirms, "first fixed the courage and the despair of our modern age."
Other Details:
297 illustrations, 276 in full color. 360 pages. 11 x 13" trim size. Published in 2001.
Publisher comments
Newly revised and lavishly illustrated, this acclaimed study of Spanish master Francisco Goya reveals the artist as a pioneer of modern art and culture
About the author
Fred Licht is curator at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. He has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, and Brown University. He is the author of Canova and Manet, among other titles. The exhibitions he has organized include Picasso--the Artist in the Studio and Boccioni's Horse. In 1981 he was awarded the College Art Association's Charles Rufus Morey Book Award for Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art.
