Goya. A clear-sighted
individual confronted
by life's contradictions


Goya's work, especially his drawings and prints, reveal a powerful personality; an individual who insisted on seeing things in his own way



The Great He-Goat
Goya's work, especially his drawings and prints, reveal a powerful personality; an individual who insisted on seeing things in his own way. At the beginning of his artistic career his work is smooth and detailed, conforming to the wishes of his clients. At the end of his life he had become more uncompromising and irascible. One consequence of this was that he threw himself into the search for the essentials, stripping them of unnecessary detail.

He had a way of looking at the world that never deceived itself about the realities of life. In his work Goya showed himself to be aware of the limits that created and defined human anxiety. His clear-sightedness drove him to melancholy. His energy, honesty and stubbornness led him to rebel against so much imperfection and hypocrisy.

One notable feature of Goya's personality is his sense of humour. A sense of humour that seems to have been the result of a compromise between his lust for life and a merciless vision of human nature. In the course of time this feature of his character took on a progressively deeper shade of black. The gentle irony of his earlier work gave way to the corrosive humour of the Caprichos. At the end of his life it was a hallucinatory, surreal, satirical vision that revealed itself in his last drawings and prints. However, even in his later works he added an element of indestructible hope. One example of this is the tenderness and innocence of the little girl with the accordion that invests his masterpiece The Great He-Goat with a touch of gentleness.

Bibliography

Alcalá Flecha, Roberto. Literatura e ideología en el arte de Goya. Zaragoza: Diputación General de Aragón, 1988.

Francisco Javier García Marco



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