Goya, the all war historian. The Disasters and war photography

Between the 2nd of December 2012 and the 27th of January 2013 the National Museum of Art of Romania and Cervantes Institute in Bucharest present the temporary exhibition Goya, the all war historian: The Disasters and war photography in the Auditorium Rotonda (Stirbei Voda Street). The curator of the exhibition is Mr. Juan Bordes.

The exhibition presents 82 prints from famous series The Disasters of War, created during 1810 – 1820 by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. The prints illustrate war scenes from the Spanish War of Idependence (1808 – 1814).

Through the prints, Goya denounces the horrors of war: cruelty, fanatism, terror, injustice, agony and death. His impartial approach, illustrating the atrocities committed by both parties in the conflict, transformes the creative act into a protest against war, unprecedented in art history.

Mirroring Goya’s prints, the exhibition presents photographies of the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939), immortalised by famous photographers such as Robert Capa, David Seymour, Gerda Taro, Augustí Centelles or Alfonso Sánchez.

Beyond its artistic value and its incontestable technique, the Disasters of War prints are a testimony of real life events (I saw, This is how it hapened – are the titles of some works). The great visual impact of these prints precedes the aesthetics of press photography: simple compositions, the capturing of the spontaneous and the insolite, black or empty spaces drawing the viewer’s attention to key elements of the image.

In the exhibition the prints are grouped into seven important themes: the front, the victims, the executions, the exodous and the robberies, the famine, the woman during war and the post-war period – a critique to the absolutist regime instaured by King Ferdinand VII.

Photographies matching the themes of Goya’s prints have been selected by the curator to emphasize the universal impact of the images from The Disasters of War series – preceeding photographic chronicles of future wars.

Goya began the series in 1810, but the last prints were not finished until 1820. In the meanwhile, he imprinted several samples and only 3 full copies of the series, under the title The fatal consequences of the bloodthirsty war against Bonaparte in Spain. In 1862 the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy has bought 80 plates of the series, the other 2 being donated in 1870. The Disasters of War title appeared in the first edition published by the National Calcography in 1863. Presently six copies of the series have been imprinted, and the first complete series, with all 82 works, dates from 1963.

Goya, the all war historian
The Disasters and war photography

artist(s):
Francisco de Goya

curator(s):
Juan Bordes