In the wake of Goya

Goya's originality and capacity for innovation meant that he stood alone among artists of the first half of the 19th century. In addition, he had no pupils who might have been able to learn from him and take his work further. Nonetheless, the legacy of his remarkable output, acknowledged from the end of the first third of the 19th century, is evident in the work of some later painters. It was inevitable that the emphasis on imagination, fantasy and subjectivity characteristic of Romanticism would find a key reference point in Goya.

It was perhaps in printmaking that Goya's legacy was most accessible to other Spanish Romantic artists. The influence of the Caprichos and the Tauromaquia series was evident in painting and, in a very immediate and obvious way, in drawing. This is clear in the present exhibition, particularly in the work of José Zapata (Valencia, 1763-1837), Leonardo Alenza (Madrid, 1807-1845) and Eugenio Lucas (1817-1870). The case of the first, an artist who trained in the last vestiges of the Baroque tradition, is highly unusual, as he was directly inspired by the Caprichos, although his old-fashioned and moralising approach locate him far from the spirit of Goya. Leonardo Alenza and Eugenio Lucas, however, represent the best of a line which Lafuente Ferrari called the finest vein of Goya's inheritance. Alenza was an extraordinary and highly productive draughtsman and kept Goya's lesson closely in mind, in an oeuvre which is probably the best example of early Romantic genre painting. Lucas's propensity towards the creation of an imaginary and fantastical world is expressed in a fresh and immediate way on paper, revealing a wealth of artistic resources, some of them of typically Romantic spirit.

Pressetext

In the wake of Goya
Bilder von Jose Zapata, Leonardo Alenza, Eugenio Lucas