The Drawings of Francisco Goya Francisco Goya (Spanish,1746-1828) Madness - Three Album Drawings The Idiot, Album H.60, 1825-28 Actual Size: 7.5 x 5.85 inches, Black Chalk This one has lots of relatives and some of them rational. - Album C.52, 1808-14 Actual Size: 8.2 x 5.5 inches, India Ink Wash Raging Lunatic (Loco furioso), Album G.40, 1825-28 Actual Size – 7.2 x 5.7 inches, Black Chalk Three Fine Art Reproductions Full Size Reproductions These reproductions are new, individually printed and proofed, superior quality, giclee* process, fine art prints. They are printed on 100% cotton rag acid-free, heavyweight fine art paper with a luxurious textured watercolor paper finish and archival pigment inks to ensure permanence. Created for collectors, they ARE NOT mass produced prints on low quality, inexpensive paper. Goya’s drawings often portrayed people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, criminals, prisoners, the insane and deformed at the lower spectrum of society. Drawing his subjects either naturalistically or acting out his imaginary macabre fantasies, his work delivers an unapologetic commentary on Spanish society and the bleak everyday existence of the unfortunate classes – those oppressed by the church, aristocracy and royal court. Goya responded to events during his lifetime as an imaginative artist. His lasting progressive effect has been to turn the artist's imagination towards the mass of oppressed society, not in a strictly realistic fashion, and not uncritically, but in a poetic manner that enables his drawings to live and breathe some two hundred years after they were executed. Today his insights are still surprisingly fresh. Goya's albums attest to the depth of the influence of the Enlightenment on the direction of his work its individuality and originality in images that are of lasting universal appeal. Francisco Goya (1746-1848) the famous Spanish court painter turned increasingly to drawing as his primary means of artistic expression after 1795. He filled over eight albums of approximately 600 drawings and published four major print cycles of etchings depicting a society in transition. With pitiless observation he captured an unstable and restless Spain – a Spain suffering from religious Inquisition, a corrupt deluded aristocracy, social injustice, violent crime and the atrocities of a guerilla war against Napoleon’s invasion of 1808. Drawn with a pessimistic and cynical yet truthful eye, his subject matter dealt with the realities of everyday life, fables, witchcraft, the church, social injustices and the disasters of war. Goya’s art invented a new type of art; art as visual reportage that virtually anticipated photojournalism and recorded a beleaguered society at the advent of the 19th century. Original Medium: Black Chalk and India Ink Wash on paper. Reproductions: Fine Art Paper, Pigment inks Image Sizes: all at actual sizes - printed on larger paper to allow ample borders for matting and framing Prints ship a protective heavy cardboard mailing tube. **the giclee process produces a high quality, fine art reproduction from a high-resolution digital file of an image. The file is then printed with a high-resolution photo generation printer on a fine art paper. Most artists and working photographers today use the giclee process to produce reproductions of their original artwork and photographs. As with any original art or fine art reproduction, it is recommended that prints are framed and displayed under glass to prevent color fade or shift over the years.