Francisco Goya heralded the end of traditional art, the father of modern art, a genius who signaled the true revolution of self-expression and the independent spirit.
Goya is a painter who witnessed something that everyone looked at, but no one saw completely, in a very fast and changing age when reactionary governments came one after another, crushed by Napoleon's boots. He influenced artists such as the famous French poet Baudelaire and writer Victor Hugo and painter Pablo Picasso.
He was born on March 30, 1746, in a small town in the city of Zaragoza, in the Aragon region of Spain, as the fourth son of the illuminator José Goya and Gracia Lucientes. The proximity of the place where he was born to the Enlightenment period France and the traces of both the craftsman and the noble part of the society in his family give clues to the main elements reflecting the general character of his art.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.
Goya attended the Escuelas Pías school, where he crossed paths with his best friend Martín Zapater, and then the school of the painter José Luzán, where he learned the basics of Aragonese painting. It was Domenico Tiepolo who influenced him the most during this period, and the traces of his paintings dealing with people and their behaviors can be clearly seen in Goya's art. Although he came to Madrid to study at the San Fernando Academy in 1763, he could not enter this school. In 1769, he won second place in the competition held by the Parma Academy in Italy, where he went both to escape the Inquisition practices that made the European Christian world hell and to study the works of Correggio. When he returned to Zaragoza in 1771, he received his first order for frescoes for the city's cathedral.
In 1775, Goya was summoned to Madrid by Anton Rafael Mengs, the chief painter of the palace, most likely on the advice of his brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu, and in the same year he was given a job as a pattern painter at the Santa Barbara Royal Carpet Factory. In these designs, he depicts the idyllic scenes of daily life with a lively romantic understanding and an ornamental approach in the Rococo genre.
In 1785, he became the principal of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts. Goya, who was appointed royal painter in 1786, was appointed court painter after Carlos IV's accession to the throne in 1789. His duties include the making of portraits of the king and queen. While the influences of Velázquez, whom he admired, were seen in Goya's first portraits, he later turned to a more natural, lively, and personal expression. He also reflects on the personal characteristics of the figures in these portraits, which he handles with a satirical and cynical approach without idealizing them. Goya's loss of hearing after a serious illness in 1792 also affects his mental health, which is also reflected in the artist's paintings.
The first of Goya's most important works in the field of printmaking, the Capricho series, was published in 1799. Apart from being the artist's first series of engravings, these also draw attention as they are works that include his critical view of society and administration. When the scathing criticism of the prints angered the Inquisition, Goya sold the eighty original copperplates and the unsold collections to King Carlos IV, and in return, the painter's son, Javier, was appointed court clerk. These works gained great fame outside of Spain, becoming the first symbol of the Goyaesque style and a new approach to reality. With this series, the cold and contrived neoclassical engraving ends.
Goya's artistic life was marked by the Spanish War of Independence, which broke out in 1808. This war affects the famous painter deeply and he uses his brush uncensored and fearlessly. It is during this period that he prepares the Disasters of War series. These engravings are like a chronicle of war. Goya begins the engravings after meeting the front in Zaragoza, where he was summoned by General Palafox and stayed from October 1808 to the first months of 1809, seeing and painting the horrors of war. The chronology of the Disasters of War, which was previously dated as 1810-1823, is determined as 1810-1815, after examining the historical-artistic context of the papers and pictures with the techniques used.
Goya painted May 3, 1808, so strikingly that it became a symbol of the suffering of all of Spain. This is the reaction of an artist who wholeheartedly stands against murderers and tyranny. In this massacre that took place in Madrid, he depicted the execution of the rebels who rebelled against the Napoleonic army invading the country. The rebel, who is about to be shot, awaits salvation with his arms outstretched as if he were crucified. A scar began to appear on his open palm. There seems to be a hope of salvation in this scene. The artist used light in painting to transform good into bad. In all artistic works done in history, light has been used to bring a sublime beauty to the theme. But here it was used as a means of slaughter. The rifles of the ruthless soldiers, who are trying to finish their dirty work as soon as possible, are shining in the darkness of the night and the soldiers are waiting for the final order. The color distribution in the painting again increased the effect of violence and destructive brutality. The dominance of yellow, brown, green, and red, which supports color varieties ranging from gray to black, showed the tension of violence and that the event took place at night. Considered one of the masterpieces of the Spanish art of painting, the work, according to art historian Kenneth Clark, was considered the first great painting that could be considered a revolution in the sense of style, subject, and intention.
At the age of 70, Goya faced financial difficulties, but on May 5, 1814, the censorship of repression was reinstated and the Inquisition was re-established.
Goya, who lived in isolation from society after 1815, deteriorated further. He settled in a house near San Isidro in 1819 for a quiet life. Called the Deaf Man's Mansion, this house was named after its former deaf owner, but Goya was almost deaf when he settled in the house. He prepares sketches of live dance figures to decorate this house; however, the severe discomfort he suffered during this period and the return of the Monarchy to Spain changed the course of his work and led to the series we call Black Paintings (1820 - 1823).
They bring the painter before the Inquisition Court because of some of his paintings. Goya realizes that he won't be able to get away with it if he falls into the hands of the Inquisitor a second time. After hiding briefly in a priest's house in 1824, he settled in Bordeaux when he was allowed to leave the country by Ferdinand VII due to his failing health. The artist, who made a trip to Paris from here, started to work with lithography as a new technique in the last years of his life, and in 1825 he performed the series Bordeaux Bulls. Although he came to Spain in 1826 to see his only surviving child, Javier, of his five sons, he returned to France. He dies after a heart attack on April 16, 1828.