National Arts Club to Showcase Rare Sketches by Francisco de Goya, 1/8-31

The National Arts Club and its Office of Fine Arts presents a rare series of sketches, Los Caprichos, from the Spanish Master Francisco de Goya. The free exhibition, titled Francisco de Goya y Lucientes: Los Caprichos will feature a reception, open to the public on Thursday January 8th from 6pm - 8pm and on view through January 31, 2015.

The National Art's Club were gifted the sketches by Robert Henri's last surviving heir in 1994. However, the gift was mislabeled, causing the collection to remain undiscovered within the Robert Henri Library at the Club until this winter, when an archivist located them.

Dianne B. Bernhard, Director, Office of Fine Arts, comments: "Francisco de Goya is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We are ecstatic to present this unique, influential work considered lost for the past two decades. Fine art as an important stewardship of culture, and to have such influential pieces is a joyous feeling."

Goya is regarded as the last of the Old Masters and simultaneously the first of the Moderns due to his wide range of work. In the late 18th century, an illness left Goya without hearing causing him to withdraw from society. During this time his work took a dramatic turn and he took an experimental route. Los Caprichos, a bitterly expressive series of aquatinted etchings, were created in this time.

Over the course of his career, Goya graduated from being light of heart to communicating pessimism within his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes. Los Caprichos is a series of 80 prints that Goya has described as depicting "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual." The visions are dark and macabre, and yet when explained through his captions they do not seem bleak, but provide humor and demonstrate the artist's sharp wit.

Representing repressive socio-political environment of Imperial Spain, despite him reaching the peak of his popularity with the Spanish nobility at the court of Charles III. His distress and disillusionment with the aristocracy, even while being commissioned by both the Imperial Court and the clergy is clear. Towards the end of his life, Goya abandoned Spain and moved to Bordeaux, where he lived until his death in 1828.

The creeping dissatisfaction with the internal dynamics of his homeland are no more obvious than in this collection and in particular with the world-renowned image of the tortured intellectual in No. 43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799.) Los Caprichos served as an experimental platform, where Goya's craftsmanship and compositional talents were stretched to surreal limits. Strictly translated, Caprichos means "caprices" or light-hearted folly, but Goya subverts this definition into something darker and foreboding. The characters and commentary within the works act as omens of darker tidings within his surroundings, and an increasingly modernized society.

Goya had initially withdrawn the series as a result of the Spanish Inquisition, with only 27 copies of the completed folio having been sold. It appears once more as a visual maelstrom of superstition, ignorance, fear, and folly that is both classic and hauntingly pertinent in the present day.

The exhibition marks the first installment of the Offices of Fine Arts Winter 2015 program, under the direction of Dianne B. Bernard, and will provide a stunning compliment to prior significant exhibitions, from 2014's record breaking 'Charles James: Beneath the Dress,' to Rembrandt, Picasso, Munch and Romare Bearden.

The free month-long exhibition will reintroduce the American art lover to these masters with a finely curated show from The Office of Fine Arts at The National Art's Club.

DETAILS:

Location: The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, NY, NY, 10003

Time: 11am - 5pm Monday through Sunday

Date: January 5th - 31st, 2015

Website: www.nationalartsclub.org

Phone number: 212-475-3424

Ticket Costs: Free

Opening Reception: January 8th, 2015