(P/B) GOYA

Παρουσίαση

The greatness of Goya is more widely acknowledged today than ever before. He is known and appreciated everywhere as a portrait painter, as a creator of menacing and melancholy images in oils, as a master of enigmatic, satirical and revolutionary drawing and engraving, as the champion of the Spanish people in their struggle against oppression, and the recorder of their life and customs and their sufferings in war. Today every major collection in the world possesses some of his 292 engravings. These were published from Goya's own plates in successive editions, the most recent being issued in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. These engravings are, of course, the most portable of Goya's works and therefore, in the physical sense, the most accessible. To judge his achievement as a painter, however, one must still go to Spain. Most of the chief galleries of Europe and the Americas contain, to be sure, examples of his painting, and some of these represent him a: his best and most characteristic. But of approximately 500 works with any title to authenticity, nearly a third are in Madrid and almost half are preserved in Spain. No gallery outside Spain possesses more than a dozen.(. . .) (ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΚΔΟΣΗΣ)