Francisco Goya, the most important Spanish artist of late 18th and early 19th centuries, has been crowned by many as the last of the Old Masters and the father of modern art. The enigmatic and dark series, the Black Paintings, are the natural outcome of his life. The turbulent political times as well as a string of personal tragedies and illness shaped his thinking and marked the climax of his illustrious artistic career.

What drove Goya to paint such macabre, grisly images?

Are they the ravings of a mad man on the verge of insanity?

Or are they a grotesque mirror of human nature, chronicling overwhelming terror and despair?

By exploring Goya’s evolution from a highly ambitious commercial painter in the Spanish Court to a hermit painting, the solemn series of Black Paintings on the walls of his home, you will understand how his work and thoughts on human nature changed art forever.

Rags to Riches: From humble beginnings to royal painter

Growing up in Fuentedos, a small rural Spanish village, Goya initially learnt to paint by imitation. Looking to advance his skills, the aspiring young artist headed to Madrid. There, Francisco Bayeu, a court painter, took him under his wing and helped to pave Goya’s entry into the Royal Court of Madrid.

At first Goya painted cartoons for tapestries which would adorn the walls the royal palaces. As a tapestry designer, his work was infused with his fascination for common street life, alluding to his humble roots and primed him to be a keen observer of human nature. His earlier works were filled with street fairs, bar fights, swaggering majos, working-class men, and their sensuous majas, female partners etc.

As Goya won the royal favor, he steadily worked his way up the professional and social ladder and was commissioned to paint portraits for crowned princes, wealthy merchants, noblemen and aristocrats. Notable works include ‘The Nude Maja’, ‘The Clothed Maja’ and ‘The Family Of Charles IV Of Spain’.

In 1786, he was appointed Painter-to-the King, the most prestigious position for a Spanish artist. In this role, Goya received a front row seat to the tumultuous political era which would leave an indelible mark on his work.

In 1792, at the peak of his career, Goya suffered from a mysterious illness, leaving him permanently deaf. Imprisoned in a tomb of silence, Goya distanced himself from society, becoming bitter and increasingly occupied with his own anxieties and fantasies. Many believe that the Black Paintings served as an outlet for his pent up frustration with his deafness and was a turning point in his outlook and artistic style.

More than his personal misfortunes, Goya’s shift in artistic and social world views was influenced by the political upheaval of the time.

At the turn of the 19^th century, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain. During this bloody period in Spanish history, Goya, continuing to serve as court painter to the reigning French, captured the horrors of war in ‘The Disasters of War’. These etchings chronicle the bloodcurdling savagery and violence of mankind in times of conflict. Having borne witness to the atrocities of which man is capable, Goya lost his faith in humanity and further withdrew from society.

In 1819, at the age of 73, Goya purchased a farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid and retreated to the life of a recluse. The house, aptly nicknamed “Quinta del Sordo”, “House of the Deaf Man”, bore the name of the previous owner a farmhouse who was also deaf. It was on the walls of this house that Goya painted a series of 14 haunting works – the Black Paintings.

The Black Paintings: Self-expression of a tortured mind

Goya’s Black Paintings are the climax of his work as a painter. Through these frightful images, he expressed the fears which plagued him.

The nightmarish, demonic figures in the Black paintings, with gaping mouths and leering stares, stand in such stark contrast to the brightly colored paintings of his earlier career that some art historians have questioned whether Goya in fact painted the series.

His earlier portrayals of terror and violence, pale in comparison to the Black Paintings. Not only because Goya proceeded his time by exploring the human psyche, but because he did not intend for the images to be made public.

Goya was able to explore these themes of sorrow, pathos and panic with complete freedom. This is what makes Goya the first modernist of his time. He did not title his works, nor did he provide any explanation for them.

Following his death, the paintings were removed from the walls and may be seen today in the Prado Museum in Madrid. Even in the sanitized halls of the Prado, the monochromatic Black Paintings leave viewers unnerved. Here you go a quick brief of Goya’s black paintings

1. Atropos (The Fates)(Átropos/Las Parcas)

Three mythological figures (gods), clutch a pair of scissors, a demon and a mirror. The gods flank a fourth figure who is bound and is meant to represent the notion that one cannot escape destiny.

2. Two Old Men (Dos viejos/Un viejo y un fraile) 

Two elderly men dressed in friar’s garb stand in darkness. The one, a demonic character, whispers into the ear of the second bearded man, who is hunched over a cane. The demonic figure may allude to Goya’s deafness or to insanity.

3. Two Old Men Eating Soup (Dos viejos comiendo sopa)

Painted in the same dark shades as other images in the series, the theme is not violent but arouses feelings of misery and despair. Two elderly figures, one bearing a devoid, toothless grimace, sit bent over their meal in a cloak of darkness.

4. Fight with Cudgels (Duelo a garrotazos/La riña) 

Two men, brandishing clubs in the air, rush at each other in conflict. The sparing pair seems to sink into a muddy bog as they fight.

5. Witches’ Sabbath (Aquelarre/El Gran Cabrón)

Satan, with the head of a male goat, lingers over a huddle of terrified witches. A withdrawn young girl sits in the corner apart from the quivering mass of bodies. Famous art historian, Licht believes that this painting was Goya’s reflection to physically convey anxiety at human inadequacy and his own feelings of personal doubt.

6. Men Reading (Hombres leyendo)

In this vertical image, a group of men, blanketed in darkness, huddle around a document. One of the men gazes upwards in a look of despair.

7. Judith and Holofernes (Judith y Holofernes)

   

The painting is Goya’s personal interpretation of the narrative from the “Book of Judith”. In the story, Judith saves her people by seducing and beheading General Holofernes.

8. A Pilgrimage to San Isidro (La romería de San Isidro) 

The painting shows the pilgrimage of poor villagers together with nuns and men wearing top hats. The pilgrims appear to be drunk or despairing, singing with distorted expressions. Goya explores the subject of pilgrimage to convey the popular superstitions and ignorance

1. Men Mocked by Two Women (Mujeres riendo)

Two women, perhaps prostitutes, jeer with mocking expressions at a man who sits masturbating. The image is closely linked to another work in the Black Paintings series, ‘Men Reading’.

10. Procession of the Holy Office (Peregrinación a la fuente de San Isidro/Procesión del Santo Oficio) 

    

A procession of hunched over figures, predominately white-scarved women, wind their way around a mountainous path. The sky is brightly lit, yet the figures are encased in hues of browns, blacks, and grays.

11. The Dog (Perro semihundido/El perro)

A forlorn looking black dog pokes his head out above a dirt mound. The dog is lost in the emptiness of the image which is vacant except for the sloping mound which conceals him. There are many interpretations of Goya’s intentions, one of which is, the work represents the man’s trivial struggle against malicious forces; the dog continues her fights but the sloping mass is burying her under sand

12. Saturn Devouring His Son (Saturno devorando a un hijo) 

Inspired by Greek mythology, Saturn devours one of his children in fear that his offspring will one day usurp him. The ancient god with bulging eyes rips into the flesh of a small bloody body.

13. La Leocadia (The Seductress)

Leocadia Weiss, Goya’s housemaid and possibly his lover, leans against a mantelpiece or burial mound. Dressed in black funeral garb, she gazes at the viewer with a dejected expression, however, this work is more peaceful in representation and persoanlity

14. Fantastic Vision (Visión fantástica/Asmodea)

Two figures, one shrouded in red, hover over a group of people and horses congregating beneath a large mountain. At the bottom of a frame, an armed soldier raises his rifle towards the figures as they appear to float towards a fortress at the top of the mountain. Goya’s versatility in applying diverse techniques on the canvas is reflected work in this work

Goya’s Black Paintings: Inspiration for future generations

The Black Paintings serve as a cornerstone to Expressionism and Surrealism, influencing the works of Picasso, Manet and other great masters of the 20^th century.

Francisco Goya’s dark paintings have left an indelible mark on the art world, influencing subsequent generations of artists, including the enigmatic Salvador Dali. we can explore the profound connections between these two visionary artists, unveiling the depths of human emotion and the allure of the surreal.

Today, although we are exposed to images of gore, misery and grief, much of it is sanitized and censored. Goya, on the other hand, unabashedly captures human trauma and sorrow in paint.

Deeply scarred by the times and by personal hardships, the Black Paintings serve as a cathartic expression of his unfiltered views of human nature. It is inspiring to see how the artist evolved from a painter seeking to please his patrons to an uninhibited artist who uses his art as the purest form of self-expression.

His works and their raw scrutiny of the human spirit remain just as relevant today. Respect Goya!

The post Why You Must Know Goya’s Black Paintings, The Darkest Painting Series in the World appeared first on The Artist.

But maybe we should stop worrying and learn to love the “naive”.[quote_colored name=”” icon_quote=”no”]Is it not more remarkable when a natural talent emerges from nothingness to produce a work of art with an organic honesty that might have been wiped out by years of training in established structures, conventions, and accepted wisdom? [/quote_colored]

Maybe the first time someone said it, they said it with a sneer, but that person was almost certainly an established artist or critic who might have felt threatened by a raw talent from an unlikely place.

One such unlikely place was a tax collector’s office in Paris, and its unlikely talent came in the form of a Laval­born son of a plumber named Henri Rousseau. The majority of Rousseau’s life is somewhat cloudy, and with good reason—it is wholly unexceptional. After graduating high school with merely passable grades,

Rousseau worked for a while as a lawyer’s assistant before deciding to trade in his briefcase for a gun as a member of the French army. His father’s death put an end to any military aspirations, as Rousseau moved back to his hometown to care for his mother, eventually finding himself in a government position as a toll collector. At this point, Rousseau is a few years past forty, married, father of several children, and moderately successful in a comfortable job.

Respectable, sure, but remarkable? Not by a long shot. It was during this time that Rousseau began to commit himself to the one subject where he had shown exceptional talent as a student—art. At the age of 49, he left his day job and dedicated himself fully to creating art. Maybe it makes for a better story to say that his work was unappreciated in his lifetime—and certainly, he attracted more than his fair share of critics and found limited financial success—but to claim as much is to ignore several renowned supporters that he earned during his lifetime. Chief among them is the great Pablo Picasso, whose immediate recognition of Rousseau’s talent compelled him to host a banquet in the former toll collector’s honor.

The Snake Charmer, pictured here, is a testament to the attention Rousseau received from prominent artists during his time. Commissioned by the mother of experimental French artist Robert Delaunay in 1907, one year prior to the banquet with Picasso and three years before Rousseau’s death,[quote_colored name=”” icon_quote=”no”] The Snake Charmer is a dream­like depiction of mysterious human and animal forms in a jungle scene. [/quote_colored]The piece’s reliance on dark, subdued colors relegates its subjects to shadows in the background, giving the piece a frightful, exotic feel. This focus on feeling over precision in naive art genre is what makes Rousseau’s frequent jungle depictions so evocative, though it is now believed that he lived his entire life in France and never saw a jungle with his own eyes. The Snake Charmer is an especially strong example of what made the naive art style so controversial during Rousseau’s time—abstract yet meticulous, childlike but sophisticated in a way of its own.

Though beloved by many artists during his lifetime, wide acceptance of Rousseau as an avant­garde master did not occur until after his death in 1910. The flat, fantastical depictions seen in naive art works such as The Snake Charmer, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope (1905), The Sleeping Gypsy and The Dream (1910) have influenced artists and writers as varied as Sylvia Plath and Joni Mitchell, and his unlikely rise to fame continues to inspire us all to this day.

[quote_colored name=”” icon_quote=”no”]In every common person there is the potential for greatness—greatness which may be criticized, called primitive and unsophisticated, but can be developed only through determination and perfecting one’s craft. [/quote_colored]

If being “naive” puts you in the company of greats such as Rousseau, consider that it may not be such a bad thing after all. As stated above, we must stop worrying and learn to love the naive. Is it truly remarkable when a natural talent emerges from nothingness to produce a work of passion with an organic honesty and enters into the world of greatness!

The post This Snake Charmer Is Amazing, Truly A Masterpiece In Naive Art appeared first on The Artist.

Mondrian was determined to become a painter, although his family insisted he pursues a degree in education first. In 1892 he had qualified to teach drawing in secondary schools. After graduation, instead of pursuing a career in teaching, he moved to Amsterdam and enrolled in the Rijksakademie. During this time he supported himself by producing scientific drawings and copies of museum paintings as well as hosting private drawing lessons in his studio. 

His first paintings were exhibited in 1893 in Utrecht at the art society known as Kuntsliefde which he was a member of. In 1897 he exhibited for the second time. He started off painting traditionally styled landscapes. It was when he has introduced to the French Post-Impressionists that his work changed dramatically. 

In 1905 he began integrating bold colors and brushwork, reminiscent of Van Gogh, as well as pointillism techniques. In these early works, it’s clear that he enjoyed working in series, creating a number of pieces based on a single subject. These elements all contributed significantly to the development of the abstract style that he’s so well known for in his mature works. 

This led to Mondrian being a leader in the modern abstract art movement and the main player in the Dutch abstract movement known as De Stijl. This is most apparent in his later works, combining simple straight lines and right angles with primary colors, black, white, and gray.

The development of Mondrian’s style is an important representation of the art world’s progression towards abstraction, and for this reason, his legacy lives on today. 

Broadway Boogie Woogie

Broadway Boogie Woogie is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian in 1943. This painting depicts the city grid of Manhattan, and the Broadway boogie woogie and also canvas is divided into a much larger number of squares. This painting can be viewed at Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Gray Tree

Gray Tree is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian in 1911. In this painting, the tree is shown subtly oval in form and the paintings foreground and background elements seem to intermingle. This painting can be viewed at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague.

Victory Boogie Woogie

Victory Boogie Woogie is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian between 1942 and 1944. The US President Barack Obama with other Dutch politicians was seen photographed with this painting in 2014. This painting can be viewed at Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

Evening; Red Tree

Evening; Red Tree is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian between 1908 and 1910. This painting depicts the artist’s luminosity period and it was painted when the artist was in Zeeland coastal resort of Domburg. This painting can be viewed at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague.

Self Portrait

Self Portrait is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian in 1918. The artist portrayed himself in many paintings but this one is different among others because it is the only painting that shows him clearly as a painter. This painting can be viewed at Gemeentemuseum den Haag, Hague, Netherlands.

Woods near Oele

Woods near Oele is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian in 1908. The painting shows horizon opened up and the artist began to look beyond the somewhat narrow boundaries of the Dutch school. This painting can be viewed at Gemeentemuseum den Haag, Hague, Netherlands.

Composition with Red Blue and Yellow

Composition with Red Blue and Yellow is a painting produced by Piet Mondrian in 1930. The painting is a product of the Dutch De Stijl movement which translates to “The Style”. The movement can be viewed as an overlapping of individual theoretical and artistic pursuits.

Girl Writing

‘Girl Writing’ was created in 1895 by Piet Mondrian in Impressionism style.

Village Church

Village Church is a Post-Impressionist Charcoal, Gouache, Pastel, Pencil and Watercolor Drawing created by Piet Mondrian in 1898.

Wood with Beech Trees

‘Wood with Beech Trees’ was created in 1899 by Piet Mondrian in Post-Impressionism style.

View Of Winterswijk

This delightful landscape painting by Piet Mondrian was completed in 1899 and today resides within a private collection.

Moored ships Sun

‘Moored ships Sun’ was created in 1899 by Piet Mondrian in Impressionism style.

Going Fishing

‘Going Fishing’ was created in 1900 by Piet Mondrian in Post-Impressionism style.

Self-Portrait

Mondrian portrayed himself many times. This one’s from 1900 made in Post-Impressionism style.

Among The Amstel

‘Along the Amstel’ was created in 1903 by Piet Mondrian in Impressionism style.

The post 15 Most Famous Artworks by Piet Mondrian appeared first on The Artist.

Art focuses in on the essence of the scene rather than the whole of it. It homes in on what is most memorable from the scene the artist was viewing. DaVinci could have put detail into every part of Mona Lisa, but he chose to light up her smile. Van Gogh made it quite obvious that the brilliance of the stars in the night sky were the things meant to make you reminisce.

[quote_colored name=”” icon_quote=”no”]Artists not only preserve a visual reminder of a memory, they record the emotions associated with the memory[/quote_colored]

When we view the image, whether it is one from our own memory or someone else’s, we tap into that remembered emotion and relate it our own past experiences.

Such is the case of these famous paintings and illustration, from Pawel Kuczynski, who has given the best response while the world is contemplating on absurdities of modern world

Dissonance

Brinkmanship

Puzzle

Morality

Inorganic

Deception

Narcissism

Garbage

Digital

Zuckian Vision

These famous illustrations proved the power of art in a quintessential way

The post Absurdities of Modern World, These Satire Illustrations Have the Best Depiction appeared first on The Artist.