The first edition of Goya's impassioned 'Disasters of War', one of the most visually arresting artistic creations of all times, which has forever influenced our perception of war, the grief, the pain, the madness, our civilization at its most gruesome, universalizing the theme of war like never before, often represented in movies when an iconographic rendering of humanity at its lowest can come to, at the same time, as remarkable artistic achievement by one of the world´s most famous, influential, and wonderful artists of all times.
Goya is deservedly one of the foremost artists of all times, his art may be considered a bridge between the Old Masters and the modernists in their intrigue for the surreal and current affairs; both Dali and Picasso praised Goya as a precursor. His was equally famous for his printing production.
“Goya trató no tanto de dejar constancia de hechos concretos sino de captar la esencia de los mismos. Se sitúa de este modo en un plano contiguo a la acción, tomando parte en el suceso como nunca hasta ahora artista alguno había realizado… Lo que acontecía en estos años estaba en boca de todos, en la calle, en la prensa, en los panfletos, en la literatura e incluso en el teatro. Goya es capaz de crear imágenes completamente nuevas a partir de estos hechos y de la información que generaron; partiendo de la realidad, la transforma en imágenes nuevas, sin equivalente formal hasta entonces, y que se van a convertir en referentes universales de los desastres que genera la guerra. Los Desastres son la máxima expresión que un artista haya sido capaz de realizar de la irracionalidad de la violencia y de sus terribles consecuencias sobre el Hombre. Lo esencial de estas obras es su intención de universalizar el tema de la violencia, de mostrar la esencia del mal que acarrea, y de brindarnos unas imágenes ante las que no podamos permanecer indiferentes, ya que su mera contemplación es como un puñetazo a nuestra conciencia.” (Museo del Prado catalogue entry).
Historical background:
When in 1807 French troops started to flood into Spain and the country quickly descended into a chaotic and bloodthirsty war, Goya’s highly ambiguous dictum 'El sueño de la razon produce monstruos' must have felt like a prophesy. The phrase, published in Los Caprichos in 1799 seemed to describe the aftermath of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon perfectly: the dream of reason had indeed produced monsters. Whether Goya was too disillusioned or just too pragmatic to openly take sides is impossible to tell. In the course of the Peninsular War, he painted a portrait of the French General Guye, received commissions and the Royal Order from Joseph Bonaparte and, when all was over, portrayed the victorious Duke of Wellington. In 1808, right at the beginning of the conflict, the Spanish General Palafox invited the artist to travel to Saragossa to depict the ruined city and immortalise the people, who had so courageously defended it during the siege by the French. It may have been during this journey across the war-torn country that Goya first thought of creating a series of prints about the war. In short, he was an eye-witness to the horrors of war.
Creation of the series:
The Disasters of War was created by Goya presumably over the course of ten years and in three distinct phases. The earliest plates, some of which bear the date 1810, depict scenes from the actual war, the battles and skirmishes, the executions, rapes and mutilations, the wounded and the dead. The second group concentrates on the famine caused by the war in 1811-12, which left tens of thousands of Madrileños dead. The third and final part consists of a group of grotesques, satires and allegories reminiscent of Los Caprichos, expressing Goya’s disdain for Fernando VII’s reactionary and vengeful rule after he had regained power following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814. It seems likely that Goya had wanted to publish the first two groups of etchings in 1814, but was prevented from doing so by Fernando’s post-war tyranny. In 1820, the revolt of Rafael del Riego and the restoration of the liberal Constitution promised liberty at last. It may have been then that Goya once again thought of publishing the series and complemented it with the caprichos enfaticos, as he called them. Yet three years later, Fernando’s absolute rule was re-established, General Riego was executed and Goya soon emigrated to France. Los Desastres de la Guerra were never published in his lifetime. When the fight for freedom was over and won, and victory had brought nothing but Fernando’s vindictive restoration, Goya certainly seemed to have lost all faith. One of the caprichos enfaticos at the end of the series (plate 69) shows a skeleton scribbling one single word as it sinks into the grave: Nada ('Nothing'). This issue has a few captions corrected, as explained in Harris.
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) needs no introduction, he is amongst a short list of artists that have shaped our visual perception of the world, and namely, his depictions of war, are certainly amongst the most reproduced in today´s culture, in films, documentaries, etc.
“Francisco Goya, in full Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… Spanish artist whose paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. The series of etchings The Disasters of War (1810–14) records the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion.” (Harris-Frankfort, E.. "Francisco Goya." Encyclopedia Britannica, April 12, 2022).
Second issue of the first edition, with plates 9, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39 and 47 in the corrected, second state, as per Harris.
Harris, II, pp. 173-174, n° 1b; Vindel, p. 25.
