Goya images created two centuries ago still resonate today

Bedraggled peasants plead before the points of bayonets. Emaciated figures beg for provisions. Naked bodies, their faces contorted with pain, lie heaped in crude piles.

Francisco de Goya’s war etchings dissolve the perception of battle as a glorious and noble endeavor. Instead, his images focus on the sheer indignity of war. He foregoes the grand expanses of the battlefield and hones in on singular horrors: the guerrilla fighter vomiting blood over a smattering of dead bodies, a woman being groped salaciously by soldiers, citizens starving in rags.

One of the most renowned Spanish artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Goya witnessed the brutality of the Peninsular War in 1808, when Napoleon Bonaparte’s army invaded Spain. The highly trained and well-equipped French soldiers met resistance from a much weaker Spanish force consisting largely of untrained guerrilla fighters. The war dragged on for six years, with bloody massacres and widespread famine devastating the country.  

Goya had been serving as official painter to the Spanish Court since 1799, but he was contracted by the French monarchy after Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, took the throne. The series of aquatint etchings he privately produced during this time period puts viewers in the shoes of an eyewitness to the violence, ignominy and senselessness of war. Known as “Disasters of War,” the series was made public several decades after Goya’s death.

Half of the famed series is currently on display at the Paul Creative Arts Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The UNH Art Gallery rented the collection from the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia for $2,000, plus shipping. Consisting of 40 images divided into three categories, the exhibition will remain on the gallery’s second floor until April 7.

Organizers timed the Goya exhibition to coincide with the UNH theater department’s Greek Trilogy Project, which features three Greek plays that deal with the consequences of war. Gallery director Vicki Wright notes that the topic of war currently weighs heavily on people’s minds as the bloody conflict in Iraq barrels forward. The images Goya created two centuries ago are still relevant today, Wright says.

The black and white etchings have sparse backgrounds, offering little to distract viewers from the graphic and emotional depictions before them.

“You’re forced to focus on the action that’s in front of you,” Wright said. “You become the witness. It’s like you’re right there.”
The first and largest section of the Disasters of War series focuses on the brutality of combat. Goya stresses the contrast between the uniformed French soldiers and the tattered Spanish fighters, who are slain in masses and left in naked heaps. Some images depict tethered and blindfolded men before the firing squad. Others show bound Spaniards being hanged.

The cruel banality of each horrific act is encapsulated in the title of an etching that depicts French soldiers strangling a Spanish man. “Por qué?” inquires the title scrawled at the bottom of the etching. People around the world ask the same question in countless languages when they see images of war on television or witness them first hand. Why would human beings inflict such nightmares on one another?

The second section portrays the consequences of famine in Madrid in 1811, when more than 20,000 people died as the result of supply route disruptions. Somber images of withering bodies, begging citizens and Spaniards carrying off their dead line the gallery wall. Goya’s unflinching approach forces viewers to confront the reality of starvation.

The third and final sequence of prints, known as “emphatic fantasies,” takes a more surreal approach. Goya created the prints after Ferdinand VII was reinstated to the Spanish throne following the war. Ferdinand restored the Spanish aristocracy and clergy and resumed the Inquisition, bringing a new wave of terror to the war-ravaged nation.

Equally critical of the French and Spanish monarchies, Goya employed allegorical and metaphorical images to create cynical commentaries on his leaders. One etching depicts a demonic, winged creature sucking at the dead body of a Spaniard. Another shows wild dogs attacking a madly bucking horse.

The series ends with a pair of seemingly related etchings. The first, titled “Truth is dead,” depicts a bare-breasted woman lying dead before a crowd. The second, called “Will she rise again?” shows light emanating from the lifeless woman’s head.

The “Disasters of War” prints were not made public until 1865, some 37 years after Goya’s death. By creating art that was critical of the French and Spanish monarchies, Goya knew he ran the risk of persecution. Ferdinand VII did his best to quell the tongues of liberal thinkers.

“I think that Goya knew full well that he would have been called on the carpet, so to speak, by the Spanish monarchy if he had made these public at that point,” Wright says. 

Wright credits Goya with being one of the first artists to create artwork motivated purely by his own convictions. Most artists of Goya’s era, she says, were contracted by kings and aristocrats to paint flattering portraits and murals. While Goya was no stranger to this practice, himself being a court appointed painter, he did his most significant work in private—work that could have gotten him imprisoned or killed.

“He had what you might think of as a private art,” Wright said. “An art that he did documenting what was going on around him, which he didn’t necessarily do to sell to patrons.”

Modern artists predominantly use their canvases as a forum to express their opinions and beliefs, but this was largely unheard of before Goya’s “Disasters” prints, Wright says. And just as earlier Spanish painters like Rembrant and Velasquez influenced Goya, he in turn rubbed off on later artists like Manet and Picasso.

Goya was also a technically proficient artist who mastered a number of techniques. His etchings began with graphic designs inked upon copper plates. Material was pressed against the original plates to reproduce the images. The etchings on display in Durham were reproduced in 1906 from Goya’s original plates.

Also on display at The Art Gallery is the N.H. Art Association 59th Annual Exhibition, featuring 70 paintings, photographs, sculptures, ceramics and other works created by N.H. artists. The exhibition has been held at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester for the last 58 years, but was moved to Durham this year because of extensive renovations at Currier.

The Greek Trilogy Project, a collaboration between UNH, Keene State College and Plymouth State University, takes place from Feb. 21 through 25 at Johnson Theater in the Paul Creative Arts Center. A UNH production of “Electra” by Sophocles runs on Feb. 21 and 22 at 7 p.m., and on Feb. 25 at 2 p.m. Plymouth State presents “The Trojan Women” by Euripides on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. Keene State presents “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus on Feb. 24 at 7 p.m.