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He lived in the 1800s, and painted scenes reminiscent of the eeriness of a
David Lynch movie. Now, for the first time in a German-speaking country, the
work of Francisco de Goya is on impressive display in
Berlin.
The artist sprawls in a slumber across his table, while behind his back
demonic animals rise above him. The etching, entitled "The Sleep of Reason
Produces Monsters", is a self portrait and forms part of what is probably
Goya's best-known series of eight plates, designed as a criticism of "human
errors and vices."
It was images like this that moved the organizers of the Berlin show to
try and stage it in the first place. And the process has been arduous. It
has taken more than 10 years to bring Goya to Berlin, where he is now the
protagonist of a high-profile exhibition called "Goya: Prophet of the
Modern."
Curator Moritz Wullen says Goya was a century ahead of his time,
experimenting with symbolism, expressionism and surrealism and thus
triggering the "original explosion of modernism."
Limited visitor capacity
Berlin is hoping that the show's uniqueness will pull crowds in the same
volume as the New York Museum of Modern Art exhibition staged in Berlin last
year. More than a million visitors came to see the MoMa collection, bringing
6.5 million euros ($7.8 million) with them.
City hotels
are doing their bit to drum up interest for the Spanish master, with special
offers combining accommodation, entry into the gallery and a catalogue, and
private bus companies are offering special trips to the Berlin gallery.
Wullen is a little surprised at the level of interest and has expressed
his reservations about trying to repeat the successful MoMa show, for
reasons of space, if nothing else.
The gallery is comparably small and would struggle to accommodate 1,000
visitors an hour. "The pictures would fall off the walls," Wullen said.
While thronging crowds are a daunting prospect, Wullen said he can
understand the interest, as it is only now that Goya can really begin to be
understood.
He said it takes modern eyes fed on a diet of horror films to comprehend
the artist's apocalyptic visions of sorcerers and double-faced ghosts. "If
Goya had lived two hundred years later, he would have been making films,"
Wullen said.
Colorful past
But during his lifetime spanning 1746 - 1828, Goya was the son of an
artisan, and earned his crust by painting portraits, idyllic country parties
and still-life compositions.
The quality of his work made him much sought after and he enjoyed a
varied and colorful career which included his appointment to the position of
First Court Painter to Charles IV in 1799.
By then however, the painter had been left deaf by a mysterious illness.
It was an affliction which was to change his life and his work, giving rise
to the dark exploration of social and psychological themes for which he
became so well-known.
The Goya exhibition runs at Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie until
October 3.
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