Eternal artists are scattered all over the world, but Madrid is the exception. Goya is the exception. “There is no capital in the world that concentrates practically all the works of a great master,” assures to ABC Javier Blas, coordinator of the project of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, which has all the engravings made by Goya and with the largest collection of Spanish intaglio plates. That is why they have designed an experience of maximum intimacy to delve into the works and experience first-hand the artistic work that they imply.
“Traces: From Painting to Engraving” is a new luxury cultural proposal. It begins with a pictorial visit behind closed doors where the center’s curator – and not a tour guide – contextualizes different immortal paintings to get into the mood. The history of Spain’s only Arcimboldo is detailed, the Rubens and the Zurbaráns are studied, until arriving at the magnum opus: The Burial of the Sardine, by Goya. It may seem unlikely, but it is only a prelude. What follows is a first glimpse of the “New Goya Cabinet.”
In the solitude of his deafness, the native of Zaragoza went from painting allegorical royal portraits to representing the dark realities of his ungovernable times. The change of concept was not abrupt, his graphic art is somewhere in the middle. It is a series of engravings entitled “Caprices”, “Disasters of War”, “Bullfighting” and “Disparates”. And in a feat of modern museography, the San Fernando Academy has considerably expanded its space to exhibit all 228 engravings and their copper plates – the alma mater that gave them their first birth. Before, unjustly, only 45 works were presented.
Upon arriving at the office, curator Alberto Urueña explains their value: “There are also copies of these pieces in Zaragoza and Boston, but we have the original plates.” The possibility of tracing many engravings from a single sheet means that it is the latter that acquires value. For this reason, Urueña recalls that if practically all the plates of the one who is considered – along with Rembrandt – the best engraver in history are exhibited, it means that the client is before the masterpiece of world intaglio.
Only four were sold at the Louvre, for sums exceeding a million dollars each. And these series are the main antecedent of the Black Paintings; the most precious treasure of the Prado Museum -along with El Jardín de las Delicias and Las Meninas-.
Art historian Jaime Romero claims that the pieces – published between 1799 and 1823 – satirize Spanish daily life; others, such as Javier Blas, claim that many of them only sought to represent their times with grotesque crudeness. The difference is that satire, through its ridiculous desire, still does not deny that a rotten society can have a solution, while the grotesque is pure disillusionment.
Then begins the first tour of the series. Alberto Urueña anticipates the content with a phrase from Francisco de Goya himself: “There are no rules in painting”, thus setting the scene for the observation. He then explains two of the groups: “Caprices” and “Disasters of War”.
The first round of engravings
In the 82 pieces of “Caprichos” a critical review of society as a whole is carried out. All social classes, all professions and all everyday situations, approached under a judicious eye that darkens them with an enviable technicality. The so-called “Asnerias” stand out, where they represent, for example, a donkey as a doctor doing a bad job treating his patient. The caption ironically says: “Of what evil will he die?”. There is also another one about a donkey-teacher, who teaches with a book that contains only the letter “a”. The title: “Will the disciple know more?”.
In Caprichos there is also the famous engraving 43. In it Goya confesses his deterioration of his mental state. A man lying on his desk – probably himself – suffers from his existence while owls stalk him; the symbol of wisdom. Under the desk, the teacher leaves this sentence: “The dream of reason produces monsters.”
A text entitled “Genius and Neuropsychopathology” gathers documentation on the mental illnesses that tormented the painter-engraver. For example, about his bipolarity, there are letters in which he confesses to his best friend: “I remain the same in terms of health, I go from an excitement that I can not even bear, to being calm as now, when I take a pen to write to you, and “I am already tired”.
Abandoned to altered states, he uses art to tell his life and that of his dystopian environment. “Caprichos” is a treatise on collective psychiatry but it still leaves room for irony. But later, the tour reaches “The Disasters of War”.
The curator begins to describe in detail the content of the pieces: “Goya was the world’s first war reporter,” he says. The title responds to the master’s serenity in his heartbreaking description of the Spanish War of Independence. There are no heroic characters or glorious stories, everything indicates suffering. Javier Blas describes these works as “a universal meditation on war conflicts.”
After the explanations, those responsible for the experience take out some copper sheets so that the client can feel the tracings. Of course, they are not originals, but they are part of the complete experience that we want to offer. “Digitizing the plates of a well-made engraving is another way of reading art. It is a kind of spiritual Braille,” explains Jaime Romero, mentioned above.
The Safe and Living Art
Once the whims and disasters have passed, the highlight of the visit arrives: the opening of the vault. It contains 10,000 original plates by all the artists who have set foot in the National Chalcography – the oldest in the world, founded in 1789 -. In a door that, for security reasons, imitates a simple wall, the safe opens and you can see the pieces, never exhibited to the public in the entire history of the center. It is therefore the most important collection of prints in the world.
It will be the official printer of the Academy who will begin to disassemble such a file, opening the drawers and taking out the boards. It is not possible to photograph the interior of the place, but it is a series of drawers that can be opened to explore and the full will of detail of the expert.
Once all the curiosities have been satisfied, the tour continues. The next thing is no less astonishing: the birth of a living work of art. The stamper is ready to prepare his material. And he explains his technique, engraving. He takes out his copper sheet, covers it with a soft layer of varnish to protect it. He explains that this is where the artist draws with a metal point. In this case, it is the Notre-Dame church.
The varnish is stripped of the lines, and the sheet is placed in a bucket of mordant oil that removes the varnish; the protective layer that, once the drawing is born, no longer has any function. Finally, he transports the prepared sheet to a machine called a torculo and places a blank sheet of paper.
This matrix acts as a press, exerting pressure between the metal and the paper, and thus the impression is reproduced. It is an indivisible and virtuous mixture of art and craftsmanship that one can live in this experience with all the calm in the world.
The engraver claims that Goya, in addition to being the most erudite in engraving on a conceptual level, was also the most inventive, having created the eucalyptus technique. A method used to this day. But before returning to the artist, one last experiment awaits us.
There, in the private workshop of National Chalcography, all those who have purchased the visit receive an original 19th century engraving, made by the famous artist Joaquín Pi i Margall. The themes of his work refer to classics of literature such as The Iliad or the Divine Comedy.
The second round of engravings
We go back down to the exhibition of Goya’s cabinet. It is time to know “La Tauromaquia” and “Los Disparates”. The first are a series of engravings that allude to bullfighting, but not from a folkloric point of view, but from a visceral point of view.
The academic Javier Blas comments on the possibility of a change in Goya’s position towards this activity, which he previously viewed favorably. One of the most representative issues is the last one, which tells the story of the death of the famous bullfighter Pepe HIllo.
And finally, there is Los Parates, the most enigmatic series. It is the macabre and the grotesque at its best, with deformed and devouring figures. “There are supernatural and monumental beings compared to tiny human beings. It is a dreamlike series that is closest to the black paintings,” explains Javier Blas.
“Goya explores all aspects of the human being, from his lowest passions to his highest,” explains Gonzalo Pascual, art historian, for ABC. And it is the entire human condition that is called into question. And his passage to the study of the grotesque, passes through satire as a channel – the example is ‘Caprichos’ – until reaching putrefaction with ‘Disparates’, and perfecting this disillusionment with the black paintings.
All this is meticulously taught in the experience “From Traces to Engraving”, which, after a strong cultural consumption, ends at the Canalejas Gallery for a gastronomic pleasure. They will wait for customers with a wine and ham tasting, and then invite them to a luxury meal at the St. James rice restaurant.
