Goya's Last Works
February 22 through May 14, 2006
Goya’s Last Works is the first exhibition in the United States to concentrate exclusively on the final phase of this artist’s career. It is the third in a series of critically acclaimed presentations focused on Spanish art at The Frick Collection, following Velázquez in New York Museums (1999) and El Greco: Themes and Variations (2001). Organized by Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, New York University, and Susan Grace Galassi, Curator at The Frick Collection, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue published by Yale University Press as well as a series of lectures.
The Frick’s 1824 portrait of a woman identified as María Martínez de Puga is the starting point of this exhibition. The show focuses on the years from 1824 to 1828, which Goya spent in Bordeaux in a community of fellow Spanish exiles seeking refuge from the absolutism of Fernando VII and his vengeful purge of liberals, as well as on the years in Madrid shortly before the artist's departure. Though aged, in poor health, and long deaf, Goya produced a remarkable body of innovative work in his late seventies and early eighties. The aim of Goya’s Last Works is to bring this little-known final phase of his art, and the circumstances in which it was created, to the attention of the American audience.
The exhibition features approximately fifty works by Goya, including oil portraits of friends and family who accompanied and aided him in his final years, drawings from his last two albums made primarily for himself, lithographs — a new medium that he quickly mastered — and experimental tiny paintings on ivory. Lenders to the exhibition include private and public collections in Spain and the United States.
Principal funding for Goya's Last Works has been provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation, with major support from Merrill Lynch; Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Jonathan Brown and Susan Grace Galassi; The Widgeon Point Charitable Foundation; Mr. and Mrs. Walter A. Eberstadt; The Samuel H. Kress Foundation; and The Getty Grant Program of The J. Paul Getty Trust. The catalogue has been generously underwritten by Lawrence and Julie Salander and made possible, in part, by Furthermore: A Program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund. Support for scholarly programming has been provided by the Arthur Ross Foundation. Additional support has been provided by The Helen Clay Frick Foundation and the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
This exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities. |
