This exhibition features Francisco de Goya’s famous print suites: Los Caprichos (1799) and The Disasters of War (1810-1820) which document the brutality of the Peninsular War and the atrocities that mankind inflicts upon itself.
The Disasters of War is divided into three parts. The first illustrates the horrors of war and its effects; the second deals with famine and displacement as a consequence of war; and the last, through allegorical scenes, explores the trauma of the postwar period. Together these two bodies of work have come to be seen as the most influential graphic series in the history of Western art. This exhibition presents one of the most important artists of the nineteenth century whose social commentary embodied the anti-war, humanitarian commentary of the time and reflected similar political and social issues that we face in contemporary society.
