Francisco de Goya

An Old Master on the way to the modern age: a monumental Goya survey featuring rarely seen paintings from private collections

Francisco de Goya was one of the last great court artists and a significant trailblazer for modern art—and now, the Fondation Beyeler, in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado, has mounted one of the most extensive exhibitions of his work outside of Spain, a major event commemorated with this monumental publication.

In a career of more than 60 years, Goya acted as an astute observer of the drama of reason and irrationality, of dreams and nightmares. His pictures show things that go beyond social conventions: he depicts saints and criminals, witches and demons, breaking open the gates to realms where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur. The Fondation Beyeler exhibition and its accompanying catalog gathers more than 70 paintings, around 60 masterful drawings and a selection of prints that invite the viewer to an encounter with Goya’s vision of the beautiful, as well as the incomprehensible. For the first time, rarely seen paintings from private collections in Spain have been united with key works from the most famous European and American museums and private collections. This extensive catalog examines Goya’s unique artistic impact in texts by renowned interpreters, and features splendid photographic illustrations.

The work of Spanish painter Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) covers the spectrum from the Rococo to Romanticism. The last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns, Goya was both a transitional and completely singular figure, a chronicler of the events and protagonists of his day and an explorer of timeless interior realms.