İstanbul hosting Goya in major new show at Pera Museum

27.04.2012

On Friday İstanbul started hosting yet another major exhibition when the Pera Museum unveiled its newest show, a selection of engravings and paintings by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, at its temporary exhibition hall.

Içerigi Paylas |

Titled “Goya: Witness of His Time,” the Pera Museum show features a total of 230 pieces -- made up of oil paintings and four series of engravings -- by the artist, billed in the art world as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

The Pera exhibition is the first-ever major exhibition of works by Goya (1746-1828) in Turkey. Curated by Marisa Oropesa and scheduled to continue until July 29, the exhibition consists of works on loan from a number of leading museums and private collections in Spain and Italy.

A joint effort between the Spanish Embassy in Ankara and the Cervantes Institute İstanbul, the exhibition brings together works from the collections of Spain’s Bilbao Fine Arts Museum and Santamarca Foundation as well as a number of private collections in addition to a number of pieces from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Pera Museum officials told reporters during a press preview for the exhibition on Thursday.

Goya, having lived at the turn of the 19th century, is one of the best narrators of “darkness” and Oropesa’s selection features Goya’s works that bear witness to a turbulent period in Europe and particularly his native Spain.

The works in the exhibition, besides his career as a court painter and portraitist, shed light to Goya’s extraordinary imagination who reflects the social circumstances of the era with a critical perspective. His realistic and at times frightening style separates him from his contemporaries as his art transcends time, influencing 20th century modernism.

Özalp Birol, the general manager of Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Culture and Arts Enterprises, which runs the Pera Museum, said during the exhibit’s unveiling Thursday that the show would showcase the multiple aspects of the artist, both as a court painter and a portrait maker and also as a chronicler of the era he lived in through his paintings.

Oropesa, also speaking during the preview, told reporters that the exhibit featured some of the most important works Goya has created, including his groundbreaking series of engravings “Caprichos,” “Disasters of War,” “Tauromaquia” (Bullfighting) and “Proverbs or Follies,” as well as his realistic portraits of the Spanish King Carlos IV and Queen Maria Luisa.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of side events that include conferences and a film program at Pera Film. Titled “Goya On Screen,” the film program will get under way next weekend and continue until July 15, offering a visual and narrative journey into the life and works of Goya through various works for the big screen: “Goya in Bordeaux,” Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura’s international award-winning 1999 historical drama; “Goya: Crazy Like a Genius,” a 2002 documentary on the painter by Australian-born art critic Robert Hughes; a six-episode miniseries made in 1984 that recounts the life of Goya by Spain’s TVE; an opera based on the life of Goya by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti and starring Placido Domingo; and finally another feature film, “The Naked Maja,” a 1958 historical fiction film that tells of the romance between Goya and the Duchess of Alba, starring Ava Gardner.

    Kaynak : todayszaman.com