Francisco de Goya at Norton Simon Museum

I Saw It: Francisco de Goya, Printmaker at Norton Simon Museum is the first exhibition on the West Coast to show the prolific artist Francisco de Goya’s (1746-1828) four major print series: Los Caprichos (1799), Los Desastres de la Guerra (c. 1810-15), La Tauromaquia (1815-1816), and Los Disparates (c. 1815-23). Located in the museum’s lower-level exhibition wing, I Saw It provides visitors with an extremely rare opportunity to see Goya’s major print series in their entirety, with over 200 prints drawn from Norton Simon’s very own collection. The series, which cleverly critiques and satirizes the depravity of war, Spain’s ruling classes, and the country’s religious and political institutions, is remarkably relevant today.

In the small focus gallery on the museum’s main level is I Saw It: Modern Artists Respond to Goya is a supplementary exhibition that examines Goya’s legacy as reflected in the work of Yinka Shonibare, Enrique Chagoya, Pablo Picasso, Leon Golub, and Andy Warhol. Chagoya’s work presents contemporary interventions to Goya’s prints, Picasso and Shonibare make direct references to them, and Warhol and Golub take on similar formal approaches and themes.

Photo: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) Disparates: A Way of Flying (Modo de volar), 1864. Etching, burnished aquatint, lavis, drypoint and burin, before engraved numbers, on wove paper. Plate: 9 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. (24.5 x 35 cm); sheet: 12 15/16 x 18 ⅞ in. (32.9 x 48 cm). The Norton Simon Foundation. F.1973.14.07.13.G