A telephone receiver with a parrot. Exhibition “Caprichos. Goya and Dali Exhibition of Goya and Dali in Pushkin

From January 24 to March 12 at State Museum fine arts named after A.S. Pushkin will host the exhibition “Caprichos. Goya and Dali ".

The exhibition will feature works from two graphic series of engravings: "Caprichos" by Francisco Goya from the collection of the Pushkin Museum and "Caprichos Goya" created by Salvador Dali - from the collection of Boris Fridman.

The exhibition includes 41 engravings by Goya and their corresponding 41 prints by Dali. The 19th century prints from the original 1799 boards were made by Goya using aquatint etching. While the works of Salvador Dali are executed in the techniques of etching, drypoint and pochoir and printing over heliogravures from the original etchings of Goya.

For each pair of sheets by Goya and Dali, there is a commentary by Goya. Thus, the exposition is a literary text (comments by Goya) and illustrations to it (etchings by Goya and Dali). This design of the exposition will allow the viewer to better understand what the artists have done, to feel the modern sound of a work of art created more than two hundred years ago and continued in the 20th century.

One of the pinnacles of Francisco Goya's graphic art is his creation of the Caprichos etchings series. Caprichos (Italian capricci; French caprices; Spanish caprichos) is a special genre that has developed in art Western Europe at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries, suggesting the creation in fine arts, music or poetry, a series of whims, whims or fantasies, united by any theme.

The artist created the first sketches for the Caprichos series in 1793. In the final form, the graphic series was designed by him in 1799. Goya himself called the series "Collection of Prints on Fantasy Plots."

Within the framework of this exposition, new translation into Russian of all Goya's comments to the etchings of the graphic series. To understand more deeply what the artist has created, this series should be considered in conjunction with his comments.

Almost 180 years after the publication of the graphic series by Francisco Goya, his compatriot Salvador Dali, one of the prominent representatives directions of surrealism in the art of the twentieth century, presented his reading of the content and meanings of etchings created by Goya. Dali perceived the sheets of "Caprichos" as something close to his own surrealist method.

A fundamental feature of Dali's work with the graphic series is the replacement of all the names of images given by Goya with comments made by Dali himself, which do not so much explain the plots as set another line of their interpretation, complementing Goya's fantasies with Dali's surreal visions, which entered almost two centuries later into a kind of dialogue with a great predecessor.

I made it! After standing for exactly 55 minutes in the entrance queue, I got into Pushkin Museum to the Salvador Dali exhibition. The exhibition is not very large, but beautifully designed - hovering figures in masks above the stairs, glowing eggs along the exhibition of drawings. I was especially impressed by the hand-drawn scenery created by Dali for the performance - this is the largest painting in the exhibition, draped around the edges by curtains of red velvet. The layout of the room looks pretty in the style of a portrait of actress Mae West. To look into the window of a wooden box, you will have to stand in line, but it's worth it: hair-curtains, nose-fireplace, paintings-eyes and lips-sofa. A life-size sofa is on the opposite side.
Dali's drawings are represented by sketches of paintings, illustrations of books ("Don Quixote", "The Life of Benvenutto Cellini") and sketches for them. The abundance of the smallest details on the rather small drawings is striking. A tiny sheet of paper sometimes depicts the whole space, and some of the figures are like vortex flows or a swarm of bees. If you can still somehow look at the drawings, abstracting from the fact that people are walking around, then you already have to make your way to the pictures. The paintings are not the most famous, but even more complex and fantasy than the drawings. Dali creates absolutely incredible worlds, his paintings are not just riddles, they are puzzles. Therefore, I want to linger, consider them in detail, but it will not work. Each picture is worth twenty people, at best it will be possible to squeeze into the first row for a few seconds until you are pressed by the next admirer. At worst, you will have to look over the heads of others. By the way, I could not get close to half of the paintings. I'd better revise them later without fussing on reproductions in the album.
The exhibition also features photographs from the artist's personal archive - portraits of his parents, photographs with Gala, footage from the filming of films in which Dali took part as a decorator, unique photographs of the Venus Dreams pavilion, built for the world exhibition in New York.
I did not stay on Dali: I stood in line at the entrance for 55 minutes, spent less than an hour at the exhibition and fled from the crowd to other halls - deserted and full of solemn silence. Wandered between antique statues, lingered at the Capitoline she-wolf, saddened by the magnificent Italian tombstones of the Middle Ages, admired the portraits and landscapes of the Danes from the temporary exhibition, admired the bishop's seat, made in the form of a tall pulpit made of carved wood, the top of which resembles the towers of Gothic cathedrals, looked at a selection of canvases-illustrations from life of Christ and ancient Greek mythology. In the end, I was impressed by a convertible table-wardrobe made in Spain in the 17th century. Imagine a dark wooden colossus as tall as a human being, as wide as a desk, with a carved facade with drawers and two heads of grinning monsters - just a decoration from a mystical thriller. A story about a writer to whom someone presented such an antique table immediately began to spin in my head, and now she sits down to write at it new book, and there…

The experience of connecting romantic and surrealist

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Pushkin finally got rid of the label of a conservative museum. He does not hesitate to show the bold - both contemporary artists, lovers of transforming the masterpieces of world painting Irina Nakhova and Yasumas Morimura, and the masters of the past, who are relevant today - Francisco Goya and Salvador Dali. The second, as you know, copied a series of graphic works of the first and pretty much played on them with a needle, paints and a stencil. This is how the Caprichos project came about. Goya and Dali ”, which has just opened.

The museum did not take the word "Caprichos" from the ceiling: it is a genre of fine art, which involves the creation of whims, whims or fantasies on one topic - any. Goya also called his series of etchings, which he added with witty author's comments. It took him six years; the project was completed by 1799, a turning point for Spain. Hence - the abundance of stories about the political and social life country.

But Goya would not have been Goya if it had not reflected the fate of people against the background of historical events. Among the heroes are the master himself and his beloved Duchess Alba, who, according to legend, more than once betrayed Francisco. Perhaps that is why in his etchings he criticizes women's frivolity, pretense and self-interest. He writes about them (Goya's texts are printed on the walls, and comments are under his work): “Most women goes down the aisle, cherishing the hope of gaining even more freedom "or" They say "Yes" and give their hand to the first comer. "

I had to read a lot, look at it and break my head in order to understand how to build the exposition and that for it it would be necessary to re-translate Goya's comments, '' admits the exhibition curator Boris Fridman. - The past texts, translated 40 years ago, have become archaic, while the current ones sound in a timely manner. Caprichos is about today: look around, nothing has changed; it is also full-fledged literary work, consisting of 80 etchings (41 works are hung at the exhibition. - Auth.) and texts. Goya produced 200 copies of it, at the height of the Inquisition sold 27. He got scared in time and brought the king handwritten comments and boards from which he made prints. It saved his life.

Dali's parody etchings come from the collection of Mr. Friedman. He populates Goya's images with imaginary characters, such as a creature with the torso of a man and the head of a fish or a human cockroach. Somewhere the surrealist only alters the characters, painting them with the famous "leaked" watches, mustache or outrageous outfits, in other works he simply paints the background. Dali came up with his own comments, some of them enter into dialogue with Goya's words. For example, a drawing where a young senorita with a magnificent bust consults with her grandmother, Goya calls "Valuable advice." Dali adds: "From the dull, shriveled sperm." Whitens the face elderly woman, turning her into a half-dead old woman with a kind of vague object on her dress.

Goya empathizes with his heroes, and Dali sneers at them, - says the curator-curator of the museum Polina Kozlova. - There are five chapters in Goya's Caprichos, the same number of exhibition sections: Self-portrait, Women's Fate, Donkey School, The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters and, finally, Dawn, in which evil spirits disappear. In many chapters, plots overlap: unequal marriage, raising children, the decline of a woman, finally, evil spirits ...

Like Caprichos, Dali's series begins with Goya's self-portrait. Dali places it inside the sphinx figure. A box of winds opens from his body, and a profile black silhouette in an old Spanish suit looms in the background. The eyes of the creature are closed, which enhances the impression of a dream, in which Dali immerses all the images depicted. The Sphinx sleeps - and sees a dream about how this world is born in the head of Goya.

Goya's cycle "Caprichos" of 41 engravings with the artist's original commentary, as well as the same engravings, revised and rethought by Salvador Dali, will be shown in Pushkin from January 24 to March 12

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts A.S. Pushkin
January 24 - March 12, 2017
Main Building, Hall 31
Moscow, st. Volkhonka, 12

The collection of Goya's prints will be presented from the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and the cycle "Caprichos Goya", created by Salvador Dali, from the collection of Boris Fridman. The 19th century prints from the original 1799 boards were made by Goya using aquatint etching. The works of Salvador Dali are performed using etching, drypoint and pochoir techniques and printing over heliogravures from Goya's original etchings.

For each pair of sheets by Goya and Dali, there is a commentary by Goya. Thus, the exposition is a literary text (comments by Goya) and illustrations to it (etchings by Goya and Dali). This design of the exposition will allow the viewer to better understand what the artists have done, to feel the modern sound of a work of art created more than two hundred years ago and continued in the 20th century.

One of the pinnacles of Francisco Goya's graphic art is his creation of the Caprichos etchings series. Caprichos (Italian capricci; French caprices; Spanish caprichos) is a special genre that developed in the art of Western Europe at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries, involving the creation in fine art, music or poetry of a series of whims, whims or fantasies combined theme.

The artist created the first sketches for the Caprichos series in 1793. In the final form, the graphic series was designed by him in 1799. Goya himself called the series "Collection of Prints on Fantasy Plots."

All plots of the Caprichos series tell about contemporary artist the realities of the political and social life of Spain, which was going through a deep crisis at that time. Another plot of the series is the story of a happy and tragic love artist to the Duchess Caetana Alba. In his works, he acts as a critic of public morality, consistently exposing hidden meaning reality and destroying the existing foundations of the old world. Among the storylines that he develops, one can single out self-deception and pretense, female frivolity and misfortune, a metaphor of the human world as an animal, the sleep of reason and awakening human consciousness... Goya ridiculed Spain evil and sarcastically: vices ordinary people, hypocrisy of the nobility, court circles, the ruling couple, the church, the Inquisition.

The complex concept of a graphic series of 80 etchings demanded a more detailed commentary. Goya himself was the first to give it. On one of the albums presented to the king by the artist, additional explanations were made with his own pen to each of the sheets. This so-called "official commentary" by Goya, from the Prado Museum album, underlies most of Caprichos's contemporary publications. Within the framework of this exposition, a new translation into Russian was made of all Goya's comments to the etchings of the graphic series. To understand more deeply what the artist has created, this series should be considered in conjunction with his comments.

Almost 180 years after the publication of Francisco Goya's graphic series, his compatriot Salvador Dali, one of the brightest representatives of the direction of surrealism in the art of the twentieth century, presented his interpretation of the content and meanings of the etchings created by Goya. Dali perceived the sheets of "Caprichos" as something close to his own surrealist method.

Taking as a basis a series of 80 etchings by Goya, repeated in the technique of heliogravure especially for this work, the artist introduces additional characters, details and colorful elements into Goya's images, using the technique of drypoint, etching and pochoir. In some cases, he alters the characters of Goya's engravings, in others, he adds his own characters... Dali creates new meanings, giving the whole series a different look and character. Completing the background, depicting the famous "leaked" clock or props, the artist places the heroes of Goya in his space. Sometimes he simply follows the images of Goya, without intruding on either the image or the semantic component of the signatures, using only coloring. So he either comments on the works of Goya, or involves his characters in his game, and sometimes enters into a dialogue with his great compatriot.

A fundamental feature of Dali's work with the graphic series is the replacement of all the names of images given by Goya with comments made by Dali himself, which do not so much explain the plots as set another line of their interpretation, complementing Goya's fantasies with Dali's surreal visions, which entered almost two centuries later into a kind of dialogue with a great predecessor. The exposition of the exhibition and the accompanying publication for the first time contain the translation into Russian of the names given by Dali. To the riddle of Francisco Goya, Salvador Dali added his own.

Like Goya's Caprichos, Dali's series begins with Goya's self-portrait. Dali places it in a reduced form inside the figure of a sphinx, lying against the backdrop of a desert landscape. A box of winds opens from the body of the sphinx, and a profile black silhouette in an old Spanish costume looms in the background. The eyes of the sphinx are closed, which enhances the impression of a dream, in which Dali immerses all the images. His Sphinx symbolizes a mystery and is solved in a manner traditional for the artist: smooth tonal elaboration creates the effect of watercolors, the contours of the figure are outlined by the thinnest line; eyes are closed - he is asleep, he has a dream about how this world is born in Goya's head.

The exhibition is accompanied by a large lecture program. Leading foreign experts have been invited to participate in it. The history of the creation of the series of etchings "Caprichos" by Francisco Goya will be told by Virginia Albaran Martin, an employee of the painting department of the Prado Museum (Madrid), professor of the Department of Art History at the University of Madrid. Of great interest for art lovers will be a meeting with the famous French printer, author of several publications on printing techniques, Nicole Rigal. Nicole Rigal printed etchings for seven editions of Salvador Dali's livre d "artiste and was well acquainted with him. She also printed the series of prints Dali's Caprichos exhibited at the exhibition, about which her separate lecture is planned. The works of the exhibition of the Spanish writer and philosopher, Professor Ignacio Gomez de Liano, who was close friends with Dali, the author of a book of memoirs about the artist. During his visit to the Museum, he will tell about his meetings with Dali. Specific dates of the planned events can be found on the Museum website.

The release of a separate edition “Caprichos. Goya. Dali. " A presentation of the book will take place during the exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition will meet with the staff of the publishing house, the author, and a discussion will take place with the participation of leading Russian and foreign experts.