Political ideology, military necessity, flags, bugles, etc. The blunt, deadly rifle barrels, the last, terrifying moments of a blind-folded captive roped to a wooden stake are the only subjects here.
When you look at The Disasters of War, Plate 15, And There Is No Remedy (Y No Hai Remedio), the execution of this prisoner could have occurred during any war or revolution from the 1600's to the contemporary world. These are still-shocking works of art, two hundred years after their creation. This is quite evident from the Philadelphia Museum exhibition. Goya's prints strike directly and deeply into the troubled soul of humanity. Goya's bullfighting lithographs, created while he lived in exile in Bordeaux, France, during his last years, are also on view. The Philadelphia Museum is able to draw upon complete first edition prints from all four series of Goya's etchings: Los Caprichos, Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), La Tauromaquia and Los Disparates. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is currently mounting a major exhibition of selections from Goya's prints. If J.M.W.Turner can be lauded as a pioneer of Abstract art, Goya is certainly worthy of the title of the First Surrealist. The problem with dating Surrealism to the 1920's and 30's is that Francisco José de Goya y Luciente (1746-1828) had created incomparable works of art over a century before that fully qualify as examples of Surrealism. This certainly was the heyday of Surrealism, when René Magritte, Max Ernst and André Masson probed the realm of the unconscious and the irrational with some of the greatest Surrealist works. On the timeline of art history, Surrealism is usually placed between the end of the Dada movement around 1922 and Picasso's Guernica in 1937.
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