Goya's Caprichos: Introduction

SJMA PodCast

Video Tour for the San Jose Museum of Art's exhibition Goya's Caprichos: Dreams of Reason and Madness on view at SJMA January 26 - April 20, 2008. Download to your iPod via iTunes (search "SJMA") to supplement your visit or watch via YouTube to experience parts of the exhibition at home. Utilizing satire and a dark imagination, Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya published Los Caprichos, a series of 80 etchings in 1799. Goya was stone deaf; therefore he relied on his keen observation to represent Spain during a period of social and economic hardship. Los Caprichos portrays goblins and aristocrats alike, enacting the excesses of the nobility and the corruption of the church. Goya's characters themselves exist somewhere between actuality and fantasy. In fact, in Spanish the term "capricho" means whim or an expression of the imagination. Goya used whimsy but also gross caricature to expose a nation rife with corruption and evil.