'Goya's Last Works' Makes US Debut At The Frick Feb. 22

NEW YORK CITY

: Goya's 1824 portrait of a woman known as María Martínez de Puga has always held a special place in the artist's oeuvre. Acquired by Henry Clay Frick in 1914, the painting is the inspiration for the upcoming exhibition, "Goya's Last Works," the first in the US to concentrate on the final phase of the artist's long career, primarily on the period of his voluntary exile in Bordeaux from 1824 to 1828.

The exhibition will present more than 50 objects including paintings, miniatures on ivory, lithographs and drawings borrowed from public and private European and American collections. These works reveal the vitality and irrepressible creativity of an artist who, at age 78, in frail health and long deaf, pulled up roots in Madrid, his home for the preceding half century, and started over in France.

The Frick is the exclusive venue for "Goya's Last Works," organized by Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Susan Grace Galassi, curator of The Frick Collection. On public view from February 22 through May 14 in the special exhibition galleries and cabinet, it will be accompanied by a fully illustrated, scholarly catalog and public programs.

"The work that Goya created for his own pleasure in Bordeaux has long been appreciated by scholars of Spanish art and artists, but is little known to the public. Our goal is to bring this forward-looking final chapter of a great artist's work to light in all of its diverse aspects," said Susan Grace Galassi.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) has been referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

Lithography had only been invented at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and Goya had tried it without great success before leaving Madrid. With the Bordeaux lithographer Cyprien Gaulon, whose portrait is in the show, Goya now mastered the technique, creating the famous series of four large prints depicting scenes of bullfighting known as "The Bulls of Bordeaux." As with his miniatures, he adapted the technique to his own ends. He placed the lithographic stone upright on an easel and created the scene with a blunt crayon and then scraped away areas to make highlights.

Nowhere is Goya's irrepressible verve more evident than in his drawings, the favorite medium of his last years.

The largest section of the exhibition is devoted to works from his two final private albums. His style is energetic and cartoonish rather than classical, with bodies in exaggerated poses and states of emotion.

He also returned to past themes, such as madness and witchcraft, and made puzzle pictures in which the meaning is left deliberately ambiguous. Works such as "Man on a Swing" directly address the leitmotif that underlies all of his last works: the gravity-defying forces of creativity, humor and perseverance against the entropy of old age - the final testament of one who had seen it all and was, in his own words, "still learning."

Three free public lectures, all at 6 pm, are scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition. Seating is limited and unreserved.

Janis A. Tomlinson, director, University Museums, University of Delaware, will speak on Wednesday, March 1, on "The View from Bordeaux: Looking Back on Goya's Life." In this lecture, 1824, the year Goya moved to Bordeaux, serves as the apex for a look at the evolution of his life and art.

On Wednesday, April 26, Priscilla E. Muller, museum curator emerita, The Hispanic Society of America, will speak on "Prelude to Exile: Goya's Theater(s) of the Absurd." Muller will look at Goya's Black Paintings and his etchings series, the Disparates (or Proverbios) that he left in Madrid when he relocated to France.

Scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau will address "Plumbing the Depths of the Human Heart in Goya's Graphic Work" on Tuesday, May 2. The lecture will focus on Goya's late life drawings.

The Frick is at 1 East 70th Street. For more information, www.frick.org or 212-288-0700.