Goya/Chagoya

Selections from the Permanent Collection

The Pomona College Museum of Art presents Goya/Chagoya: Selections from the Permanent Collection, through December 19, 2004. Two series of prints by Francisco Goya—“Los Caprichos” and “The Disasters of War”—constitute one of the most sustained and bleak assessments of human frailty in Western art. Goya etched “Los Caprichos” at the end of the eighteenth century and began “The Disasters of War” in the early nineteenth century as the Spanish Peninsular War, with its mounting civilian casualties, inspired a spiral of brutal reprisals. As the twentieth century drew to a close, Bay-area artist Enrique Chagoya turned to Goya’s images and created two suites of prints, “Return to Goya’s Caprichos” (1999) and “Disasters of War” (2003). This exhibition unites model and response—Goya’s reaction to the dilemmas of his time and Chagoya’s imaginative recreation of how Goya might respond to the present. The exhibition is drawn from the Museum’s superb collection of Goya prints and incorporates new acquisitions, the two related print portfolios by Enrique Chagoya.