Beschreibung
Madrid, 1906. Folio oblong. Bound in a splendid recent full longgrained burgundy morocco binding in pastiche style, with four raised bands to beautifully gilt spine. Boards with gilt ornamental borders and gilt centre-piece. Gilt line to edges of boards and inner gilt dentelles. Marbled end-papers. All leaves re-hinged. Occasional light brownspotting, but overall very nice. Title-page (the version with the second line (beginning "Colección de Ochenta.) in lower case), 2 pp. of text (dated 1863) + 80 engraved plates (on fine, laid paper measuring 23,4x32 cm.). Plates 17 and 77 have been misbound (the numbers 1 and 7 look almost the same - Harris II:201: "In some sets this plate has been bound out of order where the number hs been read as 77"" II:288: "In some sets this plate has been bound out of order where the number has been read as 17). A beautiful copy of the splendid fourth edition of Goya's magnificent "Disasters of War" - one of the most significant anti-war works of art ever produced - consisting in all 80 plates that were issued. "The Disasters of War" constitutes Goya?s political masterpiece, directly inspired by and documenting the horrors he witnessed during the Peninsular War of 1808-14 between Spain and France under Napoleon Bonaparte, the terrible famine in Madrid in 1811-12, and the disappointment at the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. As such, it is one of the earliest and most important examples of war documentation and remains to this day one of the boldest anti-war statements ever made. This, however, is also the reason why these groundbreaking etchings were not published during Goya?s life-time. It was both too dangerous and too gruesome. As Alastair Sooke puts it, "[e]ven today it is difficult to look at the Disasters, because Goya catalogues the brutality and fatal consequences of war in such a stark, confrontational and unflinching manner." (See his article for BBC Culture, 2014). In this seminal series of etchings, Goya not only uses art to comment on politics and the atrocities connected with war, he also pioneers a number of artistic tools. Breaking from painterly traditions, he deviates from the heroics of most previous war art to show us how war can bring out the worst in humanity. He abandons colour in order to show us a more direct truth conveyed by the use of shadow and shade. Also, the fact that he presents the 80 works of art as a collection, together with the harsh, realistic nature of the etchings themselves, connect the images more closely to the art of photography that we are now so familiar with, causing the work as a whole to be viewed as one of the earliest examples of actual first-hand war reportage. The work has been extremely influential, perhaps most famously inspiring Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bells Toll). "There are many contenders for the most powerful example of war art from the past two centuries: Picasso?s Guernica (1937), painted in response to the bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War, would be an obvious choice. For me, though, nothing quite matches the originality and truth-telling ferocity of the Disasters of War, a series of 80 aquatint etchings, complete with caustic captions, by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya (1746-1828)." (Sooke). The execution of the engravings has been dated to a period between 1810 and 1820, but no contemporary edition was made of this spectacular series. "Possibly by the time they were finished, the war and famine scenes were not of great appeal, and Goya was probably unwilling to risk another financial failure such as he had experienced with the "Caprichos". It was a time of stern repression and the publication of the satirican and violently anti-clerical subjects of some of the "caprichos enfánticos" would certainly have been dangerous. These facts would account for a postponement of publication. Also, Goya himself tells us that he fell seriously ill in the winter of 1819. and on his recovery. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 60282
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