Goya's Portraits
April 8-June 18, 2006

SAN DIEGO—This spring, a special focused exhibition of approximately ten portrait paintings by the Spanish master Franscisco de Goya will be presented exclusively at the San Diego Museum of Art from April 8 to June 18, 2006. The display will highlight one of the Museum's most notable paintings, Goya's Marquis of Sofraga, providing context for Goya, his work, and the sitter of the SDMA painting.

Goya's Portraits marks the Museum's first major collaboration with the Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, which has organized a large-scale exhibition of the artist's work (Goya, November 17, 2005-March 3, 2006). SDMA's exhibition will feature an intriguing selection of about a dozen important portraits from this larger Mexico City show, with works coming from public and private collections in San Francisco, Indianapolis, Worcester, Detroit, Puerto Rico, São Paulo, and Mexico City.

The carefully selected works included in Goya's Portraits span the artist's career and include official, full-length portraits of luminaries of late 18th- and early 19th-century Spain. Goya's powerful representations will offer museum visitors a rare opportunity to explore firsthand the work of this seminal figure in modern art history and address such issues as the role of official portraiture as well as Goya's politics and biography.

Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) is one of the most multifaceted artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His oeuvre, replete with such opposing ideas as comfort and turmoil, friend and foe, anguish and celebration, and health and sickness, can be viewed as a metaphor for the tumultuous age in which it was produced. By the 18th century, Spain was teetering on the edge of political and financial collapse, desperately and vainly clinging to its one-time grandeur as the most powerful nation in Europe, with influence and colonies around the globe. This national power finally ruptured during Goya's lifetime with the collapse of Spain's monarchy during Napoleonic times, as well as the loss of the American colonies, which began with Mexico's independence in 1821.

Goya's biography also swells with contrasts. His success as the greatest portrait painter in Spain secured his position as court painter under King Carlos IV in 1789 and his appointment as first painter to the king ten years later. He was toppled from that position during the five-year reign of Joseph Napoleon, from the abdication of Carlos IV and Queen María Luisa in 1808 to the reinstatement of their son Fernando VII in 1814. Goya's distress with the political situation, through which he-like all of Spain-struggled, was only exacerbated by his deafness, suffered from the early 1790s after an acute illness (often suggested to have been lead poisoning that resulted from a lead-based paint he used).

Goya's portraits are extraordinary documents of person, place, and time and exemplify the tradition of portraiture. Like all portraitists, Goya strove to capture the sitter's likeness, interests, and station. The dozen canvases presented in Goya's Portraits reveal the breadth and range of Goya's talents. Whether capturing the likeness of clerics, aristocrats, luminaries, or friends, Goya's portraits are windows into another being, deeply psychological and multi-layered, as well as a mirror of himself.

Goya's Portraits are made possible by the generous support of the San Diego Museum of Art and the National Museum of Art in Mexico City. The exhibition is possible thanks to the generous support of Jeanne Jones, Tiffany and Co., the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program, and members of the San Diego Museum of Art.

Museum Information
San Diego Museum of Art
1450 El Prado, Balboa Park
Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 122107
San Diego, CA 92112-2107
General Information: (619) 232-7931 / Facsimile: (619) 232-9367
Group Sales: (619) 696-1915
Web site: www.sdmart.org

Exhibition Hours
Tuesday-Wednesday, Friday-Sunday: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.;
Thursday: 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.

Exhibition Prices
Adult $10; Senior (65+) and Military with ID $8; Student $7; Youth (6-17) $4. Children 5 and under are free.
(Specially priced tickets may be required for certain exhibitions. Please contact the Museum for more information.)

The historic San Diego Museum of Art provides a rich and diverse cultural experience for more than 400,000 annual visitors. Located in the heart of beautiful Balboa Park, the Museum's nationally renowned collections include Spanish and Italian old masters, South Asian paintings, and 19th- and 20th-century American paintings and sculptures. In addition, the Museum regularly features major exhibitions of art from around the world, as well as an extensive year-round schedule of supporting cultural and educational programs.

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