Venia Pastaka

Art Historian

What kind of relevance can there be between the classical and the contemporary? Can a fruitful dialogue be created between artists and works that are separated by almost three centuries? Can works of art made in the 18th century be relevant and can the viewer of today find points of identification with them? Still, how pioneering can an artist have been to influence his or her peers to this day?

Two important exhibitions that are in direct dialogue with each other are presented from 22 January at the National Gallery, launching the 2025 programme. On the one hand, in an extension of the section devoted to Western European art on the second floor, the famous Los Caprichos, the 80 prints by the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828), which were purchased in 1962 on the initiative of the then director of the National Gallery, Marinos Kalligas (1906 – 1985), in an attempt to enrich the collection with works of Western art. For the record, the prints were first exhibited under Kalligas in 1971. A part of them was exhibited in 1984, under the direction of Dimitris Papastamos (1923 – 2008) and finally in 2008 they were exhibited again in their entirety under the direction of Marina Lambraki – Plaka (1939 – 2022) and curated by Marilena Kasimatis. The current exhibition, whose artistic director is the director of the National Gallery, Syrago Tsiara, and whose curator is the art historian Katerina Tavantzi, is the fourth time that Goya’s top prints have been presented to the public in Athens, which, as the director herself rightly points out, is different even from that of 2008.

The Los Caprichos, created in 1797 – 1798 and published in 1799, were not particularly successful as their caustic content disturbed the public. Being the official painter to the King from 1886, Goya had numerous commissions and was considered one of the most important painters in Spain. At the time of the Caprichos’ creation, however, the artist was going through a difficult personal period. On the one hand, since 1893 he had lost his hearing due to an illness, which caused him to close in on himself, and on the other hand, the historical and socio-political conditions in Spain had deeply frustrated him. Inspired by the spirit and ideas of the Enlightenment and in an intelligent manner, he satirised through this series of works the society of his time, the authorities, the Inquisition and the corrupt clergy, as well as the everyday world that had allowed superstition to take over without letting reason prevail. To execute them, Goya used the combination of etching and watercolour, which was innovative for the time, and which allowed for intense shadows and a more painterly effect. His furious imagination, mocking way of rendering figures and the theatricality of his compositions inspired generations of artists from French Romanticism, Impressionism, German Expressionism and Surrealism and his work continues to inspire to this day.

To this focal point is added the exhibition in the intermediate space of the building, Allure of the Bizarre, curated by Syrago Tsiara, in which the artists Angelos Antonopoulos,Yannis Gaitis, Silia Daskopopoulou, Marianna Ignataki, Dionysis Kavallieratos, Christoforos Katsadiotis, Tasos Mantzavinos, Malvina Panagiotidi, Angelos Papadimitriou and Filippos Tsitsopoulos open a dialogue with Goya’s work. In these works, the artists address notions of the horrifying and the grotesque, the boundaries between the familiar and the uncomfortable, logic and the absurd, reality and illusion. Using various media such as painting, installation, sculpture and video art, an environment is created in which the viewer feels the fragile balance one can encounter in dreams where a friendly environment can be transformed into a terrifying field. The imposing wood-carved Gothic cabinet, a legacy of the painter Odysseus Fokas (1857 – 1946), with its grotesque and terrifying forms dominates one side of the space, showing clearly how the uncanny has always fascinated man. In these works, too, humour and irony are levers to negotiate issues related to power relations and existential questions.

Looking at Goya’s works today, at the historical juncture we are in, with the power relations that surround us, the international political scene, the war of religions and conspiracy theories, it is impossible not to recognise their timeless significance. Indeed, when contemporary works by artists are added to this context, it becomes obvious that in art, the concept of time is broken down. In this timeless universe, the coexistence of works is capable of generating new ideas, renegotiating the same issues that are in any case within the very nature of man.