Francisco de Goya returns to La Lonja with the exhibition entitled “I am Goya. La Zaragoza que viví, 1746-1775“, organized by the Zaragoza City Council, Fundación Ibercaja and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Luis, in collaboration with the Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País and Museo Goya, can be visited from March 30 (anniversary of Goya’s birth) until June 25.
Zaragoza is the city where Goya lived his first 29 years, where he was formed as a person and as an artist, and this exhibition aims to bring the visitor closer to the figure of the most universal Aragonese. To this end, it shows the urban spaces where the artist lived, his houses, the importance of his relationship with his grandfather in Fuendetodos (the place where he was born), the great events he experienced in an enlightened city, his hobbies, as well as the Aragonese people he met, from the townspeople to the bourgeois and nobles he portrayed, all this together with the presence of archival documents that explain the painter’s life in Zaragoza.
“I am Goya” is not the classic exhibition of Goya’s works, although there are some of great importance from several museums and private collections, such as the portrait of the Infanta Maria Teresa de Vallabriga on horseback, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; the self-portrait of 1824 kept in the Museo Nacional del Prado; or the portrait of Josefa Bayeu, from Zaragoza, from the Abelló Collection.
Likewise, 13 works by Francisco de Goya, specifically The Portrait of Félix de Azara, Marianito, and eleven engravings from the series Caprichos, Tauromaquia and Desastres de la Guerra, have traveled from the Goya Museum to La Lonja to form part of this great exhibition.
It should also be noted that there are works that have never been seen in Zaragoza, but which are fundamental to understand the period between 1746 and 1775, when he went to Madrid with his family. This block includes two important unpublished pencil portraits, the result of the latest research into Goya’s work.
In the exhibition, which has been curated by Domingo Buesa, visitors will be able to contemplate the only drawing made by Goya to his wife Josefa Bayeu, born in Zaragoza and to whom the city has recently dedicated one of its Giants.
Likewise, Goya’s phrases from his letters to his friend, the Zaragozan Martín Zapater, which are fundamental to understanding his love for his homeland, Zaragoza, are also on display. And as a nod to Goya’s sense of modernity, the most avant-garde audiovisual media will be used to recover his figure, a virtual way of getting to know the brilliant painter.
It will be open from Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm and from 5 to 9 pm, and on Sundays and holidays from 10 am to 2:30 pm.
From the Culture Service of the City Council have prepared educational visits for schoolchildren, families and the general public, which will begin after Easter.
