Goya. The Rebellion of Reason is an exhibition project promoted by the City of Milan – Culture and realized by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE, in collaboration with the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid.
The exhibition, curated by Prof. Víctor Nieto Alcaide, recounts through more than 80 paintings, engravings, prints and copperplates Goya’s background and fantasy world, his experience of History, his attitude as an artist, his thought and ideology, and unlike the numerous anthological exhibitions of recent years dedicated to the Spanish master, it proposes to the visitor the works that best describe Goya’s artistic evolution and the themes he dealt with while also recounting the man and simultaneously the unstable as well as bloody historical and social context that so uniquely shaped his artistic soul and intellectual thought.
Finally, the exhibition focuses on the critical fortune enjoyed by the revolutionary painter, whose aesthetic innovations helped mark a turning point in the artistic conventions of 18th- and 19th-century Spanish art forever.
A rich schedule of cultural initiatives including lectures, concerts and in-depth talks is planned throughout the duration of the exhibition to learn more about the fantastic universe of the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
Goya, beloved monster
A lecture series to enter the artistic soul of the Spanish painter
Goya, Beloved Monster is a free series of four lectures organized by the Cervantes Institute of Milan at the Palazzo Reale on the occasion of the exhibition, with the aim of raising awareness of the great Spanish painter and engraver. Starting October 31, in fact, the talks will run alongside the exhibition throughout the period it is open to the public.
Four not-to-be-missed appointments-moderated by art historian Stefano Zuffi-for anyone who wants to understand and explore the life, thought, and vast creative universe of Francisco Goya.
All lectures are free admission by reservation.
The title of the lecture series – evoking a novel by another Aragonese, Javier Tomeo and his taste for the teratological – appeals to the topicality of the extraordinary figure of Francisco de Goya: it is no coincidence that he is the Spanish artist who has held the largest number of exhibitions abroad in the last fifteen years. One of the reasons surely lies in the attraction that his visionary world continues to exert on us, as well as his more disruptive facets, determined by the dark times in which he lived and which, judging by the eloquent images he captured in his drawings and engravings, seem less distant to us than they might seem. His enormous inventiveness and creative independence enabled him to break iconographic patterns with a gaze and intensity new to art history.
A guided tour, based on the exhibited works that best illustrate the core of his thought, in which the transgression of limits is configured as a profoundly creative force and at the same time destructive of the certainties of the Enlightenment era.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023, 5:00 p.m. Royal Palace, Conference Room Conference in Spanish with Italian translation
Goya’s training was common among young people who aspired to become painters in his day. As a result, his early works reflect contemporary artistic language. His later work at court increased the value of academic uses of painting. However, in the decade of the 1790s, Goya began to move away from all established principles and create a style of painting in which the security of rules was replaced by the insecurity of his state of consciousness.
Speaker: Víctor Nieto Alcaide Curator of the exhibition at the Royal Palace in Milan “Goya, the Rebellion of Reason.” Professor of Art History at the University and academic delegate of Museum, Chalcography and Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. In 1999 he received the National Spanish History Award for his work La vidriera española. Ocho siglos de luz.
Tuesday, November 28, 2023, 5:00 p.m. Royal Palace, Conference Room
We will analyze the grotesque body in Goya’s paintings and graphic work, in the penal context of the Ancien Régime and from the revival of Leonardo’s taste for the deformed and monstrous in eighteenth-century Italy. An exploration of the aesthetic (and anti-aesthetic) implications of hybrid, carnivalesque and nonsensical bodies.
Speaker: Malena Manrique Ara Curator of the Fundación del Garabato (Angera, Lago Mayor). Ph.D. in Art History (University of Zaragoza) and Master’s degree in Analysis and Management of Contemporary Art (University of Barcelona). He conducts research on the aesthetics and artistic literature of the Spanish Golden Age and on Goya. His monograph Goya (Still) Learns. The Journeys of Knowledge (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza).
Tuesday, January 30, 2024, 5:00 p.m. Royal Palace, Conference Room Conference in Spanish with Italian translation
In Goya, the desire for rupture inherently associated with genius is evident in drawings and etchings, but also (albeit in a different way) in mural painting. We will explore this territory through some works in which the artist moves between heaven and hell, albeit with a clear drift toward the human/earthly.
Speaker: Juan Carlos Lozano López Professor of Art History and member of the University Institute for Research on Heritage and Human Sciences (IPH) at the University of Zaragoza. Full member of the Real Academia de Nobles y Bellas Artes de San Luis de Zaragoza and member of the scientific committee of the Fundación Goya en Aragón. His main line of study and research is 17th and 18th century painting.
Tuesday, February 27, 2024, 5:00 p.m. Royal Palace, Conference Room Conference in Spanish with Italian translation
The creative coherence always present in Goya’s production dispels the suspicion that his more hermetic works, such as the Disparates, are fantastic extravaganzas. In all of them one senses the lucidity of a creator who knew how to observe with great penetration the impulses of human nature.
Speaker: José Ignacio Calvo Ruata PhD in Art History (University of Zaragoza) and corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Luis. He is director of the Documentation and Research Center of the Goya Foundation in Aragon (Government of Aragon) and head of the Furniture Restoration Section of the Provincial Council of Zaragoza. His main line of research is 18th-century painting.
The Sound of Art
LaFil at the Royal Palace. Goya and Music
Three free concert evenings at the Royal Palace in which the classical music of LaFil – Milan Philharmonic meets the art of Francisco Goya, in a continuous dialogue of cross-references that will give you an enveloping and all-encompassing artistic experience.
From Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, LaFil will move its residency to the Royal Palace at the Eight Columns Hall, in addition to a special event dedicated to schools.
In addition to the rich residency program at the Royal Palace, on Nov. 27, 2023 at 8:30 p.m. LaFil Filarmonica di Milano, conducted by Marco Seco, with mezzo-soprano soloist Adriana Di Paola, will hold a concert at the Piccolo Studio Melato Theater, again dedicated to musically evoking the work of the Spanish painter.
Free admission by reservation subject to availability. Info and reservations: www.ticket24ore.it / +390254917
Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 8:00 p.m. Hall of Eight Columns, Royal Palace of Milan
A concert performed by the ensemble of LaFil – Filarmonica di Milano and conducted by maestro Marco Seco, dedicated to Luigi Boccherini, one of the best-known Italian composers who lived a large part of his life in Spain, sharing a lasting and deep friendship with the artist Francisco Goya. A fundamental composer in the history of Italian music, of great rhythmic and coloristic impact-often little performed-he is famous among other things for founding the first quartet in history.
Luigi Boccherini Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in G major G480 and the Symphony in D minor “The House of the Devil“
Cello: Enrico Graziano Conductor: Marco Seco Ensemble: LaFil – Milan Philharmonic Duration: about 50 minutes
Thursday, November 30, 2023, 11:00 a.m. Hall of the Eight Columns, Royal Palace of Milan
Workshop held by educator and musicologist Paola Bertassi together with some musicians from LaFil and dedicated to the encounter between “sounds and colors” in music. An opportunity to explore, through musical activities involving musicians from the orchestra, the deep connection between music and art through hands-on activities that will allow younger children to interact with the music, instrumentalists and paintings in the exhibition.
Thursday, November 30, 2023, 8:00 p.m. Hall of Eight Columns, Royal Palace of Milan
Following the thematic path of the exhibition, three short concert moments will allow the audience to immerse themselves “musically” in the works of the exhibition.
Part 1: The people enjoy themselves Luigi Boccherini Quintet No. 6 op.30 ”The night music of the streets of Madrid” Duration: about 12 minutes
Part Two: Watching and reporting Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 “Serious Duration: about 25 minutes
Part Three: Critical freedom and the enlargement of imagination New composition for string quartet and electronics Duration: about 10 minutes Quartetto Eos and musicians from LaFil Filarmonica di Milano
Friday, December 1, 2023, 8:00 p.m. Hall of Eight Columns, Royal Palace of Milan
Performance of the Stabat Mater, a composition built on the intimacy of the string quintet and a single soprano voice of great impact and emotional depth, which will ideally dialogue with the works Goya dedicated to the memories and impressions of the War of Independence.
Luigi Boccherini Stabat Mater Quintet of LaFil – Milan Philharmonic and soprano Duration: about 40 minutesQuartet Eos and musicians of LaFil Filarmonica di Milano
Monday, November 27, 2023, 8:30 p.m. Teatro Studio Melato – Via Rovello 2, Milan
LaFil Filarmonica di Milano, conducted by Marco Seco, with soloist Adriana Di Paola, mezzo-soprano, will hold a concert at Teatro Studio Melato, again dedicated to musically evoking the work of the Spanish painter. Luigi Boccherini’s Symphony in D minor La casa del Diavolo takes us back to the period when the musician and Goya first met at the Spanish court. The nocturnal images of Arnold Schöenberg’s Verklärte Nacht transport to the strong hues of the pinturas negras. The concert will conclude with a performance of Manuel De Falla’s El amor brujo, reminiscent of the many paintings Goya dedicated to magic and especially witches.
Arnold Schöenberg, Verklärte Nacht (30 Min)
Luigi Boccherini, Symphony in D minor “The House of the Devil” (20 min)
Manuel de Falla, El amor brujo (26 min)
Ensemble: LaFil Filarmonica di Milano Conductor: Marco Seco
