"Goya Visions of Flesh and Blood" Art Film
1h 33m
Francisco Goya is Spain’s most celebrated artist and considered the father of modern art. Not only a brilliant observer of everyday life and Spain’s troubled past, he is a gifted portrait painter and social commentator par excellence. Goya takes the genre of portraiture to new heights and his genius is reappraised in a hugely celebrated landmark exhibition at The National Gallery, London. The film uses this exhibition and extensive location footage to look in depth at Goya’s eventful life.
"30 years ago I was working on a major series of films about modern Spain for the UK’s Channel 4. To make the films properly my wife and I had moved to Spain to learn the language and thoroughly explore the land and its culture – both past and present. Living in Madrid as we did meant there was one museum we spent a lot of time in: the Prado. This spectacular museum captures just what a wonderful legacy of artists Spain has produced – and among those, one of the greatest, is Goya. Coming face to face with Goya’s paintings all those years ago left me with a desire one day to make a film about him.
Thus when I heard that a wonderful curator Xavier Bray was finally bringing to fruition a long-held desire to mount the biggest and best Late Portraits show at the National Gallery in London, it went without saying that we would do everything we could to feature it in a film. Our film looks beyond the later works to try and tell in 90 minutes the full story of surely one of the greatest artists in history. I’ll leave you to make your own mind up but I hope you’ll end up agreeing with me." Phil Grabsky, Director
[Not Available in Italy, Spain & Poland]