Goya

Human beings have been, and continue to be, caught up in wars, clashes and conflicts since the dawn of history. The reasons for going to war have varied, but issues related to land and the wealth it holds have always been at the forefront.

The conquest of new places to make them one’s own, to impose one’s ideas on others, to force those who are different to adopt the same flag, the same language, the same religion, the same king. Ultimately, the aim is to gain power over others. Natural resources and the struggle over who controls them remain, to this day, one of the main causes of conflict. And on both sides of every confrontation, there are always witnesses: painters, engravers, historians, reporters and photojournalists.

The same atrocities that were committed centuries ago and recorded in chronicles, whether written or visual, continue to happen today. Sometimes very close to us. Photojournalists are the contemporary visual witnesses who, standing before brutality, choose to keep their eyes open and press the shutter. They become the chroniclers of our time. This exhibition presents a comparative encounter between the series of etchings The Disasters of War (1810 to 1815) by the Aragonese artist Francisco de Goya and the work of two photojournalists from the same region, Diego Ibarra Sánchez and Judith Prat. They share not only a place of origin but also the role of bearing witness to massacres and violent injustices committed by human beings against one another over wealth, flags, land or religion.

Goya is one of the most influential artists in contemporary visual culture. His paintings, drawings and etchings have shaped our visual archive. His visual courage can be traced in the work of many major painters, filmmakers and photographers. He created a stark and violent portrait of the Peninsular War, depicting those responsible for it, as well as hunger, misery and cruelty. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando has written that The Disasters of War is “a universal meditation on war, not a reflection on a specific military conflict”. It is this universality, both of war itself and of the terrible images that it generates, that confronts today’s witnesses. Photojournalists are our witnesses in the present.

They walk through alleys, corners, avenues, fields, buildings and slums, palaces and caves, with a camera in hand, a tight grip on their hearts and their eyes wide open to bring back memory. In this exhibition, Diego Ibarra Sánchez and Judith Prat guide us through these landscapes. They offer us some of the saddest, most grotesque and devastating visions of war’s disasters. Their images show us that all wars have much in common: killings, victims, flight, misery, hunger, madness, abandonment, orphans, women fighters and armies. And then there are the spaces. Places of survival where a ravaged past and a present with no future repeat themselves, day after day.

On these walls, you will witness a visual conversation between Goya’s etchings and the photographic work of Judith Prat and Diego Ibarra Sánchez. The exhibition is structured through a narrative and aesthetic interpretation, shaped by the pain and ugliness of violence, presented as a series of diptychs. Etchings and photographs meet, speak to each other, and ultimately recognise themselves in the pain of the other. Please do not visit this exhibition without asking yourself why, where and who. The witnesses of history risk their own lives so that we may ask questions, think critically, and become second-row witnesses. Even from that position, our role can still be meaningful.

Pilar Irala Hortal
Curator of the exhibition