Goya

What is highly original is the fact that these drawings, often extremely ambiguous in meaning, form a meditative sequence, not apparently intended for public consumption, but entirely selfreflexive. They record the artist's dreams and fantasies, but strictly for his own contemplation. As such they represent a major psychological breakthrough, a next step forward from the late self-portraits of Rembrandt. Their successors are the images created by major Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalì and Max Ernst. The exhibition enables us to see our contemporary ideas about the nature of the self at the very moment of their first formation. These are the issues Edward Lucie-Smith will discuss in his text about this pioneering show, which not only reconstructs Goya's long-dispersed album, but places it In the context of other drawings and prints by the same great artist