Video: Understanding Art: Goya

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Goya used quick brush strokes to catch a particular moment in his paintings. Learn more about Goya paintings in the Budapest Fine Arts Museum in this free art education and travel video from a director and tour guide at the museum.

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Video Transcript

This is a popular topic on the painting by Goya, the famous Spanish artist. This is a scene from the Spanish War of Independence. So what you can see there, this is a war scene. You can see armed people against unarmed people. The question is who the armed ones are and who are the unarmed ones. The unarmed ones are the Spanish fighters, freedom fighters, and the armed soldiers are the French soldiers. You can see that this fight is unequal, obviously on one side there is power and strength and the other side what you can have only heroism and pure emotions for the nation. The brush strokes are quickly made. Therefore there is this momentary feeling of the painting while looking at this painting. And I think this is a technique that is for this particular purpose because the painter wanted us to sense that this is a particular moment. He wanted to catch the moment and for catching that particular moment, he needed to use quick brush strokes. And this is what we can see. So you cannot quite see the details of the clothes and the details of the faces, but you can sense the tension of the moment and the tension of the moment is about to get killed.

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Understanding Art: Goya

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