The Spanish Manner: Drawings From Ribera to Goya

The Frick Collection, New York

Through Jan. 9, 2011

For centuries, “drawings by the Spanish old masters—original, visionary, and fantastic—have been overshadowed by the work of Italian and Dutch artists,” said Ann Levin in
 the Associated Press. This show of 55 drawings at the Frick Collection aims to change that, focusing on pre-modern Spanish artists and their “inventive and unique graphic tradition.” The first thing a viewer may notice is a sometimes bawdy sense of humor. Jusepe de Ribera’s 17th-century chalk drawing David and Goliath seems “all delicacy and refinement—until you notice that the stone David has flung is still lodged in the giant’s forehead.” One of Francisco Goya’s “witty, satirical” drawings shows a man bending forward to peek into a peep-show box, “revealing a tear in the seat of his pants” to a woman standing behind him.

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Yet Goya was capable of far more than crude humor, said Jonathan Brown in Artnews.com. His brush-and-wash drawings are unlike those of almost anyone else: These thoroughly finished compositions “resemble little paintings,” and often feature small inscriptions that complement the pictures’ themes. In Joy (1816–20), which simply shows two figures thrashing their legs in the air, “Goya has suspended the laws of gravity.” Emotionally resonant, the picture is also pleasing in its details. Where the loose clothing of the figures is rendered with freely flowing brush strokes, the faces are “delineated with the delicacy” of a painter of miniatures. Again and again, “Goya pleases us with his artistry as he teases us with his wit and imagination.”