Inside, Outside – The World of the Artist (Francisco Goya)

Established in 1994, THE COURSE offers innovative and exciting lectures in Art History, Literature, Music and Opera.

In INSIDE, OUTSIDE, The World of the Art, Nicole Mezey will look at how creativity reflects the personal and professional experience of the artist. This series focuses on a different artist each week, looking first at the life behind their creations – the mental asylum in which Richard Dadd produced some of his greatest works, the pressure of eight children on the output of Frans Hals – before moving on to explore their work and the way it reflects that experience.

Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828), Light and Dark

Struck profoundly deaf in his forties, enduring his wife’s endless miscarriages, witnessing at first hand the brutality of the Napoleonic wars, exiled in old age, Goya’s spirited early compositions gave way to thoughtful, darker works as he explored the experience of silence and violence.