The celebrated 18th-century Spanish painter and etcher Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was in his seventies and recovering from a serious illness when he made his last series of powerful prints, The Disparates.

Depicting the folly of mankind, these etchings, produced between 1819 and 1824, are a savage satirical attack on the political and social customs of his day. Unpublished during Goya's lifetime, the etchings were hidden away in Spain after the artist's Self imposed exile to Bordeaux.

Dark in mood and similar to the terrifying 'black paintings' with which he decorated his house. The Disparates were produced while Goya was living in the Quinta del Sordo(the House of the Deaf Man), on the outskirts of Madrid. These are amongst his most disturbing and obscure plates and convey Goya' s unsettled state of mind. Spain had returned to a dictatorship after a brief liberal period, and many of Goya' s works, including a series of macabre etchings titled The Disasters of War, were not published under the oppressive climate of the lnquisition.

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Francisco de Goya 
Grotesque Dance from the Disparates-Proverbios 
1819-1829