Los Disparates (The Follies): Selected Plates

This image displays four framed black-and-white etchings arranged in a two-by-two grid on a gray wall. The prints belong to Francisco de Goya’s 'Los Disparates' series, characterized by their high-contrast, atmospheric aquatint washes and disturbing, cryptic subjects. The figures appear as distorted, heavy-set people, often engaged in chaotic movement, fleeing, or crouching in shadowy, undefined spaces that suggest a psychic interiority or a mocking, topsy-turvy world.

These works represent Goya’s late-period exploration of the irrational, the grotesque, and the failure of Enlightenment reason, reflecting the trauma of the Peninsular War and his own physical decline. They are foundational to modern artistic investigations of the unconscious and the absurdity of human social behavior.