Ramas | Francisco de Goya & Maite Cascón | 18 November - 4 December 2022

We are delighted to present Maite Cascón's first exhibition with Eames Fine Art in the Print Room this November, alongside etchings by Francisco de Goya. This special artist pairing represents the timelessness of etching and the importance of continuing the sharing of techniques and processes in printmaking across the ages. We have a master and an emerging artist, whose work transcends time, both exploring archetypes and characters in society- from folklore and real life- to analyse human behaviour.

Alongside 47 of Goya's Los Caprichos etchings, we will be showing Cascón's large scale, multi plate etching, The Trickster's Tree and a selection of her latest monotypes and etchings. TheThe Trickster's Tree series is inspired by the figure of the trickster taken from the Jungian Theory of Archetypes. This character, with the use of tricks or thievery, violates principles of the social or natural order to obtain something in return.

In folk stories and myths the trickster appear as shapeshifters, foolish or cunning characters that question and mock authority, disrupting their societies in order to establish a new one. This archetype is a symbol of change, chaos or progress.

We hope you enjoy delving into these dark and intricate works, these superb examples of the beauty of etching and aquatint from two artists working over 200 years apart.

Francisco de Goya

Los Caprichos

Francisco de Goya was born in a village in Northern Spain in 1746. Goya's formal artistic education began at the age of 14 when he was apprenticed to a local painter. After a visit to Italy in 1771, Goya settled in Madrid in 1775. In 1786 he was given a salaried position as a painter to King Charles III, and in 1789 he was appointed court painter to Charles IV.

In the winter of 1792, Goya became seriously ill and was left deaf. This was a turning point in his career. His paintings were transformed from his previous Rococo style to a more expressionistic vision and he chose increasingly dark subject matters. In 1799 Goya announced the publication of 'Los Caprichos'. Comprising 80 copper plates in etching with aquatint, the Caprichos was Goya's most ambitious graphic work to date and a considerable commercial undertaking. The project was a financial disaster however with only 27 copies of the suite being sold over the next four years before Goya withdrew the series from circulation due to unwelcome attention from The Inquisition. Despite these unpromising beginnings, the Caprichos would come to be acknowledged as an era-defining achievement and one of the greatest series of etchings in the history of Western art. In 1824, political upheavals in Spain forced Goya to go into exile in France. He returned to Madrid for a brief visit in 1826, but died in Bordeaux on 16 April 1828.

Maite Cascón

Maite Cascón (b. 1991, Madrid) is an artist using metaphorical and figurative images within printmaking and drawing. In her process, she reconstructs reality by playing with it through sketches, creating impossible scenes happening simultaneously. Psychoanalysis and folk tales are important references. Having been raised in a catholic androcentric country, she explores these subjects looking for answers to conflicts of her close environment and therefore this way she analyzes inherited patterns.

The topics of her practice are based on the body and death, and different social issues, such as gender, sexuality, violence, the disengagement from nature and the increase of human individualism.