I'm reading a book about Picasso and the author mentions Francisco Goya, another iconic Spanish painter. Off to Wikipedia, is it done pouting, good. The most interesting works created by Goya are named the "Black Paintings". Supposedly, at the end of his life, Goya had become very misanthropic, and his outlook was heavily reflected in about a dozen murals he painted on the walls of his two story villa. The are truly haunting and creepy and amazing. One art historian put it like this in describing the series: "the most essential to our understanding of the human condition in modern times"
Unfortunately, Goya's most famous works may not be his. Experts discovered that when the house was sold after he had lived there, it was a one story house, so how could the murals have been painted on a floor that did not exists. The most plausible scenario is that his son Javier painted them, but when Javier's son, Goya's grandson, went to sell the house, in order to get a higher price he claimed his grandfather had painted them.
Today they hang in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, and are still attributed to Goya. Either way, they will haunt your soul, if you dare look at them.
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