After the Spanish painter’s death, fourteen murals were found, painted on the walls of his house outside of Madrid where Francisco Goya spend his last years of his life. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and his bleak outlook on humanity.
Linning places Goya’s paintings and her own vision of the current state of today’s society as a universal story of light and darkness; the struggle to find lightness and hope in times of crisis, oppression and despair.
Set to the metaphysical music of Arvo Pärt’s 4th Symphony, Nanine Linning drew her inspiration from Hesiod’s Theogony and the arguably darkest pictures of Goya’s legendary Black Paintings series: Saturn Devouring his Son. The first part, The Black Paintings, was commissioned by Gauthier Dance in 2015. For Szegedi Kortárs Balett, Hungarian renowend contemporary dance company, she adds a second part to continue her series of short pieces under the title of The Black Paintings.
