Salvador Dalí

Les Caprices de Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was a legendary Spanish painter and printmaker who is renowned as the first ‘modern’ artist. Goya’s late artworks were sombre and pessimistic, illustrating his bleak view of disparaging social and political climates. Although many of his personal standpoints no longer exist in written form, the artworks tell Goya’s stories. These, along with Goya’s life, were a significant influence on Salvador Dalí.

Goya’s etching suite, Los Caprichos (The Caprices) was made in 1797 to 1798 before being published in book form in 1799. The set of eighty prints is Goya’s satirical response and experiment to reveal the immeasurable follies, deceitful manners, and self-obsession found in Spanish culture at the time, along with social superstitions. However due to the political climate, he had to disguise the implied depictions within the artworks. The prints are currently on display at dAda mUse alongside Dalí’s response to them.

Salvador Dalí’s Les Caprices de Goya suite contains eighty original etchings with aquatint and colour on paper. Following the themes of Goya’s artworks, Dalí added his own symbology and created the suite in 1977.

The dAda mUse collection also contains some rare working original watercolours that Dalí created before choosing colours and styles for the final prints.

Below are the translated titles of Goya’s artworks, along with the corresponding title (in brackets) of etchings that Salvador Dalí made in response to the Goya works.

Capricho No. 1: Francisco Goya y Lucientes, painter (Diminished sole/soul)

Capricho No. 2: They say yes and give their hand to the first comer (To the first 18 wicker chairs)

Capricho No. 3: Here comes the bogeyman (It’s not true, to me with those, no…)

Capricho No. 4: Nanny's boy (The one with the skewered nuts)

Capricho No. 5: Two of a kind (The swan is not up to punches)

Capricho No. 6: Nobody knows himself (Apart from the salivary glands)

Capricho No. 7: Even thus he cannot make her out (That’s how it annoys them)

Capricho No. 8: So they carried her off! (He laughed thinking she was a girl)

Capricho No. 9: Tantalus – Greek mythological figure (sole)

Capricho No. 10: Love and death (Reciprocal vomiting)

Capricho No. 11: Lads making ready (Girls on the street)

Capricho No. 12: Out hunting for teeth (Hunting for toothpicks)

Capricho No. 13: They are hot (Ironically)

Capricho No. 14: What a sacrifice! (What a bouquet of pretty cherries)

Capricho No. 15: Good advice (Wrinkles of melancholic sperm)

Capricho No. 16: For Heaven's sake: and it was her mother (And also your father)

Capricho No. 17: It is nicely stretched (Creepy concrete column)

Capricho No. 18: And the house is on fire (As God commands)

Capricho No. 19: Everyone will fall (Heisenbergs uncertainty principle)

Capricho No. 20: There they go plucked (you create cannons with six feathers)

Capricho No. 21: How they pluck her! (The Pilgrims)

Capricho No. 22: Poor little girls! (Ashes)

Capricho No. 23: Those specks of dust (those dirty closets)

Capricho No. 24: There was no help (It is a colossal painting)

Capricho No. 25: He broke the pitcher (The flowerbed broke)

Capricho No. 26: Now they are sitting well (A wheelbarrow of bleeding flesh)

Capricho No. 27: Who more is surrendered? (Whom they sodomize)

Capricho No. 28: Hush (Until deafening)

Capricho No. 29: Now that's reading (Raimundo Lulio (Catalan mystic and poet) knew how to do it)

Capricho No. 30: Why hide them? (When Dali has always said that Cezanne was worthless next to Francois Millet)

Capricho No. 31: She prays for her (Pray for us)

Capricho No. 32: Because she was susceptible (Strict Lulian hypnagogic chord)

Capricho No. 33: To the count palatine (The great albino)

Capricho No. 34: Sleep overcomes them (The phosphenic machines render/yield to them)

Capricho No. 35: She fleeces him (The harquebus (gun) produces monsters)

Capricho No. 36: A bad night (Good day)

Capricho No. 37: Might not the pupil know more? (Yes)

Capricho No. 38: Bravissimo! (No)

Capricho No. 39: And so was his grandfather (Captain Nemo)

Capricho No. 40: Of what ill will he die? (Of Hibernation)

Capricho No. 41: Neither more nor less (No Less no more)

Capricho No. 42: Thou who cannot (Think of Millet’s angelus (prayer marking the end of days work over basket of potatoes)

Capricho No. 43: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (The dream of reason produces monsters)

Capricho No. 44: They spin finely (Like shrimp)

Capricho No. 45: There is plenty to suck (There is a lot to existentialize)

Capricho No. 46: Correction (Rasputin)

Capricho No. 47: A gift for the master (Get on your knees)

Capricho No. 48: Snitches (Cherubs)

Capricho No. 49: Hobgoblins (mischievous household spirit) (Goat dropping)

Capricho No. 50: The Chinchillas (girls who do not like boys flirting with them) (Background of photographic tripods)

Capricho No. 51: They spruce themselves up (Teeth file)

Capricho No. 52: What a tailor can do! (Oxygen on Mars)

Capricho No. 53: What a golden beak! (The horizon)

Capricho No. 54: The shameful one (Small time tarantula)

Capricho No. 55: Until death (And come and come and come)

Capricho No. 56: To rise and to fall (He walked up the stairs as if he were going down them)

Capricho No. 57: The filiation (Pink cernera?)

Capricho No. 58: Swallow it, dog (Look for the truffle)

Capricho No. 59: And still they don't go! (Five or six at least)

Capricho No. 60: Trials (Lightning bolts)

Capricho No. 61: They have flown (Infinitesimal cloud)

Capricho No. 62: Who would have thought it! (Cinderella)

Capricho No. 63: Look how solemn they are! (Goya)

Capricho No. 64: Bon voyage (This is it, this is not it)

Capricho No. 65: Where is mommy going? (In the slaughterhouse)

Capricho No. 66: There it goes (Wet ear)

Capricho No. 67: Wait till you've been anointed (Not even for those)

Capricho No. 68: Pretty teacher (The hairy incas of the sunset)

Capricho No. 69: Gust the wind (Sorrowful melancholy)

Capricho No. 70: Devout profession (The divers of the future)

Capricho No. 71: When day breaks we will be off (it doesn’t dawn we stay?)

Capricho No. 72: You will not escape (With all these troubles you will not escape)

Capricho No. 73: It is better to be lazyI (except at three)

Capricho No. 74: Don't scream, stupid (don’t scream fool)

Capricho No. 75: Can't anyone unleash us? (the soft clocks)

Capricho No. 76: You understand?... Well, as I say... eh! Look out! Otherwise... (sixteen judges eat a hangman’s liver)

Capricho No. 77: What one does to the other (Torquato Tasso (16th century Italian poet of Jerusalem delivered)

Capricho No. 78: Be quick, they are waking up (pedestal for the world)

Capricho No. 79: No one has seen us (moon reflections)

Capricho No. 80: It is time (banana pirouette/trick)