In the manner of Francisco Goya
Spanish, 1746–1828
Two Men Arguing in the Replies, 2026
Oil on plaster, transferred to canvas
123 × 164 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.4.3
Two men up to their knees in mud swing cudgels at each other, and neither of them looks. Each is reading the small screen in his free hand, presumably to find out what the other one said. Goya painted the original fight in the same brown field under the same flat sky, and the point was the same: they are sinking, and they will not stop to notice. The reply is loading.
The brief
Two men sunk to the knees in mud swinging cudgels at each other, each staring not at the other but at a small screen held in the free hand, a flat grey horizon. Late Spanish Romantic oil painting from the black-paintings period, near-monochrome browns, blacks and dirty whites with one passage of blood red, figures with gaping mouths and wide eyes emerging from darkness, coarse dragged brushwork and palette-knife smears, unstable composition, grotesque satire and pity in equal measure, muddy matte surface with cracks. Flat frontal reproduction of the painting, the canvas fills the frame edge to edge, even lighting, no frame, no wall, no text.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
