National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) is currently running an exhibition from its permanent print collection titled Social Reflections through Satire: William Hogarth, Francisco Goya with Lovemore Kambudzi Paintings.
The exhibition invites viewers to exercise their imagination and interactive participation to trace similarities and differences in the works by the two artists.
Hogarth and Goya were both masters of the satirical print genre, but they used the medium differently to attack societal evils.
“The exhibition of prints introduces the viewer to the life and works of both artists, Kambudzi a young Zimbabwean satirist looking at similar issues also features in the exhibition his works explore some aspects of the 21st century Zimbabwe through satire,” said NGZ executive director Doreen Sibanda.
Hogarth was an English painter, print maker and engraver who emotionally commented on the English society of the 18th century through Celtic satire.
Born in 1967 the artist was heavily influenced by 18th century life, culture and his middle class upbringing.
He has been credited with pioneering Western sequential art.
“On exhibition is a series of six prints and engravings made between 1731 and 1732 that show the story of a young woman Mary (or Moll) Hackabout who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute. The paintings chronicle the life of Mary as a notorious and disorderly prostitute,” Sibanda said.
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She said the series of prints proved to be so popular that Hogarth used his experience as an apprentice to create engravings of images.
On the other hand, born in Spain 1746, Goya was a talented Spanish painter and printmaker who was considered as the last of the old masters and the first of the moderns.
He was known for his dark prints and paintings, as well as for being more realistic in each of them.
“As shown in the exhibition, his works portray the chaotic world of the 19th century and strongly denounce injustice, cruelty, false morality and the bigotry of religious hypocrisies. He also used his art to record moments of his country’s history. For instance, he created a series of etchings depicting the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808,” Sibanda added.
She said Goya evolved a bold and free new style close to caricature based on human weaknesses and his own imagination, which drew similarities from Hogarth’s work.
“Though operating in different times and from different places, the basic similarity between Goya and Hogarth’s works is the satiric criticism of their societies,” Sibanda said.
“Local artist, Kambudzi’s works explore the paint medium and comment on the day-to-day lives of ordinary Zimbabweans by exposing the hardships they face and the desperate efforts they employ to solve them.”
Sibanda added: “His paintings present social commentary through caricature of his figures.” The exhibition runs until July 31.
