Luz y sombra. Goya and Spanish Realism

This unique exhibition brings the groundbreaking oeuvre of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746−1828) into dialogue with work by contemporaries and artists from later generations. With his fierce, gripping depictions of injustice, abuses and horrors of his time, Goya was the pivot in the development of a modernity firmly anchored in the Spanish realist tradition. Seventy artists — from the 18th century to the present — confront Goya’s expressive complexity and prove how his formal, conceptual and ideological legacy continues to intrigue, move and inspire.

Featuring artists such as, among others, Eugenio Lucas Velázquez, Ignacio Zuloaga, Pablo Picasso, José Gutiérrez Solana, Delhy Tejero, Jorge Oteiza, Antonio Saura, Eduardo Arroyo, Marisa González and Patricia Gadea.

With new work by, among others, Francisco López, Álvaro Perdices and Albert Serra.

Co-production AC/E Acción Cultural Española
In collaboration with Ministerio de Cultura de España: Dirección General de Patrimonio Cultural y Bellas Artes, Fundación Ibercaja, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía en Mensajeros de la Paz
​​​​​​​This exhibition is organised and produced by Europalia and hosted in the galleries of Bozar.

Nuria Guiu, The Sleep of Reason - 15/11/2025, 3-5PM

Nuria Guiu gives a workshop to the students of the bachelor’s program in Dance at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, inspired by Goya’s Caprichos and Disparates. The disturbing, satirical world of Goya clashes with the performative aesthetics of digital culture, both reflecting systems of pressure, illusion and control. The embodied archives are presented in a shifting loop, where the dancers’ bodies form a field of tension between forced positivity and dark realism. Two showcase moments, in the corridors of DE SINGEL and in the exhibition Luz y sombra in Bozar.

Commissioned by EUROPALIA

Co-production Bachelor Dance Royal Conservatoire - AP Antwerp

Free entry with an exhibition ticket 

Sophía Rodríguez, La Maja Desnuda. Eaten by Saturn - 8/11/2025 & 6/11/2025, 3-5PM

​​​​​​​In this creation for EUROPALIA ESPAÑA, Sophía Rodríguez embodies the body of sacrifice: a female body torn between desire, symbolic violence and political oppression. The performance departs from two of Francisco Goya’s most iconic and charged images: The Naked Maja, which led to his persecution, and Saturn Devouring His Son, one of the “black paintings”. In this work, Saturn devours La Maja, the female body. In Rodriguez’s performance, that body is no longer a passive projection surface, but a living presence that remembers, resists and responds.

With the support of TicTac Art Center and Pianofabriek

Free entry with an exhibition ticket