Lita Cabellut, Disparate 17 - La lealtad, 2024, triptych 3 x 250 x 145 cm, mixed media on canvas
Francisco de Goya, Disparate 17 - La lealtad 1875–1877 (2nd edition), etching, aquatint, and drypoint on paper
Lita Cabellut x Goya – The Follies
This fall, Museum JAN in Amstelveen will be the setting for an extraordinary artistic encounter between two artists, two centuries apart. For the first time in the Netherlands, the ambitious exhibition *Lita Cabellut x Goya – Los Disparates* will be on view. In this exhibition, 22 monumental, multidisciplinary works by the Spanish-Dutch artist Lita Cabellut engage in a visual and conceptual dialogue with Francisco de Goya’s mysterious series of 22 etchings. The exhibition runs from September 23, 2026, through March 14, 2027, in the lead-up to the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Goya’s death.
Lita Cabellut (1961) responds to Francisco de Goya’s (1746–1828) haunting series of etchings, *Los Disparates*, through paintings and three-dimensional objects. In this enigmatic series of 22 etchings, Goya depicts a dark, absurd dream world devoid of morality. It is a timeless, psychological portrayal of a world in which reason has completely vanished.
Confrontational dialogue
Cabellut’s contemporary interpretation of the two-century-old series of etchings is confrontational: his depictions of madness, political chaos, and moral decay resonate in Cabellut’s world of existential uncertainty and social upheaval. The themes of the past are the themes of the present. Both artists refuse to spare the viewer. Both compel us to look and invite us to reflect. Displayed side by side, they engage in a dialogue on themes that are more urgent today than ever: identity, power, fear, ethics, and the vulnerability of the individual. Two centuries apart, these two Spanish masters confront the viewer with raw reality and the deepest recesses of the human soul.
Curator Eloy Martínez de la Pera Celada, who organized an exhibition with Lita Cabellut at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, describes the project as an attempt to reveal the inner world of the human being and to invite viewers to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. “Two artists, separated by two centuries, who each, in their own unconventional way, question and scrutinize reality.”
Lita Cabellut, photo by Janita Sassen
Lita Cabellut, Heads/Masks from: Disparate 09 - Disparate General, Disparate 07 - Disparate Desordenado, Disparate 12 - Disparate Alegre, Disparate 06 - Disparate Cruel, photo by Eddy Wenting
Lita Cabellut, Disparate 12 - alegre, 2024, 200x215, mixed media on canvas
Socially Critical
As a child, Lita Cabellut lived on the streets of Barcelona until, at the age of twelve, she was adopted by a family who took her to the Prado in Madrid. It was there that her fascination with the great masters—and with Goya in particular—began. She later studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and has lived and worked in the Netherlands ever since.
Her approach is physical and intuitive: she begins with an in-depth study of her subject, and then goes on to create large-scale works in her studio that blend traditional and contemporary techniques. Through the characters in her work, she portrays human vulnerability and offers a critical perspective on society.
International Museum Collections
Her work is included in international museum collections and has been exhibited from Mumbai to Shanghai, and from Seoul to Madrid. In 2018, she exhibited at Museum JAN, and she is also known to the Dutch public for her role as a judge on the television program Project Rembrandt. In 2021, she was named Artist of the Year in the Netherlands. In 2024, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona and the Encomienda de la Real Orden de Isabel la Católica.
Accompanying the exhibition is the catalog *Lita Cabellut x Goya – Los Disparates*, published by Waanders Uitgevers, featuring an essay by Ralph Keuning.
