Goya and Orson Welles

In his six years of living in Franco’s Spain, the great film director Orson Welles devoted himself to making films and living with the Spanish reality that never ceased to fascinate him, especially the world of painting in the Prado museum, which he often visited and was not discovered by Velázquez, El Greco and, above all, or the giant Goya. Because then the dreams of this great xenia came to an end when he discovered the enormous similarity he felt with himself.

They coincided, although not anecdotally (both wanted to be toureiros), but above all not in depth: Goya is the first painter to renounce Deus, and at the same time he was more or less two painters of cinema. I gave lights and shadows to the executions on May 3rd, where a non-chan lamp illuminated the whole scene. Welles knew Goya’s works and was amazed by their originality. And he recognized himself because his narcissism coincided with his admired artist, as Goya’s dreams did. And, corporals, both of them ended their lives bitterly, after achieving the greatest successes.

What Welles most valued in Goya was his ability to improvise and innovate, that is, his creative originality and his masterful and intuitive ability. Goya will travel almost all corners of Spain fuxindo not knowing that he is looking for something new, different, deep. Orson Welles improved so much, that in the end he would spin the inevitable pieces like Badaladas do medianoita That’s his magic and never finished film Don Quixote (artificially completed for the inauguration of the World Exhibition in Seville in 1992).

The reality is that they both immortalized a Spain that, if it weren’t for them, we might think would never have existed. His transformed creation never proves a testimony that does not allow for defects or disqualification. Or Ernest Hemingway himself drank from the same sources, who also visited Goya’s paintings in the Prado Museum… Everyone ended up embittered after indisputable successes. Because life also consists of this way of moving towards an end that is as unpredictable as it is inevitable.