The art historian, Valeriano Bozal, an essential reference in studies on Francisco de Goya, died this Sunday in Madrid at the age of 82, according to his family. Bozal, professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Complutense University, was a regular collaborator of the Prado Museum, and one of the first experts to question in 2008 that Goya’s painting ‘El Colossus’ was not painted by the Aragonese genius, as maintained the then curator of the national art gallery, Manuela Mena. For thirteen years ‘The Colossus’ was attributed to a disciple of the painter from Fuendetodos, the Valencian Asensio Juliá, until the Prado rectified it in 2021, returning the authorship to Goya, as Bozal had always defended.
Although he was an art historian, Bozal, who was born in Madrid in 1940, graduated in philosophy from the Complutense and before becoming a professor at that same university (he was also a professor of Aesthetics at the Autonomous University), he taught for 16 years in an institute in Vallecas, where he was forged as a teacher and acquired the popularizer tools that later led him to leave his mark on several generations of historians.
The researcher and art critic was also a renowned expert on the work of Vermeer, Piero della Francesca and Brueghel. The Prado distinguished him with several awards and he collaborated in the writing of the Encyclopedia of the institution, from which he launched several exhibitions.
Bozal, who received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2020, also presided over the Royal Board of Trustees of the Reina Sofía Museum between 1994 and 1997. The institution published a message of condolence this Sunday through its Twitter account at the one that regrets the death “of a fundamental historiographical reference of the last decades”. He was also a member of the Governing Council of the Valencian Institute of Modern Art.
A very early author (he published ‘Know how to see art’ at the age of 22 and ‘Realism between development and underdevelopment’ at the age of 26), Bozal is known above all for his bibliography on Goya, of whom he was a great scholar. ‘Goya and modern taste’, whose cover precisely illustrates ‘The Colossus’, ‘Goya’s Black Paintings’ and ‘Francisco de Goya, life and work’.He also wrote about Antonio Machado, and in 2021 he published his latest book, his own memoirs under the title ‘Chronicle of a decade and changes of place’, a very personal account of intellectual, political and moral life during the dictatorship and the first years of democracy.
He also directed the collection of essay books ‘La balsa de la Medusa’, where he published ‘History of 20th century painting and sculpture in Spain’, and during the Transition he was in charge of ‘Our flag’, the PCE debate magazine.
Author of ‘History of Art in Spain’, where he recounts the first artistic expressions from prehistory to the most recent movements, Bozal curated various exhibitions on Goya and contemporary art and curated the 1976 Venice Biennale together with his colleague, now deceased, Tomàs Llorens, the exhibition ‘Spain. Artistic avant-garde and social reality. 1936-1976.’
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