LONDON, ENGLAND.- Harvill, an imprint of Random House, just published “Goya” by Robert Hughes. The starting point of this journey through Goya’s life in 18th-century Spain is Hughes’ own first encounter with the artist’s work when he was a student in Australia. The remainder of the book charts the artist’s entire career, describing his painted and graphic oeuvre within its historical context. Particular attention is paid to Goya’s patrons, his favourite themes (portraits, scenes of warfare and terror, satirical prints and so on), his criticism of the Catholic Church and encounters with the Inquisition, his fierce anti-war stance and his reputation in his lifetime. What emerges is a picture of an artist deeply engaged with life around him and fully committed to documenting it with an unflinching eye for truth and injustice.  

TIME Magazine’s art critic Robert Hughes is also the bestselling author of The Fatal Shore and the originator and narrator of the highly acclaimed PBS television series The Shock of the New. 

As a reviewer, Hughes is the only art critic to twice win America’s most coveted award for art criticism (in 1982 and 1985), the Frank Jewett Mather Award, given by the College Art Association of America. In 1988 Hughes was named recipient of the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award. In 1993, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

The Fatal Shore, a 688-page history of the brutally dramatic origins of his native country, Australia, was an international best-seller. Both TIME and The New York Times placed the book on their Best Ten of ’87 lists, and it is about to be made into a movie. In 1988, Hughes won Great Britain’s two most prestigious nonfiction literary awards, the W. H. Smith Literary Award for the most significant contribution to literature in 1987 and the Duff Cooper Prize for the most literary historical work in 1987. Hughes is the first author to receive both awards in one year.