Plate 59 from ‘Los Caprichos’: And still they don’t go! (Y aun no se van!)

Description

In And still they don’t go!, struggling figures prop up a huge diagonal slab, their persistence seeming almost as disturbing as the danger around them. In And Still They Don’t Go!, Francisco Goya turns an ordinary expression of exasperation into a fantastic confrontation with inertia. The title asks why people remain in a situation that appears to demand escape.

Published in 1799 as plate 59 of Los Caprichos, the print gives that question a dark physical setting through etching and burnished aquatint. Goya’s grotesque figures allow folly to become more than a social mannerism: it acquires a bodily presence and a sense of peril. The image’s unease comes from the distance between recognizing a threat and responding to it. Its bitter humor rests on a refusal to leave that seems to survive every warning.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Goya collection.