Plate 45 from ‘Los Caprichos: There is Plenty to Suck (Mucho hay que chupar)

Description

In There is Plenty to Suck, grotesque figures gather beside a basket of small, unsettling forms, giving the language of appetite a disturbing visual presence. Francisco Goya’s There Is Plenty to Suck turns abundance into something threatening rather than generous. The company appears absorbed in its own interests, while the basket introduces a troubling suggestion of lives reduced to material for consumption.

Plate 45 of Los Caprichos, published in 1799, uses etching and burnished aquatint to make the fantastic scene dense and tangible. Goya’s title invites an interpretation of exploitation without requiring every detail to be assigned a single symbolic meaning. The print’s darkness comes from that transformation of need into predation. Its force lies in the relationship between those who take and what they regard as available, allowing a grotesque gathering to expose a recognizable failure of sympathy.

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