Jake and Dinos Chapman’s fascination with the work of Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya (1746~1828) is a persistent theme throughout the brothers’ oeuvre. Francisco Goya created the aquatint series <The Disasters of War> from 1810 to 1820. The eighty-two images tell of the horrors the artist witnessed during the peninsular war between Spain and France between 1808 and 1814.
In depicting the brutality of the war in graphic detail and drawing attention to the awful human cost of such conflict, the portfolio acts as a visual indictment of the French occupation of Spain by Napoleon Bonaparte and a powerful anti-war statement.
<Great Deeds Against the Dead(1994)>, showcased in the ‘Sensation’ exhibition of Royal Academy in 1997, is a mixed media rendering of Plate 39 of Goya's <The Disasters of War> series. In Goya's original work, three figures are strung up on a tree trunk, murdered, and mutilated; the Chapmans use mannequins, wigs, and fake blood to create a lifesize sculpture.
<From the Blackened Beyond (2011)> is one entire set of <The Disasters of War> reworked and improved by Chapman in his own words. In this <Human Rainbow> series, Chapman produced further works based on the same Hitler drawings of Geli Raubal, his half-niece and romantic obsession, and his dogs.