44 - ELISEO ESTEVE (Castalla, Alicante, 1925).

ELISEO ESTEVE (Castalla, Alicante, 1925). “Two Women and a Man. Goya” and “Reading,” 1966. Oil on canvas (2). Require cleaning and restoration. Signed, dated, titled, and located on the reverse. Measurements: 127 x 66 cm (x2) 140 x 80 cm (frames, x2). This pair of canvases pays homage to the work of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, one of the great masters of the Spanish artistic tradition. Created in 1966, both compositions reproduce two Goyesque scenes of an intimate and everyday nature, in which the Aragonese artist transformed the gestures, postures, and relationships between the figures into a penetrating tool for observing human nature.The works are based on *Men Reading*, also known as *The Reading* or *The Politicians*, and *Two Women and a Man*, also known as *Women Laughing*—paintings created by Goya between 1819 and 1823 and housed in the Museo Nacional del Prado. These works belong to the artist’s “black paintings” series. Eliseo Esteve Candela was a Spanish painter trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, where he studied on a scholarship from the Provincial Council of Alicante and received various academic honors. After beginning his career in sculpture, he devoted himself entirely to painting, developing a body of work marked by portraiture, landscape, and, especially, religious and historical themes. During his extended stay in Madrid, he studied the great masters of the Prado Museum with particular interest; their influence is reflected in his figurative sensibility. He exhibited in Madrid and Alicante, and part of his religious work can be found in churches and the residences of Salesian missionaries. They need cleaning and restoration.