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Archive of Meaning

References, processes and ideas that guide my tattoo work. It’s a space to give context and clarity to the style and the thinking behind the designs.

 

GOYA -Two Men Fighting

From Francisco Goya’s Two Men Fighting…

“Two Men Fighting” – after Francisco Goya
@visionsofecstasy.studio

It’s not a reinterpretation or a loose adaptation. I followed the original line for line, staying completely faithful to Goya’s hand. Every mark is his—just translated into skin.

Goya — Line for Line

A drawing from the streets, transferred to skin

An artist came to me one day — a painter, someone who knows what a drawing holds — and placed a book of Francisco Goya’s work in front of me. No reinterpretation, no idea to develop. He pointed to a single drawing from Goya’s Album E, also known as the Witches and Old Women Album, and said, “This one. Exactly as it is.”

It was Two Men Fighting, a drawing made between 1812 and 1820, most likely in graphite and ink wash. The original lines weren’t harsh or perfect — they trembled, they pushed, they felt alive. The figures weren’t stylized. They were just there: two men in conflict, pulling, locking, struggling. There’s no scenery, no clear winner, no explanation. And none needed. It felt more like something witnessed than imagined.

I didn’t change anything. I followed the drawing line for line, as closely as I could — just translated from paper to skin. Every movement of the original pencil became a movement of my machine. And for me, that was the satisfaction: not creating something new, but holding the line steady enough to let it pass through. No invention, just attention.

What I love about this piece — both the drawing and the tattoo — is that it’s not conceptual. It doesn’t need to be. It carries its weight in the gesture itself. Two bodies caught in a moment of tension. No commentary. Just motion, urgency, human force.

But that’s also why Goya matters.

He wasn’t just a royal painter or a name in art history. He lived through war, revolution, and repression. Spain during those years was collapsing inward — torn by the Napoleonic invasion, civil unrest, and violent shifts in power. Goya saw it from every side. He had painted kings, but he walked the streets. He listened to the people. He watched soldiers and beggars, fights and crowds, joy and brutality. And he drew it all.

The albums he created — like the Disasters of War, the Caprichos, and this one, Album E — were never published in his lifetime. These weren’t polished paintings meant for the court. They were personal, often private responses to what he saw around him. Sketches of street fights, women arguing, men collapsing, children playing, priests shouting, mothers grieving. They weren’t allegories. They were Spain — raw, chaotic, exhausted, real.

In that sense, Two Men Fighting isn’t just a scene. It’s a kind of truth. A quiet documentation of how conflict shows up anywhere — without heroism, without context. Goya captured that with a few strokes. And two centuries later, that tension still holds.

Tattooing it felt honest. It wasn’t about reimagining the image. It was about preserving the moment — carrying it forward, one line at a time.

NOt

Explore more of Goya’s drawings at The Met:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/357003

 
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